009_WorldPressEdit
For tens of thousands of years, Aboriginal people - the oldest continuous culture on earth - have been strategically burning the country to manage the landscape and to prevent out of control fires.
Over ten years ago, the Aboriginal owned company Warddeken Land Management was established to manage 1.4 million hectares of land in Northern Australia, the Warddeken Indigenous Protected Areas (IPA), home to the Kunwinjku Aboriginal people.
The business combines ancient traditional knowledge with Western science and contemporary technologies such as aerial burning, leaf blowers and digital mapping.
The company is able to sell carbon credits to heavy polluters by preventing wild fires in the region. However, in recent years, with the onset of climate change, Wardekkens work is getting harder and harder: They are seeing shorter but more intense wet seasons and longer, drier, windier and hotter dry seasons - making fire abatement increasingly difficult. Climate change not only jeopardises the business, but threatens one of the countryâs most unique environments.
Once a year in the dry season, using proceeds from the carbon credits, Wardekken organises a bush walk with Aboriginal land owners in an effort to encourage people to return to their homelands and traditional lifestyles. The walk is an opportunity for elders to pass down knowledge to the younger generations: They are being taught how to hunt, where important rock art sites are and when the country needs to be burnt. During the walk, fires are being lit sporadically whenever conditions are appropriate.