Towards co-governance: An evaluation of co-management advantages, challenges and ways forward in South Australia

Recent decades have been marked by a transition from exclusionary to collaborative and community-based conservation. This transition has been underpinned by the aim to enhance the field’s contribution to human coexistence and environmental sustainability. Yet while the language of collaboration is now firmly entrenched in the global conservation rhetoric, collaborations too often remain restricted to community participation in pre-determined programs at local scales. Using South Australia as a case study, we illustrate this restriction and its implications in the context of co-management between the state and Aboriginal nations. Specifically, we draw on co-management legislation, agreements and reports, observations of co-management meetings of the Ngaut Ngaut and Gawler Ranges Parks co-management boards as well as interviews with co-management board and committee members, policy makers and park rangers. We illustrate that collaboration only exists within park management planning and does not extend to the design and administration of the legislative framework under which it occurs. As this restriction disproportionately affects the realisation and realisability Aboriginal nations’ aspirations, we propose a transition from co-management of protected areas to co-governance of the entire framework moving forward. We further highlight similar power and knowledge imbalances within the new conservation paradigm more broadly and make the case for an expansion of current forms of collaboration to conservation policy and practice on all scales.