Reserve Selection for Nature Conservation in South Australia: Past,Present and Future

This paper re‐examines the chronology of reserve selection in South Australia in the context of changing social, political and economic attitudes. The effect of these changing attitudes on reserve selection in South Australia is assessed in the light of the principles of a comprehensive, adequate and representative (CAR) National Reserve System. The outcome of reserve selection in South Australia is the establishment of a vast network of reserves in the arid regions and many fragmented and small reserves in the agricultural regions. It is likely that the remnant ecological system in the agricultural regions is not representative of the regional environmental diversity and that land clearance has precluded the establishment of a CAR reserve system in South Australia. The rate of reserve selection for nature conservation has decreased over the past decade as the opportunities for reserve acquisition decrease. It is concluded that large‐scale and strategic revegetation will be required to facilitate a CAR reserve system in South Australia.     

Local government perceptions of water related issues in rural Australia

Water supply has long been regarded as a limiting resource in the further development of Australia. Active management has been necessary in both more densely settled areas and in areas of moderate settlement density but low rainfall such as the Murray-Darling system. The recently released Water 2000 Report details current knowledge about the quality and distribution of these resources. Following on from this Report this article presents perceived problems with water quantity and quality (in particular, salinisation) obtained from a survey sent to rural local governments in late 1982. The survey requested information on the relevance of twenty-two land use issues, known from earlier work to be representative of common concerns throughout Australia. Public perceptions were remarkably similar to the results of the Water 2000 Report. Water quantity/quality and salinisation issues were the sixth and seventh most commonly cited issues throughout Australia, but were of much greater concern in specific areas. Tasmanian local governments reported major problems of water supply, those in southwest Western Australia exhibited a very high level of concern with dry land salinisation, local governments in the Murray-Darling Drainage Division reported concern with salinisation, droughts, floods and general water quality, while local governments in the Gulf of Carpentaria Drainage Division consistently cited flooding as being a major problem. Information from surveys such as this, and others where the respondents are the end-users, need to be combined with expert opinion in order to increase the effectiveness of the management of our water resources.     

Planning rural land development: forestry and agriculture in northeastern Australia

Australia has a limited area of land suitable for the production of food, fibre and forest products and governments are under increasing pressure from relevant industry groups to release those small areas of land that are not already committed. Land use decisions of this type are predominantly political ones, but the politicians are influenced by whatever facts can be mustered to support competing interests. This article presents a number of measures of the likely efficiency and regional economic impacts of plantation forestry and agriculture, based on sugar cane in the Herbert Valley, where such a land use decision must be made by politicians in the near future.     

The Limits of Influence: Australia and the Future of New Caledonia, 1975 to 1988

From the late 1970s Australian governments (led in turn by Malcolm Fraser and Bob Hawke) expected New Caledonia to become independent. France responded with suspicion. From 1983, however, reformist governments in Australia and France took apparently converging views. But tensions rose because of unrest in New Caledonia and conflict over French nuclear testing. Australia’s limited capacity to influence developments waned further in 1986 when Jacques Chirac became French prime minister and countered the Kanak nationalist movement. Foreign Minister Bill Hayden favoured moderating Australia’s position, but the issue became moot in mid-1988 when the rival forces in New Caledonia agreed to the truce embodied in the Matignon Accords. The different approaches of the Fraser and Hawke governments reflected philosophical differences, the personal stance of key players, influences from their political movements, and the challenges of changing circumstances. Decades later, with a referendum due by November 2018, Australia’s approach is likely to be cautious.     

Introduction: cultural policies for sustainable development

Abstract

Sustainable development has long conceptual roots, and international organisations have played a significant role in articulating the meaning of the term and the content of the dominant discourses. Within these frames, the concept of cultural sustainability tends to be diversely defined and operationalized. This article and special issue examine culture and sustainable development in ways that articulate and contemplate different roles for cultural policy.     

