The practice of participatory planning at Mapoon Aboriginal settlement: Towards community control, ownership and autonomy

The practice of participatory planning in discrete Indigenous settlements has been established since the early 1990s. In addition to technical and economic goals, participatory planning also seeks community development outcomes, including community control, ownership and autonomy. This paper presents an evaluation of one such planning project, conducted at Mapoon in 1995. The Plan successfully improved physical infrastructure and housing, but had mixed success in terms of community development. Despite various efforts to follow participatory processes, the Plan was essentially a passing event, community control progressively diminished after its completion, and outcomes fell short of notions of ownership and autonomy. This suggests some misunderstandings between the practice of participatory planning and the workings of governance.

Sustainable Management of the Great Artesian Basin: An Analysis Based on Law and Environmental Economics

Current policy issues surrounding management of the Great Artesian Basin - historical development of existing legislation and institutions - hydrological and historical background information - development of concerns over unsustainable use of resources and possible adverse environmental impacts - recent developments associated with the general reforms to water law and policy initiated by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) - comparison of issues surrounding the Murray-Darling Basin and the Great Artesian Basin.

Measuring community strength and social capital

Five case study communities in both metropolitan and regional urban locations in Australia are used as test sites to develop measures of 'community strength' on four domains: Natural Capital; Produced Economic Capital; Human Capital; and Social and Institutional Capital. The paper focuses on the fourth domain. Sample surveys of households in the five case study communities used a survey instrument with scaled items to measure four aspects of social capital - formal norms, informal norms, formal structures and informal structures - that embrace the concepts of trust, reciprocity, bonds, bridges, links and networks in the interaction of individuals with their community inherent in the notion social capital. Exploratory principal components analysis is used to identify factors that measure those aspects of social and institutional capital, while a confirmatory analysis based on Cronbach's alpha explores the robustness of the measures. Four primary scales and 15 subscales are identified when defining the domain of social and institutional capital. Further analysis reveals that two measures - anomie, and perceived quality of life and wellbeing - relate to certain primary scales of social capital.

Role of smoking in global and regional cancer epidemiology: current patterns and data needs

Although smoking is widely recognized as a major cause of cancer, there is little information on how it contributes to the global and regional burden of cancers in combination with other risk factors that affect background cancer mortality patterns. We used data from the American Cancer Society's Cancer Prevention Study II (CPS-II) and the WHO and IARC cancer mortality databases to estimate deaths from 8 clusters of site-specific cancers caused by smoking, for 14 epidemiologic subregions of the world, by age and sex. We used lung cancer mortality as an indirect marker for accumulated smoking hazard. CPS-II hazards were adjusted for important covariates. In the year 2000, an estimated 1.42 (95% CI 1.27-1.57) million cancer deaths in the world, 21% of total global cancer deaths, were caused by smoking. Of these, 1.18 million deaths were among men and 0.24 million among women; 625,000 (95% CI 485,000-749,000) smoking-caused cancer deaths occurred in the developing world and 794,000 (95% CI 749,000-840,000) in industrialized regions. Lung cancer accounted for 60% of smoking-attributable cancer mortality, followed by cancers of the upper aerodigestive tract (20%). Based on available data, more than one in every 5 cancer deaths in the world in the year 2000 were caused by smoking, making it possibly the single largest preventable cause of cancer mortality. There was significant variability across regions in the role of smoking as a cause of the different site-specific cancers. This variability illustrates the importance of coupling research and surveillance of smoking with that for other risk factors for more effective cancer prevention. (C) 2005 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Role of smoking in global and regional cardiovascular mortality

Background - Smoking is a major cause of cardiovascular disease mortality. There is little information on how it contributes to global and regional cause-specific mortality from cardiovascular diseases for which background risk varies because of other risks. Method and Results - We used data from the American Cancer Society's Cancer Prevention Study II (CPS II) and the World Health Organization Global Burden of Disease mortality database to estimate smoking-attributable deaths from ischemic heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, and a cluster of other cardiovascular diseases for 14 epidemiological subregions of the world by age and sex. We used lung cancer mortality as an indirect marker for accumulated smoking hazard. CPS-II hazards were adjusted for important covariates. In the year 2000, an estimated 1.62 (95% CI, 1.27 to 2.04) million cardiovascular deaths in the world, 11% of total global cardiovascular deaths, were due to smoking. Of these, 1.17 million deaths were among men and 450 000 among women. There were 670 000 (95% CI, 440 000 to 920 000) smoking-attributable cardiovascular deaths in the developing world and 960 000 (95% CI, 770 000 to 1 200 000) in industrialized regions. Ischemic heart disease accounted for 54% of smoking-attributable cardiovascular mortality, followed by cerebrovascular disease (25%). There was variability across regions in the role of smoking as a cause of various cardiovascular diseases. Conclusions - More than 1 in every 10 cardiovascular deaths in the world in the year 2000 were attributable to smoking, demonstrating that it is an important preventable cause of cardiovascular mortality.

