Traditional CPRs, New Institutions: Native Title Management Committees and the State-Wide Native Title Congress in South Australia

Abstract

"Native title has the characteristics of a common property resource. Its management involves accommodating both Aboriginal customary law and the Australian legal system in securing and maintaining a flow of benefits and allocating these between members of the native title community. Native title governance institutions need to be robust to hold and manage native title in perpetuity. They will face inevitable threats to their stability and authority from community conflicts and complex negotiation processes with globalised actors.

"This paper outlines the development of governance institutions for native title in SA, at local and statewide scales. These institutions are critical to delivery of authority and certainty in negotiations about native title, yet they are new and fragile. Ostrom's design principles for effective common property resource management institutions find resonance at various scales in their developing structures and decision making processes and also provide a potential framework for critique of the likely effectiveness of their operations. The question of how Ostrom's design principles might be applied to inform, build awareness and support informed decision making by native title communities about the design of effective institutions for holding and managing native title warrants attention."