Paul Munro

The Great Artesian Basin: a contested resource environment of subterranean water and coal seam gas in Australia

ABSTRACT The Great Artesian Basin (GAB) in Australia is one of the largest subterranean aquifer systems in the world. In this article we venture into the subterranean “resource environment”’ of the Great Artesian Basin and ask whether new insights can be provided by social analyses of the “vertical third dimension” in contemporary contests over water and coal seam gas. Our analysis makes use of a large number of publicly available submissions made to recent state and federal government inquiries, augmented with data obtained through ethnographic fieldwork among landholders in the coal seam gas fields of southern Queensland. We examine the contemporary contest in terms of ontological politics, and regard the underground as a challenging “socionature hybrid” in which the material characteristics, uses, and affordances of water and coal seam gas resources in the Great Artesian Basin are entangled with broader social histories, technologies, knowledge debates, and discursive contests.

Twenty years of pacifying responses to environmental management

Using a state, pressure, response framework, we provide an evidence-based reflection on environmental outcomes in Australia and New Zealand across the domains of climate change, biodiversity, freshwater and marine management, emphasising the role of Indigenous and business perspectives. Significant developments have occurred in the past 20 years through affirmation of Indigenous rights and responsibilities. Responses to climate change have tended to emphasise passive risk management with unclear outcomes. Despite meeting biodiversity protection targets, outcomes are worsening, suggesting a need to challenge the dualistic preservation/production land categorisations. In freshwater and marine management, a mix of collaborative and market-based responses has emerged, although their efficacy remains untested. A reliance on voluntary approaches by business makes critical assessment of progress difficult. Thus, despite strong progress in some areas, the adaptiveness of environmental management remains limited, and many indicators suggest continuing decline in environmental condition. Our responses have been largely pacifying in nature, leading to perverse outcomes and failure to acknowledge alternatives that might address deteriorating environmental conditions. A shift is needed towards deliberative policy experimentation that truly values the application of novel and diversified approaches and facilitates integrated learning across environmental domains.

The role of cenotes in the social history of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.

Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula has had a complex and dynamic history, which has seen processes such as the rise of the Maya civilisation, colonial conquests, indigenous rebellions and a range of commercial activities. The Peninsula also represents a unique ecological place in the world: no rivers or major lakes exist on its surface – rather fresh water can only be found in its extensive underground flooded cave system, which is only accessible through cenotes (water sinkholes) that sporadically pierce the landscape’s surface across the region. This paper seeks to reconcile the above observations, analysing how the Peninsula’s dynamic history and its unique ecological landscape have interacted, producing certain environmental, social, political and economic outcomes. Thus, presented in this paper is an alternative perspective on the Peninsula’s history, cast through an environmental historical lens that elicits nature’s role as a historical actor.

Social enterprise development and renewable energy dissemination in Africa: The experience of the community charging station model in Sierra Leone

In many parts of Africa, the spread of grid electrical networks into rural areas has remained a pernicious challenge. There has been a persistent bias towards expanding electricity access to urban centres, perhaps understandably as they are the main drivers of national economic growth. In contrast, the expansion of grid electricity networks into rural areas is largely seen as being financially unviable and thus is unlikely to be achieved in the foreseeable future. Using the example of energy kiosks in Sierra Leone, this paper examines the potential commercial and policy implications of a social enterprise approach to address this impasse. Specifically, the success of the community charging station model of one non-governmental organization, Energy For Opportunity, is evaluated in the context of ongoing commercial viability, the overcoming of financial and technological barriers, and the lack of for-profit entities in the market. This case study demonstrates how an innovative blending of non-profit and for-profit models of development interventions can provide effective institutional arrangements to realize solar electrification in rural Africa.

