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The Multifunctional Transition in Australia's Tropical Savannas: the Emergence of Consumption, Protection and Indigenous Values
Author(s) -
HOLMES JOHN
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
geographical research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.695
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1745-5871
pISSN - 1745-5863
DOI - 10.1111/j.1745-5871.2009.00629.x
Subject(s) - indigenous , geography , freehold , frontier , leasehold estate , consumption (sociology) , dominance (genetics) , pace , land use , land tenure , property rights , political science , ecology , sociology , agriculture , law , social science , biochemistry , chemistry , archaeology , geodesy , gene , biology
As elsewhere in affluent, western nations, the direction, complexity and pace of rural change in Australia can be conceptualised as a multifunctional transition in which a variable mix of consumption and protection values has emerged, contesting the former dominance of production values, and leading to greater complexity and heterogeneity in rural occupance at all scales. This transition has been explored in accessible, high‐amenity landscapes driven by enhanced consumption values. Less attention has been directed to remote, marginal lands where a flimsy mode of productivist occupance can, in part, be displaced by alternative modes with the transitions being facilitated by low transfer costs. Such is the case in Australia's northern tropical savannas where an extensive mode of pastoral occupance is selectively displaced by alternative consumption, protection and Indigenous values. This transition towards multifunctional occupance is most readily documented by mapping changes in land tenure and ownership over the last three decades. Tenure changes have been accompanied by new regimes of property rights and land ownership, including: native titles derived from common law; non‐transferable, common‐property Aboriginal freehold tenures; transfers of pastoral leases to Indigenous and conservation interests; expansion of conservation lands under public tenures; and revisions of the rights and duties of pastoral lessees. Future occupance scenarios remain unclear, given the sensitivity of this frontier zone to national and global driving forces.