Description:
Sustainability assessment methods are primarily aimed at global, national or state scales. However, modelling sustainability at finer spatial scales, such as the region, is essential for understanding and achieving sustainability. Regions are emerging as an essential focus for sustainability researchers, natural resource managers and strategic planners working to develop and implement sustainability goals. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of current sustainability assessment methods - ecological footprint, wellbeing assessment, ecosystem health assessment, quality of life and natural resource availability - at the regional scale. Each of these assessment methods are tested using South East Queensland (SEQ) as a case study. It was selected because of its ecological and demographic diversity, its combination of coastal and land management issues, and its urban metropolitan and rural farm and non-farm communities. The applicability of each of these methods to regional assessment was examined using an evaluation criteria matrix, which describes the attributes of an effective method and the characteristics that make these methods useful for regional management and building community capacity to progress sustainability. We found that the methods tested failed to effectively measure progress toward sustainability at the regional scale, demonstrating the need for a new method for assessing regional sustainability.
Description:
Many local government or regional plans have “a sustainable future for our community” as a goal. However, few local or regional governments have a sustainability reporting tool in place that enables them to understand how far along the pathway to sustainability their community is. There are a range of reasons for this, including current sustainability indicators and indices not matching the needs or capacity of local actors. This paper argues that a collaborative approach to developing sustainability reporting tools, that involves sustainability experts and local actors working together, will be more successful at developing a tool that has a theoretical basis with locally relevant indicators, which is practical for informed decision making. This process will also build the sustainability reporting capacity of local actors. This collaborative approach was tested in South West Victoria, Australia, resulting in a locally relevant, practical and theoretically sound sustainability reporting tool that met the needs of local actors. This outcome shows that a collaborative approach can overcome some of the barriers to sustainability reporting for local actors; however, further testing is required.
Description:
Many local government or regional plans have “a sustainable future for our community” as a goal. However, few local or regional governments have a sustainability reporting tool in place that enables them to understand how far along the pathway to sustainability their community is. There are a range of reasons for this, including current sustainability indicators and indices not matching the needs or capacity of local actors. This paper argues that a collaborative approach to developing sustainability reporting tools, that involves sustainability experts and local actors working together, will be more successful at developing a tool that has a theoretical basis with locally relevant indicators, which is practical for informed decision making. This process will also build the sustainability reporting capacity of local actors. This collaborative approach was tested in South West Victoria, Australia, resulting in a locally relevant, practical and theoretically sound sustainability reporting tool that met the needs of local actors. This outcome shows that a collaborative approach can overcome some of the barriers to sustainability reporting for local actors; however, further testing is required.
Description:
Water authorities are dealing with the challenge of ensuring that there is enough water to meet demand in the face of drought, population growth and predictions of reduced supply due to climate change. In order to develop effective household demand management programs, water managers need to understand the factors that influence household water use. Following an examination and re-analysis of current water consumption behavioral models we propose a new model for understanding household water consumption. We argue that trust plays a role in household water consumption, since people will not save water if they feel others are not minimizing their water use (inter-personal trust). Furthermore, people are less likely to save water if they do not trust the water authority (institutional trust). This paper proposes that to fully understand the factors involved in determining household water use the impact of trust on water consumption needs investigation.
Description:
Water is a scarce resource around the world, but particularly in dryland regions of Australia where droughts and the impact of climate change have dramatically reduced water availability. For communities living in dryland areas, and for global food security, this is a critical issue. This book contains case studies of innovative applied research for adaptive water management in the dryland regions of Australia. Each of these studies tells a story of an approach to adaptive water management that not only provides solutions to the water scarcity challenges in dryland areas, but also helps sustainability of regional communities around this issue.
Description:
The assessment of sustainable development is often based on the three pillars of sustainability model using social, economic and environmental indicators. It is thought that by measuring the performance of each system, information can be gained about the sustainability of the whole system. However it seems there has been no attempt to evaluate if such an assumption is true. During the development of a sustainability assessment framework for south west Victoria, Australia, it has become evident that this approach to sustainability assessment does not provide an accurate assessment of system sustainability. The project found that environmental indicators were considered the most important for assessing regional sustainability. As a consequence, the assessment produced shows that in south west Victoria, sustainability is largely determined by the condition of the environment. This finding highlights the current disconnection between the theory and reality of sustainability. Here, we describe a framework for sustainability assessment that attempts to re-connect theory to practice.
Description:
Transition initiatives in Australia, as elsewhere, have been mooted as a means of increasing community resilience to the threats posed by peak oil, climate change and economic uncertainty. Their emergence has attracted researchers to ask questions around their purpose, effectiveness and attraction for those who participate, as well as their likely future prospects in changing attitudes and habits in their respective communities and in society as a whole. This paper contributes to the broader understanding of transition initiatives in Australia by analysing the findings from a survey conducted amongst those involved in such initiatives within a deinstitutional theory framework. It is concluded that although the emergence of these initiatives are somewhat indicative of deinstitutionalisation, this is limited. In addition, the concepts and concerns on which they are based flow only slowly into the broader community.
Description:
Environmental education challenges educators to provide students with activities that cover complex societal issues, enhance critical thinking and to promote interdisciplinary and holistic learning. A further challenge is to convey this information so that it provides a solid foundation for participatory decision making. For example, effective management of water resources requires consideration of the social, economic and environmental consequences of various water allocation decisions together with an understanding of the possible conflicts that arise from these decisions, particular under scenarios of limited water supply. Well designed visualisation tools can enhance teaching and understanding of difficult concepts. For example, they can be designed to allow students to participate in hypothetical decision making and to visualise the potential implications of their decisions under a range of scenarios. A review of the published literature revealed that several visualisation tools have been developed for use in science education, but few provide the option for students to participate in integrated environmental decision making. This paper presents a visualisation tool, called WINDSCREEN, that has been introduced into environmental science classes to enhance student learning. The tool focuses on water resources and requires students to think about how they would allocate available water supplies for social, economic and environmental uses. An overview of the challenges associated with water allocation decisions, together with the role that visualisation tools can play in environmental education are also discussed.