Contesting African landscapes: A critical reappraisal of Sierra Leone’s competing forest cover histories

In the late-1990s anthropologists James Fairhead and Melissa Leach declared in a series of seminal publications that mainstream understandings of Sierra Leonean forest cover history had greatly exaggerated its past extent and rate of conversion to other land uses. Using archival evidence, they recast the ‘official’ story as a product of antiquated European environmental philosophy rather than empirical data. Moreover, they found that it distorted environmental policy by perpetuating images of a mythological past in which once nearly universal forest cover had been (and continued to be) denuded and degraded by irrational, primitive rural agricultural practices. Building on this foundation, they developed a trenchant critique of the existing academic literature describing land cover change in Sierra Leone, discounting most findings on the grounds of the authors’ uncritical engagement with the colonial-era narrative. In this article we present a re-evaluation of this influential thesis, arguing that while their broader critique is quite sound, historical deforestation in Sierra Leone has most certainly been considerably exaggerated, Fairhead and Leach overreached in their dismissal of prior works. Drawing upon new empirical data, we revisit these debates and develop a more nuanced critical platform from which to understand Sierra Leone’s forest cover history.

Feeding the flock: Wild cockatoos and their Facebook friends

Wildlife is persisting in urban areas of Australia even though white settler colonialism has resulted in the large-scale destruction of forested landscapes. While many bird species are in decline, the Sulphur-crested Cockatoo has found emergent opportunities for flourishing within the built environment. Cockatoos are actively generating relationally constituted spaces, drawing humans into urban ecosystems that are ‘more-than-human’ places, abundant and lively multispecies communities. Beginning in 2011, yellow tags attached to the wings of cockatoos, along with a smart-phone app and a Facebook page, have enabled scientists to collect data about these birds’ movements. These tracking technologies were quickly co-opted by an emergent public for their own purposes, including speculating about the personalities, relationships, intentions, and desires of individual birds. Interspecies friendships formed between humans and birds – involving shared understandings, emotional resonances, ongoing social exchanges, and utilitarian arrangements. We used the wingtags and the associated digital infrastructure as an opportunity to experiment with new modes of collaborative research and teaching in multispecies ethnography. Bringing together a flock of academics and students, we explored emergent social spaces involving people and birds. While many participants who fed the birds worried that they would become tame, we found multispecies flocks were fleeting associations where wild and unruly behaviours redoubled as people offered up food. We found that wildness emerged in intimate encounters with other species, encounters that were often characterised by shared but unequal vulnerabilities. Some cockatoos have been killed, after conflicts over property damage led authorities to identify them as nuisance animals. Against the backdrop of asymmetrical risks, we studied flocks of birds as models of, and models for, fleeting forms of association and collaboration. In these spaces, feelings of interspecies attraction quickly alternated with agitated and uncomfortable experiences. Amid animated encounters, people explored the ethics of inclusivity and conviviality.

Equitable and Quality Education for All of Africa? The Challenges of Using ICT in Education

Technological advances are increasing interest in the potential role of information and communication technologies ( ICT ) in enabling quality education outcomes in Africa. At present, however, the geographies of ICT use in Africa is poorly understood, and ICT education policy development has occurred in a relative empirical void. Relevant studies have largely been focused on wealthier African nations, largely neglecting poorer regions where education issues are most acute. This article works to address this lacuna. Drawing upon extensive fieldwork, it provides a detailed snapshot of ICT use in education in the northern Sierra Leonean district of Koinadugu. We subsequently argue that a lack of access to electricity, along with limited numbers of qualified teaching staff, presents fundamental barriers for realizing ICT use in classroom settings. Nevertheless, we also identify some promising trends with respect to the informal use of mobile Internet by teachers and students to augment learning in the classroom.

Geza Teleki and the Emergence of Sierra Leone's Wildlife Conservation Movement

Abstract: This paper details Geza Telekis contributions in the development of a wildlife conservation movement in Sierra Leone in the late 1970s to early 1980s. Teleki, a primatologist researcher and an animal rights activist, arrived in Sierra Leone in 1979 to find an inactive government wildlife conservation program and a thriving primate export sector. Shocked by what he saw, he worked with local and international environmentalists to build a wildlife conservationist movement in Sierra Leone. From capricious negotiations with presidential dictator Siaka Stevens to theurgical conflicts with local communities, Teleki helped to lay the groundwork for transforming wildlife conservation in the small West African nation. In this paper, I explore these contributions, reconstructing Telekis position as a historical actor in Sierra Leone as well as providing some reflection on how the legacy of his work has been inscribed upon Sierra Leones contemporary wildlife conservation landscape