Design for rural development

Elliot R. Morss, John K. Hatch, Donald R. Mickelwait, and Charles F. Sweet. Strategies for Small Farmer Development. Volume I: 347 pp., tables, maps, no index. $20.00. Volume II: Case Studies. 444 pp., maps, no index. $20.00. Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, Westview Special Studies in Social, Political, and Economic Development, 1976.     

Planning for Culture in Urban Australia

This paper offers a selective overview and assessment of cultural planning in urban Australia from the perspective of a cultural geographer. It is argued that in theory cultural planning adopts a fluid and broad definition of culture similar to that used by contemporary cultural geographers. In practice, however, a narrow, material definition of culture is found in cultural plans, and the relations between cultural practices and place are construed unidimensionally.     

Memories of the Past,Visions of the Future: Changing Views of Ebenezer Mission,Victoria, Australia

Former missions and reserves occupy an increasingly important place in Australian Aboriginal heritage, as sites of recent memory, ancestral resting-places, and the foci of social action in the present. Since the 1970s heritage managers have drawn heavily upon archaeological research in reclaiming places such as Ebenezer Mission for Aboriginal descendants as well as the non-Aboriginal community. This program of research and conservation has been shaped by Aboriginal memories and values that express the community’s self-understandings and its hopes for the future, in a process that reveals the relationship between tangible and intangible aspects of the past.     

Cultural policies for sustainable development: four strategic paths

Abstract

In the Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the United Nations in 2015, the role of culture is limited. We argue that culture’s absence is rooted in the longue durée of interplay among theoretical and policy debates on culture in sustainable development and on cultural policy since the mid-twentieth century. In response to variations in concepts and frameworks used in advocacy, policy, and academia, we propose four roles cultural policy can play towards sustainable development: first, to safeguard and sustain cultural practices and rights; second, to ‘green’ the operations and impacts of cultural organizations and industries; third, to raise awareness and catalyse actions about sustainability and climate change; and fourth, to foster ‘ecological citizenship’. The challenge for cultural policy is to help forge and guide actions along these co-existing and overlapping strategic paths towards sustainable development.     

Future Prospects for Population Development in Shanghai

This study analyses the future goals of population development in Shanghai from the viewpoint of population carrying capacity and ecological footprint. The population carrying capacity is one of the fundamental factors researchers and policy-makers need to take into account in managing and planning the development of a country or a region. This study focuses on the case of Shanghai, based on previous ecological footprint analysis, and builds a comprehensive index evaluation model. By applying basic principles of multi-goal decision-making analysis and operating methods of system dynamics, it calculates population carrying capacity corresponding to different standards that resource-economic factors can support. It further explores issues related to population change in the metropolis and relevant policy measures.     

论金代对僧侣阶层的压制政策

金代对僧侣阶层一直采取压制性政策,具体表现为对其人员数量、经济资产、法律特权、结交权贵等方面进行严格限制等.这种打压僧侣阶层的政策与其他少数民族政权相比,形成了鲜明的反差.所以如此,恐怕与金代皇帝对佛教的抵触情绪,女真人对萨满教的极度信仰,国家政治文化的高度儒家化,以及"辽以佛废"的惨痛教训有关.正是这样的政策,使金代的僧侣阶层在当时始终没有成为特权等级,从某种意义上说,金代经常发生的僧侣惑众谋乱事件与此也不无关系.     

Optimal Environmental policies for Sustainable Growth: A Two-Region Model

I examine the sustainability of a spatial economy consisting of an advanced region and a developing region. The advanced region aids the developing region with technological knowledge on pollution abatement. The model is based mainly on that of van den Bergh and Nijkamp (1995) but differs in that the aids are determined through an optimal control method. The numerical simulation shows that the optimal control policy is thought to be effective in the sense that almost all trajectories of the welfare index of the advanced region are single-peaked with a fairly long duration of growth, and the policy favorably affects the welfare level of the developing region.     

Water Works a Boon for Future Generations

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