We’ve got grand plans of making this a more crowd sourced project next year with the help of our official webmaster Sandra Lauer.

In the meantime, stay safe over the Christmas period, and take some time out to contemplate the big things, a la Bill Waterson’s Calvin and Hobbs:

I had the opportunity to attend COP15 last December as part of the ANU climate change science and policy field school. I came out of Copenhagen with many experiences and insights, but this blog focuses just on my ‘research’ area, which I presented a couple of weeks ago at the Human Ecology Forum.

At COP15 (amongst the range of my other interests) I was studying the inclusion of health co-benefits of climate change mitigation in the conference agenda, with a comparison to what is presented in the literature. I kept it pretty broad, including issues such as direct health impacts, socio-economic impacts from environmental change and the ethical dimensions of these issues in my research scope. Being at COP15 gave me a chance to attend health-related events and booths on topics as diverse as water and food scarcity, disease, meteorological science and the displacement of people. The aim was to explore how health issues were perceived and represented, and if there was any agenda push or official inclusion of health co-benefits in the negotiations and text. Due to the access restrictions of the NGO pass issued to ANU students, the bulk of my experiential research concentrated on the health issues presented by the side events and booths and is therefore weighted from the perspectives of NGO delegates. At the same time I was conducting a literature review looking at how the health co-benefits and impacts are presented, and if there is any discussion of how to argue ‘health co-benefits’ external to the conference of the parties.

To my surprise, there were few side events at COP15 explicitly about health, but many others I attended mentioned health either:

-       As part of a national climate change agenda (e.g. the government of Kiribati, who impressed me with their level-headed explanation of measures they were taking rather than just appealing for help)

-       In relation to other climate change issues

• Migration
• Employment
• Youth
• Gender
• Technology transfer

-       As part of a broader agenda (e.g. in an event on adaptation including the International Human Dimensions Program- a very promising ‘human dimensions science’ collaboration)

For me another highlight was the World Health Organisation, who was at the conference with a very clear mandate to argue the health co-benefits. However, from my personal experience as an ‘NGO’ delegate, this mandate was weakened by the rabble of so many other events going on at once, and then by most of the interested conference attendees being locked out in the final days in which the specific health events were concentrated.

How does this compare to the literature? I was happy to see that in terms of facts, statements and graphics, the information presented to me at COP15 was very similar or the same as the arguments currently going around in the literature. But what surprised me is that inclusion of the health co-benefits of climate change is only really a recent thing in the ‘official’ dialogue, even though it has always been implied (e.g. in the UNFCCC, where adverse climate change effects are explained to include health issues).

The real difference between the literature and COP15 was not the information itself, but how it was presented and pushed as an agenda. I found that presentation of the health co-benefits was there- but all over the place (as is true of the conference as a whole). In COP15 health issues were also brought up in light of thier potential to become part of a wider issue grouping of the ‘human dimensions’ to climate change, which goes beyond most of the sector-focused literature. This could be in part due to the sheer number of applications for  side events which the organisers received for COP15, which resulted in them having to ask various groups with similar interests to work together within single events (with mixed success).

My main realisations from looking at health at COP15 go beyond the health agenda and are probably true for any interest grouping in these sorts of conferences. I have been considering whether these groups (such as WHO) could have done any better in the foray that was COP15, and realised that even with some effective presentation of the health co-benefits and collaboration between groups, my focus as an NGO delegate had missed the main problem. Before I came to the conference I did not realise how much of a disconnect there would be between the rabble of side events/booths and the official negotiations, which were too busy in themselves to consider any other happenings. It was like there were a number of different conferences going on at once, with different audiences and different purposes. With this sort of forum, I should not have been surprised that there was very little run through of the health agenda (being presented in one forum) to the actual negotiations (going on in another forum, and almost totally decided upon already).

This study has, surprisingly, made me consider issues which don’t just apply to health co-benefits. Notably, my frustrations have centred on the question: what is the point of having side events and booths at the conference, when it is clear that the negotiators have no time at all to engage with them, and can’t really change their official positions anyway? I realised that at COP15, their real role was to help networking and collaboration between different organisations, rather than reach the negotiators. I’m hoping that for the health agenda at least, the range of events also helped to broadly engage and encourage grassroots action in parallel with an international agreement (which some including myself would argue is the more effective mode of change).

Then, is there any more effective and open way to try to bring branching agendas such as ‘health co-benefits’ to a COP? I was forced to conclude that by the time a COP is underway, it is too late for any new agenda to be introduced. The really effective agenda push has to come in the years leading up to the conference itself, when the substantive part of the text is drafted. Organisations such as WHO have been working on this, for example, by making repeated submissions to the secretariat outlining their agenda and where they want to the text to change. However, I’m not sure how effective this has actually been in getting changes realised in the text- maybe a topic for my further undergrad study?

