Pr Hay

Comparative Green Politics: Beyond the European Context?

It is argued that there are significant differences between green electoral politics in Europe and green developments in the affluent non-European west, and that these are such that, despite the greater political formalization of the green movement in Western Europe, there is a sense in which North American and Antipodean developments are ultimately more fundamental than those that have occurred in Europe. Loosely adopting explanatory categories employed by Rudig and Lowe in a Political Studies article, we examine evidence under four sub-heads: electoral thresholds; the historical legacy of the environment movement; the different contextual roles played by the anti-nuclear movement and wilderness experience, and ecology, Marxism and the new left.

Private property and public interest in fisheries management: the Tasmanian rock lobster fishery

In 1998 a management system based on individual transferable quota (ITQ) was introduced in the Tasmanian rock lobster fishery. This marked the continuation of a management trend that has favoured economic efficiency at the cost of reduced employment and greater restrictions on access to the fishery. The authors discuss management trends in the fishery in the context of Tasmanias history, and social and political characteristics, which it is argued, have shaped development of Tasmanias resource management culture. Implications for social equality, economic well-being and environmental sustainability are discussed. In conclusion the difficulty of reforming policy that has been shaped by vested interests and which establishes rent-seeking activity is considered.

The politics of Tasmania's world heritage area: Contesting the democratic subject

Giving some 20 per cent of Tasmanias land surface World Heritage status has created major tensions in the politics of this Australian state, where the worlds first green party was born. Within these tensions, the conflict between those who hitherto used the wild places for ‘interventionist’ recreational activities on the one hand and the proponents of World Heritage listing on the other portrays in dramatic miniature the essence of the conflict between green paradigmatic assumptions and those of conventional liberal democratic politics, highlighting the intransigent nature of the difficulties inherent in accommodating the former to the latter.

The poetics of island place: articulating particularity

It has often been put to me that the so-called distinctiveness of islands is overrated; that the qualities and conditions manifest within islands are not much different from those in evidence in similarly ‘contained’ regions on continental mainlands. It is a position I strongly contest

Defending Island Ecologies

The article compares and contrasts the iconic environmental campaigns of two island jurisdictions, Tasmania and Taiwan–the Franklin-Gordon ‘wild rivers’ campaign in the first case; the Chilan Forest campaign in the second. The features of each campaign are delineated–the levels of government involved; the institutional fault lines that developed; the scale of campaign operations; activist tactics; and the significance, within their respective contexts, of each iconic campaign. How each campaign ‘fits’ a wider context of environmental activism is sketched, and the article concludes with an agenda for future cross-island research into environmental activism.

Environmental policy implementation: sea dumping off sub-Antarctic Heard Island, Australia

In pursuit of its Antarctic interests, Australia has nominated a single agency, the Australian Antarctic Division to exercise legislative and managerial responsibility for Antarctic operations. This agency has a dual role in undertaking station development and resupply activities on the one hand and the responsibility of enuironrnental watchdog over these same official activities on the other. There is potential conflict between these roles and in practice this can result in the subversion of the latter function and thus the promotion of environmental degradation with both short and longterm impacts on the terrestrial and marine Antarctic and sub-Antarctic environment. The situation described below typifies the problems encountered in implementing environmental protection policy by agencies charged with conflicting responsibilities. Recourse is had to policy implernentation theory in the context of analyses of pertinent Antarctic and sub-Antarctic environmental legislation, of policy interpretation and management within the Australian Antarctic Division, and of onsite decision-making. Observations of recent sea dumping activities off subAntarctic Heard Island are used to illustrate the problem of the Divisions role ambiguity. Conclusions and recommendations point touiard serious inadequacies in the implementation of environmental policy and to the possibility of improving the enuironrnental record by strengthening the enuironmental responsibilities of other agencies.

Vive la différence!: Recent Australian writing on environmental politics

Australian Environmental Policy edited by Ken Walker. Kensington, New South Wales (Australia): New South Wales University Press, 1992. Pp.x + 306; index.

Main Currents in Western Environmental Thought

(Aust.)29.95. ISBN 0 86840 029 7. Atomic Australia 1944–1990 by Alice Cawte. Kensington, New South Wales (Australia): New South Wales University Press, 1992. Pp.xii + 213; index.

A phenomenology of islands

(Aust.)24.95. ISBN 0 86840 388 1. The Greening of the Red: Sustainability, Socialism and the Environmental Crisis by Graham Dunkley. Leichhardt, New South Wales (Australia): Pluto Press/Australian Fabian Society/Socialist Forum, 1992. Pp.ix + 139.

Whaling and its controversies: Examining the attitudes of Japan's youth

(Aust.)14.95. ISBN 0 94913 880 0. Taming the Great South Land: A History of the Conquest of Nature in Australia by William J. Lines. North Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1991. Pp.xx + 337; index.