Laura Stocker

Cultural Models of the Coast in Australia: Toward Sustainability

Cultural models of the coast affect—and are affected by—our marine ethics, frameworks for coastal ownership, and management practices. The coast can be seen as an ecosystem with intrinsic values, a commodity that can be bought and sold, a community place where people meet, a landscape with aesthetic appeal, a productive system that generates profits, a property to be managed, or a spiritual realm that relates to proper order and reverence. Each of these cultural constructions interacts with the others and this can create conflicts over rights and responsibilities. Each construction has implications for who should manage the coast, to what ends, and by what means. This article explores the negative and positive implications of seven cultural models to the Australian coast and makes suggestions about the value of Australian Indigenous and sustainability perspectives to a durable human relationship with the coast. Examples are drawn from recent coastal developments in Australia, such as Native Title debates, the marine protected area process, and Coastcare.

Australian local government action on climate change adaptation: some critical reflections to assist decision-making.

The primary objective of this paper is to discuss the limitations of risk management as a strategy for Australian local government climate change adaptation and explore the advantages of complementary approaches, including a social-ecological resilience framework, adaptive and transition management, and vulnerability assessment. Some federal and local government initiatives addressing the limitations of risk-based approaches are introduced. We argue that conventional risk-based approaches to adaptation, largely focused on hazard identification and quantitative modelling, will be inadequate on their own for dealing with the challenges of climate change. We suggest that responses to climate change adaptation should move beyond conventional risk-based strategies to more realistically account for complex and dynamically evolving social-ecological systems.

Australian Universities, Government Research and the Application of Climate Change Knowledge in Australian Coastal Zone Management

One of the key issues in Australia for sustainable management of the coastal zone is that the science of climate change has not been widely used by decision-makers to inform coastal governance. There exist opportunities to enhance the dialogue between knowledge-makers and decision-makers, and universities have a key role to play in researching and fostering better linkages. At the heart of these linkages lies the principle of more informed engagement between historically disparate groups. In Australia, the new ‘Flagship’ research programme, funded by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), emphasizes their partnering with universities in a more systematic and collaborative manner than previously achieved in such research projects. In order to address sustainability in general and coastal adaptation to climate change in particular, interdisciplinary learning needs to occur between the social and natural sciences; also, transdisciplinary understanding of that interaction needs to be fully developed. New methods of communicative engagement such as computer visualizations and animations, together with deliberative techniques, can help policy-makers and planners reach a better understanding of the significance of the science of climate change impacts on the coast. Deeper engagement across historically disparate groups can lead to the development of epistemological and methodological synergies between social and natural scientists, adaptive learning, reflexive governance, and greater analytical and deliberative understanding among scientists, policymakers and the wider public. This understanding can lead in turn to enhance coastal governance for climate adaptation on the coast.

Climate change and social impacts: women's perspectives from a fishing community in Western Australia

A cascade of climate and environmental changes, government intervention and economic responses has led to major social impacts on the Western Australian fishing community of the Abrolhos Islands. In 2006, a significant decline in the number of settling lobster larvae was met with major changes to the management of the fishery. The decline in larval settlement appears to be climate driven. Stocks were protected by reducing the overall catch, but these measures also led to a decrease in the number of fishers operating in the fishery. The management changes have resulted in the decline of this well-established fishing community. From the perspectives of fishing women, this paper explores the tension between the contribution that women make to fishing and their well-documented ‘invisibility’ in this industry. The authors suggest that the lack of management focus on social outcomes and subsequent community impacts are related to the invisibility of women in the fishing industry.