If you’re not a local, you can watch a video of her research. Catherine presented her video at the Ecological Society of America (ESA) Millennium Conference: Water-Ecosystem Services, Drought and Environmental Justice (click on the video icon, hers is the third down) held in Georgia last year.

Catherine writes:
Concepts of justice and the distribution of public resources have been an important aspect of social debate for centuries.  Finding fair and just allocations of natural resources remains a major preoccupation for national governments and their constituent communities.  Where such allocations or decisions are perceived as unjust, underlying social tensions can emerge and result in social conflict.  This study examines two such social conflicts: a 2006 NSW government action to cut a water allocation and the Victorian government’s North South Pipeline and Food Bowl Modernisation Project.

This study investigates these conflicts from a justice perspective, concentrating on notions of fairness and justice. Using a transdisciplinary investigative framework the thesis explores these notions through stakeholder perceptions of procedural justice and distributive justice.  Procedural justice is concerned with the fairness of elements of the decision-making process and distributive justice with the outcome or decision.  The study aims to find out how people perceive fairness and justice within the social context of the decision-making process and how these perceptions contribute to their acceptance of an outcome. The seminar will explore how justice constructs can be used in decision-making processes to increase the acceptance of outcomes and how better outcomes might be achieved.

Following advice from the recently published book ‘Doctorates down under’, a group of PhD students researching the nexus between people and environment are establishing a ‘peer support group’. The group will meet semi-regularly, both through Skype and face-to-face, to discuss their ideas and issues. Interested? contact Deb (deborah dot cleland at gmail dot com). This Friday (15 Jan 2010) we will meet at 10am at Vivaldi’s cafe on the ANU campus.

“Climate change policy makers face some unique challenges. Climate change is clearly a global issue and, whilst the fourth IPCC assessment report released last November stated warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and that it is very likely due to an increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations, the element of uncertainty surrounding the cause has generated conflicting discourses within media coverage of climate change. Media coverage influences public opinion and policy makers. The policies required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and effect climate change mitigation are generally unpalatable to mainstream voters, but one factor which may induce them to support such politically difficult policies is the perception of climate change as a threat to their lifestyles, or even to their existence. And if politicians perceive majority support they are encouraged to push for mitigation policies. This research project aims to investigate the interactions between public awareness, public opinion, policy making, and policy implementation, specifically focussing on how perceptions of public support for climate change mitigation policies may have influenced policy making and the extent to which that public support has been formed by perceptions of climate change as a threat”.

“And the reason why some have four feet and others many was that the stupider they were the more supports god gave them, to tie them more closely to earth. And the stupidest of the land animals, whose whole bodies lay stretched on the earth, the gods turned into reptiles, giving them no feet, because they had no further need for them…” Plato: Timeaus 49.92

This seminar will explore several aspects of the current construction of the savannah cat controversy. Firstly, it will reveal the competing discourses evident in the savannah cat case as complex; if not irreconcilable; Secondly, it will reveal the nomenclature relied on within these discourses as equally complex. Thirdly, it will highlight suggested changes to the existing administrative powers of the national Vertebrate Pest Committee as being neither transparent nor accountable and therefore of concern.

“A need to protect water supply ‘life lines’ as well as ‘sites’”

Current drought conditions have graphically revealed, in the form of thousands of hectares of dead and dying red gums and other flood-dependent vegetation, the inadequacies of current pre-ecological policies, structures and institutions, to achieve an ecologically sustainable future for the lower Murrumbidgee floodplain. The massive destruction of natural capital, on behalf of Australian society, is attributable in a large way to maintaining processes informed by the knowledge and values of the first half of the twentieth century, when catchment conditions and scientific understanding were very different from today i.e. protecting ‘sites’ rather than whole ‘systems’ and water regimes. Kingsford and Thomas (2001: 74)* provide the following illustration:

The Lower Murrumbidgee floodplain illustrates a problem for protection of wetland areas under [current] conservation legislation and policy. Conservation legislation is primarily designed to protect areas of significance as reserves (e.g. National Parks and Nature Reserves). Two examples from the Lower Murrumbidgee floodplain illustrate how this can fail. Yanga Nature Reserve lies in the
Fiddlers-Uara stratum and was primarily conserved for its Black Box woodland vegetation community. Similarly 23,800 ha of the Lower Murrumbidgee floodplain was protected in the Lower Murrumbidgee floodplain from clearing by legislation … Legislation and policy measures usually protect actual sites of wetlands from development but do not control threatening processes upstream … To protect wetland areas, policies and legislation for wetland conservation need to be applied to flow regimes. This necessitates the interaction of policies applied to the floodplain with legislation that governs the management of water. Until there is protection of the flow regimes that define wetlands and their biota, their long-term future, even if they have reserve status, cannot be guaranteed.