Genetic diversity and regional identity in the Australian remnant Nothofagus moorei

Nothofagus moorei (F. Muell.) Krasser has a disjunct and narrow distribution in south-eastern Australian cool temperate rainforest. To assess the conservation-genetic priorities for this species, the genetic diversity of 20 populations sampled from the largest remnant patches at northern and southern distributional extremes, the McPherson and Barrington ranges (a total of 146 individuals), was investigated by using inter simple sequence repeats (ISSR). Regeneration in northern regions of N. moorei has been documented to be predominantly by vegetative means, but our results indicate little evidence of clonality outside the multi-stemmed rings of trees. In addition, genetic diversity was considerably higher in the northern (McPherson, h = 0.1613) than in the southern range (Barrington, h = 0.1159), and genetic differentiation was significantly positively correlated with geographic distance in the former region, but not the latter. Total intraspecific variation was moderate, as measured by Shannon's diversity index, I = 0.2719, and Nei's gene diversity, h = 0.1672, and is considered at the high end of spectrum for estimates of narrow endemic species. An analysis of molecular variation indicated that the majority of genetic variation is partitioned among individuals within population (60%; P < 0.001), rather than among populations within regions (10%; P < 0.001). However, a large and significant component of the measured diversity was partitioned between northern and southern regions (29%; P < 0.001). Several hypotheses are outlined to explain these differences and management implications are discussed. However, given the narrow range, poor dispersal mechanism and restriction to cool temperate rainforest, the continued existence of N. moorei is most threatened by environmental instability and habitat loss resulting from global climate change. In this context the northern regions of the species are most at risk and extinction of such populations would lead to a significant loss of genetic variation for the species as a whole.

Global and regional burden of disease and risk factors, 2001: systematic analysis of population health data

Background Our aim was to calculate the global burden of disease and risk factors for 2001, to examine regional trends from 1990 to 2001, and to provide a starting point for the analysis of the Disease Control Priorities Project (DCPP). Methods We calculated mortality, incidence, prevalence, and disability adjusted life years (DALYs) for 136 diseases and injuries, for seven income/geographic country groups. To assess trends, we re-estimated all-cause mortality for 1990 with the same methods as for 2001. We estimated mortality and disease burden attributable to 19 risk factors. Findings About 56 million people died in 2001. Of these, 10.6 million were children, 99% of whom lived in low-and-middle-income countries. More than half of child deaths in 2001 were attributable to acute respiratory infections, measles, diarrhoea, malaria, and HIV/AIDS. The ten leading diseases for global disease burden were perinatal conditions, lower respiratory infections, ischaemic heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, HIV/AIDS, diarrhoeal diseases, unipolar major depression, malaria, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and tuberculosis. There was a 20% reduction in global disease burden per head due to communicable, maternal, perinatal, and nutritional conditions between 1990 and 2001. Almost half the disease burden in low-and-middle-income countries is now from non-communicable diseases (disease burden per head in Sub-Saharan Africa and the low-and-middle-income countries of Europe and Central Asia increased between 1990 and 2001). Undernutrition remains the leading risk factor for health loss. An estimated 45% of global mortality and 36% of global disease burden are attributable to the joint hazardous effects of the 19 risk factors studied. Uncertainty in all-cause mortality estimates ranged from around 1% in high-income countries to 15-20% in Sub-Saharan Africa. Uncertainty was larger for mortality from specific diseases, and for incidence and prevalence of non-fatal outcomes. Interpretation Despite uncertainties about mortality and burden of disease estimates, our findings suggest that substantial gains in health have been achieved in most populations, countered by the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa and setbacks in adult mortality in countries of the former Soviet Union. our results on major disease, injury, and risk factor causes of loss of health, together with information on the cost-effectiveness of interventions, can assist in accelerating progress towards better health and reducing the persistent differentials in health between poor and rich countries.

Regional renaissance? New forms of governance in nonmetropolitan Australia

Since the Second World War, Australian governments have adopted various approaches to governing nonmetropolitan Australia. The authors profile three distinct approaches to governance characterised as (1) state-centred regionalism; (2) new localism; and (3) new forms of multifaceted regionalism. Although recent policy initiatives have been justified by the argument that the region is the most suitable scale for planning and development in nonmetropolitan Australia, in practice the institutional landscape is a hybrid of overlapping local, regional, and national scales of action. The authors compare this new, multifaceted, regionalism with the so-called 'new regionalism currently being promoted in Western Europe and North America. It is argued that new regionalism differs in quite important ways from the regionalism currently being fostered in Australia. In Australia, the centrality of sustainability principles, and the attempt to foster interdependence amongst stakeholders from the state, market, and civil society, have produced a layer of networked governance that is different from that overseas. It is argued that there is a triple bottom-line 'promise' in the Australian approach which differs from the Western Europe/North American model, and which has the potential to deliver enhanced economic, social, and environmental outcomes.