Aboriginal world views and colonisation: implications for coastal sustainability

In this paper, we show how the Aboriginal people in the south-west of Australia (the Nyungar) developed systems of knowledge, of caring for country and of family relations that enabled them to survive for tens of thousands of years and continue to have importance today. The impacts of British colonisation on cultural continuity and knowledge in the south-west have been significant and include loss of land, break-up of families and massacre. These practices led to a loss of knowledge of language and culture in some cases. However, Nyungar culture is alive and dynamic, constantly being reclaimed, re-energised and rebuilt through the interaction of contemporary and traditional research praxis. Focusing on Derbal Nara (Cockburn Sound) on the coast in the southern metropolitan area of Perth, we provide case examples of the action-research-learning methodologies used by Whadjuk Nyungar Traditional Owners. We also provide examples of stories about Derbal Nara that are still alive and being recounted up to the present day, including those that account for the recent ice age and the end of the ice age 8000 years BC when sea levels rose, drowning land in the area of Derbal Nara. Finally, we argue that Whadjuk Nyungar experiences and world views based on relationality and reflexivity are central to sustainable coastal management and that in some respects there has already been a convergence of Indigenous and Western coastal management. We present a set of principles that support the development of this “third space” for coastal sustainability.

Deliberative Democracy, a Collaborative Action Oriented Learning Process for a More Sustainable Future

There has been an increased urgency to debates about both education and governance in our rapidly changing, turbulent and uncertain world. Two very different responses have emerged. On the one hand, there has been a return to fundamental principles: in education, on numeracy and literacy; and in governance, on harsher law and order, for example.

Development Control And Vulnerable Coastal Lands: Examples Of Australian Practice

ABSTRACT A range of regulatory instruments can be used to modify development-control frameworks for the purposes of adapting urban areas to climate change-induced coastal erosion and inundation. This article investigates the approach of three local governments across Australia. It finds that local governments are modifying development-control frameworks to ensure the appropriate development of vulnerable coastal lands. However, the article also demonstrates the limitations in relying on development control to achieve adaptation objectives such as preserving public beach amenity, and highlights the need for legislative reform or the emergence of incentive-based instruments to complement development control.

Environmental politics and deliberative democracy: examining the promise of new modes of governance

This book offers a rare, critical examination of the ‘promise’ that new modes of governance soft, flexible and collaborative will counteract deficits in governance, legitimacy and implementation. The book is framed by a careful and scholarly review across three intersecting disciplines: green politics; deliberative democracy; and governance theory. One empirical and two structural critiques of the new modes of governance are then explored in a series of eight case studies relating to climate policy and governance, EU governance of genetically modified organisms, EU water policy, food technologies, sustainability governance and forest governance. A central question of the book is: do new governance arrangements ensure effective environmental policy performance as well as deliberative and participatory quality? It could be argued that no governance arrangements could ever ensure either of these outcomes, and the question is something of a ‘straw man’. However, it is the important task of the book to explore normative, empirical and critical responses to this question. The editors present the empirical critique that there have been few systematic inquiries and little empirical evidence to support the ‘promise’. Such a shortage would not be surprising given the length of longitudinal study required and the complexity involved in rigorously assessing ‘effective environmental policy performance’ and ‘deliberative and participatory quality’, especially when goals are not clearly articulated. The editors present two further critiques which relate to the structures of deliberative governance arrangements. One is that deliberative governance has been colonised so extensively by the values of new public management, market environmentalism, privatisation and deregulation that the existing economistic paradigm is ratified and the possibility of real change compromised. The other structural critique is that deliberative governance arrangements are often based on stakeholder groups; this approach collapses deliberation into conventional interest group politics, reinforcing existing asymmetries in power and silencing certain voices. Such an outcome does not address politics of difference and runs counter to Habermasian ideals of communicative rationality. On the basis of case study analysis, in relation to the empirical critique, the editors conclude that deliberative process is no guarantee of green outcomes, and that the long-standing tension remains between process and outcomes. The study finds that the deliberative turn in environmental politics is valenced towards output legitimacy and effectiveness rather than quality and legitimacy of the deliberative process. Some cases showed signs of ‘empty proceduralism’. Furthermore there was Australasian Journal of Environmental Management Vol. 19, No. 3, September 2012, 200 205