REEF RESTORATION & ADAPTATION SCIENCE
Creating equity and changing the narrative for Traditional Owners
What is Reef Restoration and Adaptation Science?
Reef Restoration and Adaptation Science, or RRAS, is focused on restoring the Reef and helping it adapt to threats such as climate change through scientific interventions and processes. The program also creates opportunities for Traditional Owners through education and development in RRAS programs, as well as employment in research and delivery roles such as scientists, technicians and researchers.
RRAS is a key component of the Reef Trust Partnership (RTP). The program includes Traditional Owners as part of its formal governance arrangements, but also collaborates closely with the dedicated Traditional Owner Reef Protection component of the RTP, which supports its own Traditional Owner Technical Working Group. The Technical Working Group formed in 2020 to co-design fit-for-purpose Traditional Owner-led programs that contribute to the overall outcome of reef restoration and adaptation efforts.
Reframing RRAS
In most cases, mainstream environmental programs are designed by non-Indigenous people. They frame the language relevant to both the challenge and applied solutions in overly scientific ways that do not necessarily connect with Traditional Owner communities’ ways of doing, thinking and knowing.
This is what surfaced through the co-design work of the RRAS-COTS Traditional Owner Technical Working Group, so a concerted effort was made to reframe the terms and meanings associated with reef restoration and adaptation.
The new language that emerged from Traditional Owners was that if Country is sick, then the logical solution is simply to heal Country.
In July 2021, the technical working group met to co-design a Healing Country grant program as part of RRAS.
The workshop also led to the development of a key statement reflecting how Traditional Owners feel about healing the Reef – The Heart of the Reef Statement. It provides the foundation for the Healing Country grant program, but it’s also an urgent call to action that articulates the deep interconnectedness that Traditional Owners have to Country. The statement speaks to the power of interweaving Traditional Owner and Western-based knowledge systems, plus the holistic approach to managing Reef Country, where nature and culture are inextricably linked in one biocultural landscape.
“We need to stand up as one mob, one Country, one Spirit, one Voice. And heal.”
— Heart of the Reef – a call to action for healing, 2021
The grant program
The Healing Country grant program provided $1.8M in funding to eligible Traditional Owner groups to lead and collaborate on activities that care for, heal and restore Reef Country. It’s also designed to foster the vital partnerships needed with universities, businesses, and institutions like the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) – which has the funding and expertise needed to conduct most of the current restoration projects.
For Traditional Owners, the program is contributing to business readiness for communities and expanding skills through training opportunities in areas like monitoring Reef health, reef restoration techniques, replanting mangroves, monitoring seagrass beds, and conducting cultural mapping surveys of water springs and coastal areas.
Traditional Owner input and involvement
Launched in 2022, the grant program currently has seven successful applicants taking part.
During the application process, Traditional Owners shared their thoughts on what needed to happen on their Country to heal it. The ideas were diverse, ranging from a need for more training and more knowledge of Western science, to the development of skills to conduct crown-of-thorn starfish control and baseline mapping of Country around things like seagrasses and turtle nesting sites.
For others, it was about getting more young people involved with understanding what adaptation and resilience means in terms of the Reef, and what’s needed to take their existing Healing Country work forward.
A major priority for everyone is ensuring that in future, Traditional Owner groups are equipped and supported to contribute meaningfully to decision making around conservation with Western-based stakeholders like scientists, governments and industry to restore the health of the Reef.
Looking ahead
Changing the narrative around the value and validity of Traditional Owner knowledge and their unique holistic approach requires driving a more public-facing presence for Traditional Owner groups, their projects and successes. This presence is crucial in helping to secure funding for future Traditional Owner-led projects and ensuring that Traditional Owners are positioned as key partners in the delivery of intervention projects restoring Reef health.
The RRAS Program, like all Reef Trust Partnership components, is building the evidence, skills and relationships needed to challenge thinking and demonstrate that Traditional Owner-led programs will create better outcomes for the Reef – today and in the future.
