Abstract

In the Northern Territory of Australia, Payment for Ecosystem Services is a relatively new tool which is fairly well integrated within a number of Indigenous Ranger Programs and contributes to a considerable proportion of their total operational budgets. As a tool the extent of its application is determined by the buyer of this service which in this early stage is mostly State and Commonwealth governments. The purpose of the paper is to suggest that instead of PES being merely a tool to assist in Integrated Natural and Cultural Resource Management (INCRM) it could be used as a framework to remodel the way all land management activities are valued, governed and delivered. There are several advantages to promoting PES as a model rather than merely use it as a tool especially on Indigenous lands. (1) This would put control back into the hands of the people who own and have lived on that country for thousands of years. (2) Sustaining INCRM practices by aligning economic, social, cultural and political aspects the PES model will provide greater control of the decision-making models to people with Indigenous knowledge and scientific knowhow, who wish to adapt in managing their resources. However like many other notions relating to management on Indigenous lands, such a proposal comes with caveats. The experiences of working on an Australian Research Council project grant provided opportunities to examine these. The most fundamental of these caveats are ways to satisfy the desire of Aboriginal people to have holistic control of INCRM of their lands and resources and at the same time satisfy the requirements of the funding bodies by providing evidences of results for funding expenditures. This paper therefore calls for a fundamental shift in government policy and models of delivery of funding to make PES operational and be an effective framework for INCRM.