Approximately 65 000 hectares of historically inundated flood-dependent land on the floodplain has become ‘stranded’. A considerable part of the stranded landscapes now receives water only during rare major flood events (the last being in the mid-1970s). In a country with notoriously poor soils, a relatively large area of rich alluvial soils has virtually been taken out of ecological and agricultural production.

Floodplain-saltbush-red gum resilience cycle

A feature of traditional European land-use and natural resources management in the lower Murrumbidgee landscape was that landholders did not confine themselves to one ecosystem. They practiced annual stock movement between floodplain and saltbush ecosystems (similar to Swiss transhumance). Stock was moved to graze on the saltbush plains in winter and back to the floodplain vegetation in summer, after flooding had receded, so that both ecosystems could be ‘rested’. Many properties still retain frontage (floodplain) and back (saltbush) blocks in their ecosystem mix. This is a vestige of the pastoral era that dominated land-use in the region until the early 1980s and is being revisited in the light of climate change and a decline in the availability of oil.

During periods of difficult economic conditions, such as droughts or economic depressions, community members can, to this day, make a living from red gum forest products. This means that they do not have to leave their community to find work and the local economy is sustained during ‘hard times’. The red gum forests are looked upon as a source ‘exceptional circumstance’ community income. While there is a small amount of continuous forest product extraction in the district, red gum generally provides a major input to the local economy approximately once in a generation (25 years).

* Kingsford, R.T. & Thomas, R.F. 2001. Changing Water Regimes and
Wetland Habitat on the Lower Murrumbidgee Floodplain of the Murrumbidgee
River. NSW NPWS, Hurstville.

Friday 20 June, 2008 12:00 – 2:00pm

Development of Duffy 2002 (left) and 2005

The suburban landscape is predominately a twentieth century phenomenon. Likewise, much criticism has occurred in the last century, if not the last fifty years. Early planning literature in Australia suggested the detached dwellings should be the dominant suburban form as it was in keeping with notions of respectability and social progress (Hoskins 1994). In the USA, critics such as Mumford observed that the role of developers and housing construction companies had far greater influence than the planning aspirations for aesthetically pleasing healthy communities. As a result the aesthetic ideals originating from the Garden City and City Beautiful movements were supplanted by monotonous rows of houses with very little character. Today’s suburbs have been variously linked to a range of social ills from environmental pollution caused by increased stormwater run off to childhood obesity. However valid these concerns are, little is understood about how the suburban landscape is perceived or valued. Few studies have explored how residents interpret changes to the character of their suburban landscape and what effect this has on the way planning and design incorporate these landscape values held by the community. This study presents an opportunity to interpret how different social actors’ values and aspirations have affected the character of the suburb.

Few decision makers face complexities that are as persistent and pervasive as those who are tasked with managing the environment or managing human impacts on the environment. Does this mean that managers working on complex systems, such as these, need to be especially good systems thinkers and able to engage with the perspectives and thinking of multiple communities of interest?

After many years as a senior manager in New Zealand’s Department of Conservation, Keith Johnston is completing a PhD with the ANU’s School of Management, Marketing and International Business. His thesis studied environmental managers working in New Zealand. The over-arching question he set out to address was: What is the level of complexity of thinking and meaning making that might be required to sustainably manage the environment and how does this compare with the levels demonstrated by existing managers?

Using theories and methods from the field of adult development, he argues that managers need a high level of complexity of thinking and meaning making, or this at least needs to be present within management teams, if sustainable management is to be attained. He developed a framework for environmental management and leadership, providing indicators of systems capability and meaning making at different levels of management. But he did not find the levels of capability that he expected were required, even amongst the teams that were judged to be the most successful. What are the implications of these findings?”

The presentation will reflect on Viveka’s PhD work into design-led research and research-led design as a tool for change towards a sustainable future. The presentation will outline the concepts being played with in this metadesign project in order to open up the ideas for discussion. The aim of entering into this conversation is to get some feedback on the concepts being developed and to generate some ideas on how design-led methods might be of use to the research community in general.

Viveka is shortly attending three conferences to present her thoughts on co-designing a sustainable future. Towards that end she has supplied here two papers and one abstract relating to each of the three conferences:

* Designing a Travel Guide to the UnNatural World: Exploring a Design-led Methodology (331 KB)
* Changing the Change Conference: Co-designing a Sustainable Culture of Life (1.1 MB)
* Abstract (20 KB) for ‘Design with a Thousand Faces: Design-led methods for the social science research community’