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Full Text, Thesis (PhD Doctorate), Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), School of Medicine & Dentistry, Griffith Health, Considerable scientific evidence showing climate change will amplify disasters and cause adverse health impacts. If not mitigated, climate change will push health systems beyond their limits and capacity. The projected trend of increasing climaterelated disasters will intensify existing health risks arising from more frequent and severe extreme weather events like floods, bushfires, poor air and water quality, and emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. This incidents place enormous demands on the future of the healthcare sector, especially on hospitals. To prepare for and deal with the immense challenges ahead, hospitals need to incorporate climate change adaptation (CCA)1 strategies into planning for disaster risk reduction (DRR)2. It is, thus, timely to investigate the feasibility of and pathways to future-poof hospitals against disasters in a changing climate. Hospitals are no stranger to climate change as an issue. They are at the forefront of addressing the health impacts of disasters, treating the illnesses and injuries caused by them, and upholding critical response roles during and after disasters. This role will continue to expand as hospitals struggle to cope with the additional demands of climate change-related disasters. Many hospitals have in place their own emergency response procedures, but little information is available in terms of the extent of how they have incorporated CCA measures into their risk management plans. While hospitals are affected by climate change there is also the reality that they are in part responsible for accelerating climate change. Studies estimate that the healthcare sector is responsible for approximately 4.4% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, it is important therefore for healthcare to start shifting to renewable and reliable energy sources and adopt environmentally responsible waste management practices. The problem remains to facilitate this; it would require leadership commitment, and full par

Full Text, Thesis (PhD Doctorate), Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), School of Eng & Built Env, Science, Environment, Engineering and Technology, Sustainable food systems can contribute to addressing food security, climate change, poverty alleviation, and economic growth. With 870 million undernourished people around the world and food shortages exacerbated by climate change, the United Nations (2015) made food security a priority in 2013. Gustavsson et al. (2011) estimated global food waste at 30% of food production. In 2015, the United Nations member states adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets under the framework of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The goal related to food waste reduction. Goal 12 “sustainable consumption and production” aims to reduce per capita food waste to 50% at both consumer and retail levels alongside reducing food waste in the supply chain and along production lines. The debate on food waste has become significant within the waste industry and has received considerable attention from premier organizations, including the United Nations (UN), the European Union (EU), and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The UN (2015) estimated that almost half of all global food production is wasted, representing USD 750 billion. The environmental and climate change impact of the wasted economic resources associated with the production, distribution, and disposal of wasted food is another area of concern. The FAO reported that food waste has direct annual economic costs equal to USD 1 trillion, environmental costs of USD 700 billion, and social costs of USD 900 billion. (FAO, 2013) Food waste research is gradually evolving, especially in developed economies with less research investment in developing countries. After years of waste management in developing countries, research has shown that food waste constitutes a significant portion of municipal solid waste (Asomani-Boateng & Haight, 1999). A large percentage of the municipalities’ budgets are spent on waste collection. This research investigates barriers limiting food waste initiatives and programs

Full Text, Thesis (PhD Doctorate), Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), School of Environment and Sc, Science, Environment, Engineering and Technology, Climate-related natural disasters are increasing, leading to devastating physical, environmental and socioeconomic impacts. Among the efforts to address these impacts, disaster risk reduction (DRR) is one of the major approaches. The disaster risk reduction (DRR) approach strives for reducing disaster risk through systematic and comprehensive efforts to address the causal factors of disasters (UNISDR, 2016). Climate change is widely acknowledged for increasing the scale and intensity of disasters. Therefore, a growing body of literature stresses the necessity to link climate change adaptation (CCA) with DRR. the climate change adaptation (CCA) approach strives for adjustment to climate change stimuli or their effects, in order to reduce their adverse impacts or exploit beneficial opportunities (IPCC, 2014). DRR and CCA share common objectives in reducing vulnerability and increasing resilience. Effective linkages should help to ensure coherent, effective and efficient responses to current and future climate-related disasters. However, integrating interventions for DRR and CCA remains a challenge because these concepts originated from, and are articulated by, distinct researchers and practitioners. DRR and CCA works are often undertaken in isolation, resulting in overlapping effort and inefficient use of resources. Moreover, this is particularly problematic for resource-constrained countries, because they are constantly struggling with the challenge of scarce resources, and inconsistent arrangement of a diverse range of policies, actors, and institutions surrounding DRR and CCA. These complex challenges can be better understood from the perspective of political economy, which mainly deals with the influence of powerful decision makers, resource distribution mechanisms, and government’s interactions with stakeholders. The political economy analysis would enhance understandings of how actions and funding allocation decisions of DRR and CCA by different value-reach inst

