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.

“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.