UXH 331

Interested in a PhD in environmental planning?

The School of Architecture and Built Environment is looking for graduate students motivated to study towards a PhD in the following areas:

#1: Stakeholder engagement in action research for strategic environmental assessment. This project will investigate the impact that social, cultural, and institutional factors have on increasing and facilitating stakeholder and community engagement in action research that contributes procedures of environmental assessment.

#2: Evaluation of collaborative learning in strategic environmental assessment. This project will evaluate how collaborative learning between scientists, decision-makers and the community can better contribute to the definition and the analysis of cumulative effects in dedicated assessment procedures.

#3: Evaluation of governance frameworks for ecosystem restoration and adaptation. The potential of strategic environmental assessment policy frameworks to guide the development, testing, and deployment of novel technology in large-scale ecosystem restoration and adaptation interventions.

If any of these projects raise your interest, get in touch with us! 🙂

"Unless we as a society rethink our use of global resources, life, as we know it, will one day cease to exist"

Sustainability is unrealistic and we need to go back to basics, say experts Some experts say the concept of sustainable development has been hijacked by corporate interests and inconsistent standards has allowed many to game the system.

The report documents the loss of approximately 14 per cent of the world’s coral since 2009.

The report profiles RRAP (authored by David Mead and Ian McLeod) in the chapter on the Australian Region (Chapter 8 )

The Sixth Status of Corals of the World: 2020 Report - GCRMN Executive Summary, Global Analysis and Regional Chapters are now all available to download below. Coral reefs occur in more than […]

There is a box labelled “climate”, in which politicians discuss the climate crisis. There is a box named “biodiversity”, in which they discuss the biodiversity crisis. There are other boxes, such as pollution, deforestation, overfishing and soil loss, gathering dust in our planet’s lost property department. But they all contain aspects of one crisis that we have divided up to make it comprehensible. The categories the human brain creates to make sense of its surroundings are not, as Immanuel Kant observed, the “thing-in-itself”. They describe artefacts of our perceptions rather than the world.

Nature recognises no such divisions. As Earth systems are assaulted by everything at once, each source of stress compounds the others.

‘Green growth’ doesn’t exist – less of everything is the only way to avert catastrophe | George Monbiot It is simply not possible to carry on at the current level of economic activity without destroying the environment, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

Think twice before buying a house. Or a flat.
Or anything, really.

And what about Far-North Queensland?

Heatwaves may render parts of Sydney unliveable in decades With Australia's largest city facing 50-degree-plus summers, experts say its suburbs must be radically redesigned and rebuilt in order to remain liveable.

Doctors have urged the federal government to commit to stronger climate change targets ahead of next month's global climate summit in Glasgow, warning the health of Australians is being put at risk.

Doctors push federal government on climate change targets ahead of Glasgow climate summit Doctors urge the federal government to commit to stronger climate change targets ahead of next month's global climate summit in Glasgow, warning the health of Australians is being put at risk.

Can Climate Affect Earthquakes, Or Are the Connections Shaky?

Can Climate Affect Earthquakes, Or Are the Connections Shaky? – Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet Earthquakes have been on the minds of millions of Californians lately. Do they have any connections to climate? A NASA scientist does a scientific shakedown on the matter.

Research from Western Sydney found houses were built too close together and made from materials which exacerbate hot weather. 🥵

The Great Australian Dream? New homes in planned estates may not be built to withstand heatwaves The research, focused on the Jordan Springs estate in Western Sydney, found houses were built close together and made from materials which exacerbate hot weather.

The country, like most of the world, is becoming both drier and wetter in the era of climate change. It depends where you live.

These Maps Tell the Story of Two Americas: One Parched, One Soaked

Executive Summary - Biodiversity
The value of Australia’s biodiversity is difficult to measure, but biodiversity is a key part of Australia’s national identity, and is integral to subsistence and cultural activity for Indigenous Australians. It is also fundamentally important to environmental services that support human health and wellbeing, and economically important to a wide range of industries (e.g. tourism, agriculture, pharmaceuticals).

This report demonstrates that Australia’s biodiversity is under increased threat and has, overall, continued to decline. All levels of Australian government have enacted legislation to protect biodiversity, and Australia has made good progress in increasing the extent of the National Reserve System since 2011, driven by growth in Indigenous Protected Areas. We now have more than 17 per cent of our terrestrial land and 36 per cent of our marine area under some form of protection. Some individual measures to conserve biodiversity are having success, and many local and regional examples show successful recovery of threatened species, eradication or control of invasive species, or improvements in habitat quality or extent.

Biodiversity Biodiversity summarises the condition of Australia's living resources and highlights the challenges of management in the context of human dependence on biodiversity for ecosystem services.

Australian plants have adapted to persist in a fire prone environment along with regular droughts and the nutrient poor soils that are a feature of our environment.

Most plants can re-shoot from protected buds on their stems or roots, so they can recover rapidly after a fire. Thick bark protects these buds from the damaging heat of fires.

Fire, plants and vegetation Many plants are able to convert atmospheric ni...