Full Text, Thesis (PhD Doctorate), Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), School of Environment and Sc, Science, Environment, Engineering and Technology, Australia’s population is ageing rapidly with growing demands for health and aged care services. Providing these ageing populations with adequate, affordable and sustainable healthcare poses significant challenges for the government. It is even more challenging to plan for the upcoming large number of ageing and retiring baby boomers born between 1946 to 1964, who are the first generation to face the new ‘third’ age: a decade or two of longer life after retirement. Current aged care planning is largely based on data collected from previous generations with little focus on this bulging baby boomer generation, whose experiences and expectations greatly differ from those of the previous generations. Among the Australian baby boomer cohort are the growing culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) populations. Previous studies demonstrate that Australia’s CALD migrants’ social circumstances, language and cultural issues result in programs delivered failing to meet their needs. But few examine what these needs are and the factors underpinning them. This is the case for Chinese migrants, the fastest growing and largest subgroup of the CALD baby boomer population. Information about their experiences and social and health needs is very limited, making it difficult for health planners to provide them with timely and appropriate information, supportive resources, and culturally-sensitive services. Thus, this study investigates the social and health needs of Chinese baby boomer migrants in Brisbane, Australia so as to inform the future development of policies and programs that promote their health and wellbeing. This research adopts WHO’s concept of the ‘healthy ageing’ approach as the theoretical base for the methodological design. Healthy ageing is about planning health programs that promote active and healthy life stages in order to achieve healthy life expectancy. To this end, this study applies a comprehensive needs assessment framework to identify issues of concern, th

Full Text, Thesis (PhD Doctorate), Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), School of Medicine, Griffith Health, Climate-sensitive infectious diseases such as hand-foot-mouth disease (HFMD) are expected to increase with the changing climate, leading to a greater burden on population health. The extent to which the changes in climate can or will affect population health varies across regions, depending on specific climate characteristics and variability, and on the specific socio-economic and health infrastructure of each region. Hence, local regional-specific climate change adaptation measures needed to be based on an understanding of the health impacts at the regional level. This is particularly relevant when dealing with the hand-foot-mouth disease (HFMD). HFMD, caused by a group of enteroviruses, mainly EV71 and CVA16, is an emerging and increasingly wide spread climate-sensitive infectious disease. It has become endemic over recent decades in many countries, especially in the Western Pacific Region including China, Japan, Singapore and Vietnam. Millions of children suffer from this disease every year, and in severe cases, it is fatal. Research has focused on clinical diagnosis, testing, and treatment in order to reduce mortality. Few studies have investigated prevention and control of HFMD. Recent studies have begun to examine the relationship between HFMD and climate factors such as temperature, humidity, and rainfall. These studies also report that there are regional variations associated with differences in socio-economic characteristics, geographic and climate zones. Thus, regional research is needed to better understand the specific climate-HFMD associations, especially in the “high-risk” regions vulnerable to climate change such as the Mekong Delta Region (MDR) in southern Vietnam. The MDR has been a focus of climate change research over the past decade. While studies have identified many climate change related issues such as increases in temperature and number of hot days, sea level rises and floods. However, only a few have examined the impacts of climate change on

In earlier cultures and societies, hazards and risks to human health were dealt with by methods derived from myth, metaphor and ritual. In modem society however, notions of hazard and risk have been transformed from the level of a folk discourse to that of an expert centred concept (Plough & Krimsky, 1987). With the professionalization of risk and hazard analysis came a preferred framework for decision making based on a range of 'technical' methodologies (Giere, 1991 ). This is especially true for decision processes relating to risk assessment and management, and impact assessment. Such approaches however, often entail narrow technical-based theoretical assumptions about human behaviour and the natural world, and the· methods used. They therefore carry 'in-built' error factors that contribute considerable uncertainty to the results.