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Lessons for Australia and beyond
No full textAustralia has had its National Drought Policy in place for more than a decade. It istherefore timely to consider the strengths and weaknesses of the policy approach that was adopted in 1992 and to draw some lessons for Australia and other countries considering an integrated policy response to drought. Many of the lessons outlined below apply particularly to industrialised countries in which the farm sector is diminishing in importance, in terms of its contribution to GDP, and in which drought does not result in widespread human disasters such as famine.In summary, policy makers in Australia in 1992 attempted to align attitudes towards drought with the reality of a highly variable climate. The move from a disaster response to an approach based on self-reliance and risk management was based in a recognition that Australian farmers should expect droughts to occur and should factor drought risk into their business decisions. In economic and policy terms, the recommendations of the Drought Policy Review Task Force which reported in 1990 and the direction of the National Drought Policy announced in 1992 were coherent and logical and would allow the farm sector to operate efficiently and productively within the constraints of the Australian climate. However, drought responses are not only concerned with economicand policy coherence—they are developed in a specific socio-political context. The following section discusses the context of Australia’s drought response and highlights some of the tensions which arise between different policy objectives and different values within the Australian community and the problems that have arisen in the implementation of the National Drought Policy. The final section identifies the lessons from which Australian policy makers and their counterparts elsewhere in the world can draw in considering future drought responses
Late twentieth century approaches to living with uncertainty: the National Drought Policy
No full textFrom the time that they arrived in Australia, Europeans regarded drought as anaberration, a break with the ‘normal’ pattern of climate, and its onset was considered to be a natural disaster. Until 1989, governments responded accordingly through Commonwealth-State natural disaster relief arrangements which treated drought in a similar manner to other disasters such as cyclones, earthquakes or floods. With the removal of drought from these disaster arrangements in 1989, this view of drought as disaster was questioned in policy circles and a view emerged that drought was a normal part of the farmer’s operating environment and should be managed like any other business risk.In 1992 the Commonwealth and State governments agreed on a national drought policy based on principles of self-reliance and risk management and a package of programs was put in place to support farmers as they improved their risk management skills. The policy also introduced the concept of ‘exceptional circumstances’ to cover events of such severity that they were beyond the scope of good risk management.This chapter describes the development and evolution of Australia’s National Drought Policy and tracks the changes that have occurred over its first decade of operation and the policy challenges that continue to face policy makers working within its framework
Preface:Drought, Risk Management, and Policy: Decision-Making under Uncertainty
No full textThe relationship between science—and indeed all forms of expertise—and policy development has been the subject of a wide range of research from the science and technology studies tradition, which is strongly sociological in orientation, to the knowledge utilisation literature associated with policy sciences/public policy. Science/policy relationships can be problematic, particularly in democracies where policy making is somewhat of a balancing act between competing societal values. In open and competitive policy communities, much to the frustration of some scientists, expert advice is only one voice around the policy table and often is not decisive in the decision-making process. Yet aspirations to bring order and evidence to policy processes persist, so as Harold Lasswell (1951, 3) asked over 60 years ago, What are the most promising methods of gathering facts and interpreting their significance for policy? How can facts and interpretations be made effective in the decision-making process itself
Introduction:From Disaster Response to Risk Management
No full textAustralia’s attempt at a national drought policy in the early 1990s and its experiences with this policy over the past decade have intrigued the international scientific and policy communities. Few nations have made much progress on a national policy but it is now being widely discussed by many countries and promoted by United Nations agencies, international development organizations, development banks, and others. For example, under the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), countries are encouraged to develop national action programs to combat the effects of desertification and drought. There are also many other national, regional, and global initiatives to promote the need for greater levels of drought preparedness and to formulate national drought policies. The experiences of Australia represent valuable lessons to many countries, developed and developing alike, on the opportunities and challenges of a national drought policy and preparedness strategy. Documenting the policy development process and the lessons learned at each step in the process will benefit all nations that choose to follow this course of action
At the intersection of science and politics:Defining exceptional drought
No full textAustralia introduced the National Drought Policy (NDP) in 1992 based on principles of self-reliance and risk management (see Chapter 4). The NDP was an agreement between the national and state governments which sought, for the first time, to deliver a nationally consistent approach to drought policy. Based on these principles, the governments agreed to provide additional support for drought-related research and development and improved farm management practices and to reorient their direct farm assistance policies away from ad hoc assistance to “farmers in trouble”, i.e., towards farm business and welfare support directed at increased self-reliance and risk management based on objective, science-driven decision making. Against this background, the NDP included recognition that occasionally farmers face rare and severe events that are outside the preparedness strategies of even the best managers. These events were classified as “exceptional circumstances” (EC). The declaration of EC provided a trigger initially for the provision of farm business supportand after 1994 for farm family welfare assistance to individual farm units by thenational government. This assistance comprised extremely generous access tocomponents of the welfare system (including income support) and generous interest ratesubsidies previously denied. Although the state governments had agreed to phase out the provision of drought-related support, not all states have done so by the time of writing
Trends in National Party support
No full textThe National Party of Australia is under challenge. Will it be able to adapt and survive or will it become increasingly irrelevant in Australian politics? With population growth in some coastal and hinterland areas and decline in inland agricultural areas, the face of rural and regional Australia is changing. As a result, the National Party's traditional support is being eroded. Within the long-standing Coalition, the influence of the Nationals appears to be in decline, yet they continue to resist amalgamation with the Liberal Party
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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