Managing Change

Australian conservation scientists, managers and decision makers must come to grips with anthropogenic climate change, imposed upon an already variable regional climate system. Pre- and postinstrumental records and climate proxies indicate that Australia has experienced wet and dry cycles over intradecadal to millennial time scales ....

"I've set myself the modest task of trying to explain the broad pattern of human history, on all the continents, for the last 13,000 years. Why did history take such different evolutionary courses for peoples of different continents? This problem has fascinated me for a long time, but it's now ripe for a new synthesis because of recent advances i ....

Rural communities such as Stanthorpe on Queensland's Southern Downs, in Australia, are familiar with turbulent environmental, social, technological and economic change and the adversity that frequently accompanies such changes. The capacity of individuals and communities to bounce back from adversity is referred to as resilience. P ....

In 2000, the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia was awarded a grant by the Australian Research Council under its Learned Academies Special Projects Scheme to carry out research on 'The Sustainability of Australian Rural Communities'. Six university-based teams from across Australia convened in Canberra in February 2001 to develop a share ....

This research is an attempt to apply a resilience framework to understand how pastoral social-ecological systems respond to change, and the potential role of formal CBRM institutions in this process. The resilience principles of Folke, Colding & Berkes (2003): (1) learning to live with change and uncertainty, (2) nurturing diversity ....

Introduction : co-evolution, complexity and emergence in regional innovation systems What went wrong with the vertical process and policy perspective? What is transversality? The co-evoluttionary origins of transversatlity Transversality and transition in innovation and eco-innovation : towards complex adaptive systems analysis Transition ....

n 2004, BHP Billiton announced it would open what has since become a US$2.2 billion nickel mine in the rural Shire of Ravensthorpe, Western Australia. The arrival of this mine exemplifies profound and rapid rural economic change. Taking the position that economic change cannot be understood separately from local social aspects and ....

New Zealand farmers were affected in significant ways by agricultural restructuring during the mid 1980s. Government, farmers' union, academic and media discourses all describe the ensuing years as a period of financial hardship for farm families. Based on aggregate statistics, the majority of these discourses reflect and 'naturalise' the governm ....

Surfboard-making is concentrated in regions with vibrant surfing subcultures, suitable waves and sufficient expertise in crafting boards, by hand, to suit prevailing coastal conditions. This article charts the rise of the Gold Coast as Australia's most concentrated cluster of surfboard-making, from its origins as do-it-yourself craft in backyards ....

A new geography of Functional Economic Regions (FERs) has been created across the large metropolitan city regions and across the non-metropolitan areas of the nation. The demarcation of FRRs, which are formed on spatial building blocks known as SLAs (Statistical Local Areas), uses a methodology that optimises within-region self-containment of com ....

Rural communities in developed countries such as Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom and Ireland have experienced profound challenges over the past three decades. The social fabric of rural communities in these countries has been and will continue to be affected by global and local processes that compound poverty and e ....

Recent environmental changes and trade liberalisation have significant implications for the way farming will be conducted in future. The number of farming families has decreased by 46% between 1971 and 2006 (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2006, Customised Data), therefore the re-evaluation of farming methods seems appropriate. Tra ....

The Department of Planning and Community Development (DPCD) has an interest in understanding how communities cope with, and respond to, social, economic and environmental change. This report outlines the findings of a set of interviews conducted in Lake Boga in early 2011. The interviews were a follow-up to rese ....

The Queensland Government has set a clear, ambitious target to double Queensland’s agricultural production by 2040. The purpose of this research, development and extension (RD&E) plan is to describe how the Queensland Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry’s (DAFF) agricultural RD&E program will contribute to achieving th ....