Projects
Desk-top review of Indigenous engagement in the National Environmental Science Program

High Impact project

Client:

Department of the Environment and Energy

Location:

Australia

Sector/s:

Environment

Service/s:

In 2019 SGS was commissioned by the former Department of the Environment and Energy (DEE) to undertake a desk-top review of Indigenous engagement in the National Environmental Science Program (NESP).

Specifically, the brief required SGS to:

Scope Indigenous environmental and climate science research themes and questions
Where documented research themes could not be found online, to consult with relevant Indigenous organisations
Collate existing resources to support Indigenous collaboration in environmental and climate science research, and
Liaise with Indigenous stakeholders about the draft findings via online platforms and phone calls given the constraints on face-to-face meetings due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The final report was completed in July 2020. It presents our findings and recommendations.

As this research was desk-top based and the authors of this report are not Indigenous, our findings and recommendations do not represent the collective views of Indigenous peoples about their environmental and climate science research themes and questions. Therefore, we included a recommendation that further consultations with the Indigenous peoples around Australia will be necessary in order to ascertain their environmental and climate science research needs and priorities for the next iteration of the NESP.

We thank the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment for allowing us to host the report on our website. And we are grateful to the Knowledge Brokers in each of the six NESP Hubs who gave generously of their time and effort to locate documents, provide information and review draft documents. We thank them sincerely. We also want to acknowledge the contributions of the many Hub Steering Committee members, Indigenous Advisory Group members and Indigenous researchers who also gave freely of their time to have discussions with us via various electronic platforms following the restrictions on face-to-face meetings that were introduced following the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic.

We appreciate the time given by many other people who agreed to be interviewed and participate in discussions along the way, especially many Indigenous groups around the country.

We would also like to acknowledge our appreciation of the time, insights and assistance provided by the Science Partnerships Section and other officers within the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment and other Commonwealth agencies. Their assistance in providing information, locating documents and recalling the history around policies, programs and events was very helpful and greatly appreciated.