Land Sea and Water

Ancient Indigenous Australian bush-burning could be used around the world to radically cut greenhouse gas emissions, according to United Nations research, which also challenges Prime Minister Tony Abbott's refusal to embrace the purchase of international carbon credits. Abbott has previously said buying overseas offsets sends money "offshore into dodgy carbon farms in Equatorial Guinea and Kazakhstan".

The government this month delayed considering the measure until 2017 or later, saying it would rather make cuts domestically. [node:read-more:link]

Researchers established that Lake Mungo's high water mark was five metres higher than previously realised, and results of an international study has revealed that the iconic lake situated 90 kilometres north-east of Mildura, was actually a mega-lake, almost 20 per cent bigger than thought before. "Traces of people's activities are actually embedded in sediment, so that tells us that people were relying on watercraft to get around to exploit what was on the island in terms of animals to hunt," said La Trobe University archaeologist Nicola Stern. [node:read-more:link]

Our brains were our great evolutionary advantage, conferring massive memory, curiosity, inventiveness and observational powers ... By applying our acquired knowledge and insights, we could deliberately choose a path to avoid danger or trouble, and to exploit opportunities. I believe foresight was a huge evolutionary advantage for our species. And that's what is so tragic today when we have all the amplified foresight of scientists and supercomputers, which have been warning us for decades that we are heading down a dangerous path, but now we allow politics and economics to override this predictive power. [node:read-more:link]

Going without food, or going without nutritious food, has heavy consequences for Indigenous people, as we learnt on a recent research trip to the West Kimberley. Indigenous Australians are already twice as likely to have a disability or chronic illness as non-Indigenous Australians; poor nutrition compounds these problems, leading to further illness and secondary impairments.Aboriginal people consistently reported alleviating food insecurity by going crabbing or fishing on traditional lands. Though this accounted for a small portion of total dietary intake. [node:read-more:link]

Indigenous land and sea rangers have called on the government to expand what they say is one of the most successful Indigenous jobs programs, caring for the huge swaths of protected land across the country. However, it falls on the deaf ears of racist and greedy governments who prefer to destroy the land with mining and sell the rest to China.
In doing so, they further damage the climate for everyone's children and grandchildren's future, including their own descendants. [node:read-more:link]

Southeast Asia and Australia during the last Ice Age. (Photo: Migration Heritage NSW)

Wes Judd Australian Geographic 27 September 2013 [node:read-more:link]