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Natural capital and the sustainability of rural communities
No full textIn a controversial article in Nature, Costanza et al. (1997) estimated the monetary value of the world's 'ecosystem services and natural capital' to have an average annual value of $33 trillion. Irrespective of the validity of the calculations,l the importance of the article resides in the fact that it drew widespread attention to the immense material value of the natural environment; indeed, the estimate is far greater than the sum of all the world's gross national products. From around that time, the notion of 'natural capital' has gained substantial currency, particularly in the context of discussions about sustainability.
According to Berkes and Folke (1993; see also Pretty, 1999; van del' Perk & de Groot, 2000), natural capital has three components:
• the non-renewable resources that are extracted from ecosystems
• renewable resources, which are produced and maintained by ecosystem processes
• environmental services - such as the climate, soil formation, nutrient cycling, waste assimilation - the products of ecosystem functioning
For rural commodity producers, the perennially difficult act of balance is to at once draw upon natural capital and ecosystem services, while at the same time being good stewards of the environment, thereby ensuring that their farms are sustainable - ecologically and economically. In many cases, this balance has simply not been achieved and the result has been environmental degradation. This ultimately has implications for the sustainability of individual farms, but also for the rural communties of which they are a part
'Tarra', Victoria
No full textThe region named 'Tarra' in this case study encapsulates many of the challenges faced by Australian rural towns and districts: it has experienced the combined effects of service cuts, agricultural restructuring and falling commodity prices, drought and livestock disease, local
government amalgamation, and declining population. On the other side of the ledger, it presents a rich and varied environment, supports a range of economic activities, and is the site of a community redevelopment initiative, the' Alberton Project', which is regarded as the model for a State-wide community-capacity building project
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
The restructuring of the electricity sector in New Zealand, 1986-2002: whither energy sustainability?
No full textFull text is available to authenticated members of The University of Auckland only.The attempts of successive New Zealand governments, driven by neoclassical economics ideology, to commodify electricity and create competitive markets for its allocation, have produced mixed results. This thesis has examined these outcomes within the context of energy sustainability, based on the premise that a more proactive approach to regulation may be more suitable. The quest for sustainability in the sector has been elusive. The segmented management arrangements which were introduced in the 1980s have exposed the trade-offs that are inherent in sustainability in general, and electricity in particular, but the chosen regulatory arrangements have done little to resolve them. New Zealand enjoys a relative abundance of hydro resources, but the last fifteen years has seen a steady growth in large-scale non-renewable sources. Small scale emerging renewables remain disadvantaged, primarily because they have not been supported by proactive energy policies. While the economic management of the sector has evolved fairly rapidly, environmental management has been largely restricted to rubber-stamping new thermal plants. The most proactive responses have ironically come from the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority, an entity which until recently had no statutory powers. That they have recently been upgraded into a government agency with greater power and resources to promote sustainable energy management is an encouraging development, but it may not be sufficient.
Regulating the monopoly elements of electricity distribution has been particularly problematic. It emerged that it was inappropriate to integrate these elements with the more contestable ones, as this inevitably led to monopoly abuse. It has been extremely difficult to produce more competition in generation. The imperative of economic agents to dominate markets was underestimated, and the fact that this occurred with State-owned entities, proved no different. Recent adjustments to wholesale markets are designed to facilitate more competition in generation and make demand-side management alternatives, such as energy efficiency and conservation more attractive. It has been a feature of the reform process, that it is only really under crisis conditions, such as widespread power shortages, that the benefits of energy conservation really become apparent. The events that preceded these crises were arguably created by economic imperatives overshadowing the need to prudently manage risk, to maintain a secure and reliable supply. Again this highlights the strategic importance of electricity and that its allocation and management cannot be left solely to the market.
The State still largely relies on market mechanisms to achieve the wider objectives of energy sustainability. The belief prevails that economic agents will act in ways which will produce long-term sustainable outcomes, rather than short-term, unsustainable ones. The geographic restructuring model stresses that the State acts as a filter for global and local processes. In the case of the New Zealand electricity sector, the State can, and in fact has had, a much stronger influence. Electricity is not a readily substitutable commodity, and in any case it can be more realistically perceived as an essential service. I have argued for the application of more facilitative and interventionist measures to quicken the uptake of renewable sources. I have also suggested that the State still needs to oversee both the operational aspects of the sector and its own regulatory authorities to ensure that they do not continue to give primacy to short-term unsustainable outcomes for the electricity sector.
Key words: restructuring, New Zealand, neoclassical economics, ecological economics, electricity, energy sustainability energy policy, renewables, regulation, geographic restructuring mode
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
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
Neo-liberalism and governing of natural resource management in Australia
No full text[Extract] Since the 1980s, rural land and water degradation has enjoyed a prominence on the Australian political agenda unheralded since the severe soil erosion and ensuing dustbowl conditions of the 1930s (Bradsen 1988). New, or previously unrecognised, problems such as soil salinity and tree dieback have become headline news. Salinity alone affects 2.5 million hectares of land and threatens to affect more than 15.5 million hectares if insufficient action is undertaken to address it (Madden, Hayes and Duggan 2000). The annual cost of rural land and water degradation is estimated to be at least 6 billion by the year 2020 (Madden et al. 2000). While it may seem self evident that environmental degradation on this scale should be considered a problem of national significance, such recognition is, in fact, a recent phenomenon. Following the severe erosion of the 1930s, state-based soil conservation authorities were established around Australia to undertake research and provide advisory services to those land users who voluntarily sought assistance to tackle soil and water conservation. Since the 1980s, however, both national and state governments have been far more active in the development of initiatives to improve land and water management. Such initiatives include the National Landcare Program (NLP), Integrated Catchment Management programs, property management planning (PMP), the National Land and Water Resources Audit, National Drought Policy, facets of the Rural Adjustment Scheme and a range of associated programs designed to provide more 'rational' and 'bottom-up' approaches to environmental decision making. billion and likely to increase to $6 billion by the year 2020 (Madden et al. 2000). While it may seem self evident that environmental degradation on this scale should be considered a problem of national significance, such recognition is, in fact, a recent phenomenon
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