Traditional owners in $17million carbon trade

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$1 million a year for the next 17 years:The carbon trading deal will deliver $1 million a year for the next 17 years to the Bawinanga Aboriginal Corporation, which manages Maningrida outstations, and the Jawoyn Association, which administers communities farther south.The West Arnhem Fire Management Agreement is expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 100,000 tonnes a year, the equivalent of taking 20,000 can off the territory roads, Scrymgour says. What’s more, out of control burning off routinely threatens valued environments in Kakadu and Nitmiluk national parks.

World first – brokered by government: The agreement was a world first –

• brokered by government;

•  funded by a private gas producer; and

• contracted out to indigenous landowners.

It would unite traditional knowledge and practices with land management based on contemporary science. The burning of savanna grasslands was the biggest source of greenhouse emission in the Top End; about 40 per cent of the territory’s gas emissions come from wildfires. Maningrida has one of the lowest average incomes in the country.

The Australian, 28/8/2006, p.16

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