Search

Climate change loss and damage (L&D) due to both sudden and slow-onset events are a growing concern for vulnerable countries. Over the last decade, agricultural communities in Fiji have suffered a range of serious L&D from severe drought events. Through a grounded theoretical lens, qualitative research was used to gain in-depth insights into L&D from droughts in the Fijian sugar industry. In-depth semi-structured interviews (n = 68) were conducted in two Indo-Fijian sugarcane communities, Barotu and Toko settlements in Western Viti Levu, Fiji, and with key stakeholders from government ministries, academia, and climate change experts at the national level. Purposive sampling was initially used to identify smallholder sugarcane farmers and key stakeholders. Theoretical sampling further identified key stakeholders for the interview. Despite implementing various adaptation measures, the Fijian sugar industry has suffered severe L&D, including non-economic L&D (NELD) and associated cascading effects. L&D included reduced yields, loss of crops, and reduced income. NELD included deterioration of mental, physical, and emotional health, loss of hope, and uncertainty. Cascading effects included increased food insecurity risks and impacts on children’s education. Key policy interventions are recommended, such as removing adaptation constraints, developing drought risk profiles and early warning systems, investing in livelihood diversification, and engaging in new markets to facilitate social and ecological transformations that will promote livelihood resilience. Key Policy Highlights:Climatic and non-climatic stressors are inherently interconnected and interact in a complex and complicated manner to enhance social-ecological systems (SES) vulnerability.Inadequate drought adaptation measures further marginalise farmers and ultimately increase their vulnerability to drought risks and loss and damage (L&D).L&D presents itself in various ways, including non-economic L&D and cascading effects that are impacting upon future generations.With projected climate change and the likelihood of impacts worsening, there is an urgency to address L&D more coherently through crucial policy interventions.Climatic and non-climatic stressors are inherently interconnected and interact in a complex and complicated manner to enhance social-ecological systems (SES) vulnerability.Inadequate drought adaptation measures further marginalise farmers and ultimately increase their vulnerability to drought risks and loss and damage (L&D).L&D presents itself in various ways, including non-economic L&D and cascading effects that are impacting upon future generations.With projected climate change and the likelihood of impacts worsening, there is an urgency to address L&D more coherently through crucial policy interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is generating levels of environmental risk that are jeopardising modern development. As the management of water systems becomes more difficult, approaches to governance and engagement within regions are increasingly shaping adaptation successes and failures. We use theory on hydrosocial systems and risk to critically analyse stakeholder experiences of a transition in South Australian water management in peri‐urban Adelaide, with detail from the Langhorne Creek viticultural region. Local prescription of water resources has limited over‐exploitation and supported landowners to use water in sophisticated ways. When community stakeholders deliberated on common concerns with governance organisations for mutually beneficial outcomes, decision‐making supported successful hydrosocial adaptation. Ongoing challenges, such as a lack of confidence in the scientific knowledge guiding decisions, were accentuated when the process was politicised and engagement became inauthentic. If trust between governance organisations and local stakeholders is broken, it is difficult to re‐engage the farming community with adaptation decision‐making. In contrast, by working closely with community end‐users, government can enable appropriate behaviour and guide adaptive management. Attention to hydrosocial processes will be crucial to facilitate effective local adaptation policy in response to climate risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Farmers in the Langhorne Creek–Angas Bremer basin irrigation district of South Australia have faced a series of hydrosocial crises relating to drought and groundwater depletion and degradation. The crises have been negotiated through concerted community engagement and cooperation. Adaptation responses have included a combination of infrastructural development and changes to the licensing, regulation, and oversight of irrigation governance, easing extraction pressures on the local groundwater catchment. However, new risks have emerged in the wake of, and as a result of, these solutions. One aspect of the solution has been to connect the Angas Bremer basin district more intimately to the much larger continental riverine system, the Murray-Darling basin, which stretches across multiple regional and state jurisdictions. The very success of that scalar response to hydrological risk generates broader systemic risks: to water supply and quality from climate change and upstream extraction; to basin governance; and to community cohesion, engagement, flexibility, and resilience. In a post-crisis period, there is a need to understand the emergent risks from transformational adaptation and guard against complacency to ensure that the hydrosocial qualities of flexibility and resilience that enabled positive responses to the initial crises endure to respond to future crises in water supply and its management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecological and social risks are part of life on Earth, and yet they have increased during the late modern era due to environmental change and rising inequality. People who are well-educated are better able to plan for and respond to risk, both individually and collectively. Geography teachers' perceptions are critically analysed to examine the contemporary approach to risk education. There can be drawbacks of focusing on risks, including the emphasis on negative futures that could dissuade students from engaging with relevant issues. However, a range of advantages of risk education include engagement with important issues and concepts; learning about practical responses to relevant risks; higher order inquiry-based learning into societal issues; supporting resilience in students; and assistance with personal and democratic decision-making. The teachers' narratives on risk education are used to frame a critical discussion on the roles of the formal education system to prepare students for uncertain futures. The teachers recognised the need for more risk education to prepare students for a second modernity, but cautioned that teaching and learning approaches must focus on appropriate, relevant issues to provide opportunities to imagine and enact hopeful futures.

Floods generate both risks and benefits. In Langhorne Creek, South Australia, a historically-embedded system of shared floodwater management exists among farmers, who rely on semi-regular flood inundations as part of the region's hydrosocial terroir – a dynamic conjunction of water, landscape, social relations and agricultural practice. Unruly floods coexist with a heavily regulated and precisely measured system of modern water management for viticultural irrigation across the region. Since the mid-twentieth century, groundwater extraction and new pipeline schemes have linked Langhorne Creek to the Murray Darling Basin water management system, which has displaced flooding as the primary source of irrigation water. The associated modernist shift towards the rationalization of water as a measurable resource has acted to sideline flood irrigation. Yet, floods maintain important viticultural, ecological and social roles in Langhorne Creek, adding to the flexibility and resilience of the region in response to water management challenges. The system involves technological and infrastructural components, such as flood gates and channels, but also relies upon the cooperation and coordination of community members. Local vignerons suggest that flood irrigation is environmentally as well as economically beneficial, rejuvenating riparian wetlands along watercourses. A more formal acknowledgement of the specific regional experiences of water management in a wine region like Langhorne Creek helps to fill a gap between emplaced and hydrosocial understandings of flood irrigation and broader assumptions about flooding as wasteful and inefficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the importance of effective secondary education for all children as Australian society embraces globalization. In a global era, where societal development will rely on the knowledge and skills of the workforce, an effective education will become even more important for socio-economic engagement and equality. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds are the most vulnerable to globalization as they are less likely to achieve academically or go on to benefit from the restructured neo-liberal economy. Education policy will need to continue to support the right of each individual to be prepared for life in general, and employment in particular. Opportunities for democratic pedagogy, curriculum and education policy to respond to risk are outlined and critiqued in relation to the ongoing need for justice in education systems. If adequate funding is not provided for secondary education and directed to ensure an effective education is available for all students, obtaining a quality education will increasingly shift from a right to a privilege in Australian society. (Contains 1 table.)