...et al. 2003; Fonjong et al. 2004). Agenda 21 and the Convention on Biological Diversity (hereafter 'the Convention') were outcomes of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED 1992) and were reaffirmed by most nations at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002. Agenda 21 is global action plan that promotes environment and development partnerships and is supported by international agreements about the conservation and sustainable use of environmental resources, such as the Convention. These policy instruments encourage programmes that simultaneously address environmental degradation, poverty reduction, Indigenous rights, and access to education, health services and employment. Signatory nations to the Convention commit to an equitable sharing of technologies, and project resources and benefits, with Indigenous people and developing nations. Some proponents consider that Indigenous people's genuine participation in environmental programmes will secure the basis for their livelihoods and ultimately reduce economic disparity and political power between nations in a shared, global future.

Australia is a signatory nation to both Agenda 21 and the Convention, and has made some (limited) progress towards upholding its commitment to Indigenous (1) people within initiatives that fall under the guise of participatory, community-based, or collaborative research. Indigenous Australians are a social minority in Australia, and although there are now many principles and protocols for cross-cultural collaboration on projects, many of these have been written and produced by agency staff rather than by community representatives. They are generic in nature, with appeals for 'respect' or to 'be sincere' common in government protocols for engaging Indigenous communities in research and other initiatives. These principles provide little practical guidance when working in complex social and cultural contexts and geographically isolated areas. Even the existing generic, cross-cultural protocols present major challenges to mainstream environmental agencies that neither sufficiently adapt to, nor embed, these protocols within collaborative programmes, often perpetuating institutional racism (Hollinsworth 2006; Carter and Hill 2007).

Systematic development and testing of frameworks for engagement has received little attention in Australia, and there is a need to evaluate whether current principles are, indeed, appropriate and equitable for Indigenous Australians, or whether they simply perpetuate an assumed policy of engagement that suits major stakeholders. The study described here outlines the development and testing of a framework of engagement, while implementing a participatory environmental science research project in two study areas located on Aboriginal land in northern Australia: the Maningrida region and the Cobourg Peninsula (hereafter 'Maningrida' and 'Cobourg', respectively).

Participatory environmental research

Participatory research is based on the philosophy that community ownership of a project will increase its successful implementation and the adoption of its findings (e.g. Brunner and Clark 1997; Brosius et al. 1998; Patterson and Williams 1998; Christie et al. 2002; Eversole 2003; Garande and Dagg 2005). Participatory research is flexible and recommends a range of differing techniques and tools that are designed to promote shared dialogue and action (see Carter 2001). Yet, many participatory environmental research programmes simply offer very passive types of participation such as consultation for a or information leaflets. Some co-opt participants into dominant ways of working and thinking about environmental research that stem from objectivism and the rationalist paradigm, rather than exploring alternative methodologies and designs, such as action research (Buchy and Ross 2000; Christie et al. 2002; Garande and Dagg 2005; Sapountzaki and Wassenhoven 2005).

Despite even the best intentions of environmental sciences' researchers, melding linear research approaches with the ideals and operational practice of participation is difficult and contested. The paradigm of positivism or rationalism, based on the premise that empirical measurement and rational thought are the basis to objective research, remains dominant in environmental sciences' research in Australia. While social science methodologies, such as narrative or critical theory, have been used to explore environmental issues with Indigenous Australians, these are not acceptable approaches within most environmental management domains, or to biophysical sciences and resource management agencies, such as those with the authority to issue a fishery licence.

There are few examples of collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in the objectivist sciences and further understanding of these efforts is recommended to advance sustainable development (Davies et al. 1999). Kennett (1997) described Indigenous participation on a project that quantified sea turtle distribution, abundance and harvest by incorporating Indigenous knowledge and disseminating information in schools. Nesbitt et al. (2001) stress the need to incorporate Indigenous knowledge, language, access permission, cultural constraints, and employment in biological resources survey. Gambold (2001) described participatory land assessment by mixing quantitative and qualitative local knowledge and terminology in a computer mapping system. Evaluation of participatory environmental programmes, however, is particularly scant (Patterson and Williams 1998; Eversole 2003), and even these more successful projects would benefit from a critical methodological approach that systematically formulates principles for success, and tests their effectiveness.

In particular, analysis of the epistemological basis for many environmental programmes is not undertaken. Debate surrounds the value of Indigenous knowledge as a development strategy because it needs to be decoupled from the power structures and factors that marginalise Indigenous people (Agrawal 1995), and because current rhetoric often fails to acknowledge that communities are filled with multiple knowledges that are hybridised, mediated, localised, and continually adapted for utilitarian or other purposes (Briggs 2005). Sometimes people simply prefer to acquire new knowledge rather than provide Indigenous knowledge, or integrate new and existing understandings (Agrawal 1995; Briggs 2005).

Some recent international attempts to evaluate research processes systematically have linked participation to various stages in the project cycle and scientific methodologies (Spaling 2003; McCall and Minang 2005). To maximise cross-cultural collaboration in research, Hill et al. (1999) designed a comparative ecosystem management framework. They nominated desired outcomes and articulated processes to protect Indigenous intellectual property, to negotiate, and to incorporate Indigenous language during research about Indigenous fire use and management. Their research provided valuable qualitative data, but a similar development and evaluation of principles for collaboration in the pursuit of the quantitative data required for most environmental sciences research needs to be addressed. Orchard et al. (2003) analyse secondary sources to redress Indigenous participation in mainstream natural resources management projects, proposing institutional arrangements within partnerships of consultation and negotiation. While such institutional re-engineering is critical to facilitating community-based approaches with Indigenous Australians, the need to design and evaluate processes that complement objectivist research remains.

Guiding principles are required to support new paradigms, including those developed within the objectivist sciences, and appropriate processes need to be systematically developed and tested at programmatic and operational levels (Brunner and Clark 1997; Brosius et al. 1998). Even the choice of participatory technique or tool (from a range of alternatives) must be carefully considered as to its effectiveness at various procedural stages (Garande and Dagg 2005). To this end, a framework of engagement based on guiding principles that are tested and evaluated during a programme of environmental sciences research at the two study areas is described below.

Study area and context

The Maningrida study area occurs in Arnhem Land, along Australia's northern coastline (Figure 1). Arnhem Land is held under inalienable freehold title for Aboriginal people under the Commonwealth Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act (1976). Maningrida is around 380 km east-northeast of Darwin,...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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