The international regulation of sustainable forest management : doctrinal concepts, governing institutions and implementation

The overarching objective of the research was to identify the existence and nature of international legal principles governing sustainable forest use and management. This research intended to uncover a set of forest legal considerations that are relevant for consideration across the globe. The purpose behind this, is to create a theoretical base of international forest law literature which be drawn upon to inform future international forestry research. This research will be of relevance to those undertaking examination of a particular forest issue or those focusing on forests in a particular region. The thesis explains the underlying legal issues in forest regulation, the dominant international regulatory approaches and makes suggestions as to how international and national forest policy could be improved.

Researching for social justice: Contextual, conceptual and methodological challenges

Reforming schooling to enable engagement and success for those typically marginalised and failed by schools is a necessary task for educational researchers and activists concerned with injustice. However, it is a difficult pursuit, with a long history of failed attempts. This paper outlines the rationale of an Australian partnership research project, Redesigning Pedagogies in the North (RPiN), which took on such an effort in public secondary schooling contexts that, in current times, are beset with 'crisis' conditions and constrained by policy rationales that make it difficult to pursue issues of justice. Within the project, university investigators and teachers collaborated in action research that drew on a range of conceptual resources for redesigning curriculum and pedagogies, including: funds of knowledge, vernacular or local literacies; place-based education; the 'productive pedagogies' and the 'unofficial curriculum' of popular culture and out-of-school learning settings. In bringing these resources together with the aim of interrupting the reproduction of inequality, the project developed a methodo-logic which builds on Bourdieuian insights.

Assessing the relationship between global warming and mortality : lag effects of temperature fluctuations by age and mortality categories

Although interests in assessing the relationship between temperature and mortality have arisen due to climate change, relatively few data are available on lag structure of temperature-mortality relationship, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere. This study identified the lag effects of mean temperature on mortality among age groups and death categories using polynomial distributed lag models in Brisbane, Australia, a subtropical city, 1996-2004. For a 1 °C increase above the threshold, the highest percent increase in mortality on the current day occurred among people over 85 years (7.2% (95% CI: 4.3%, 10.2%)). The effect estimates among cardiovascular deaths were higher than those among all-cause mortality. For a 1 °C decrease below the threshold, the percent increases in mortality at 21 lag days were 3.9% (95% CI: 1.9%, 6.0%) and 3.4% (95% CI: 0.9%, 6.0%) for people aged over 85 years and with cardiovascular diseases, respectively. These findings may have implications for developing intervention strategies to reduce and prevent temperature-related mortality.

Learning in the global classroom : a guide for students in the multicultural university

This unique and fascinating book is written for tertiary level students in the multi-cultural classroom, whether studying abroad or at home alongside international students. It relates a genuine understanding of the student perspective of learning in a multi cultural classroom, highlighting how students possess different learning styles and attitudes to teaching and learning and demonstrating that students not only face language issues, but also numerous other unanticipated challenges.

Local and global : cultural globalization, consumerism, and children's fiction

According to Zygmunt Bauman in Liquid Modernity (2000), the formerly solid and stable institutions of social life that characterised earlier stages of modernity have become fluid. He sees this as an outcome of the modernist project of progress itself, which in seeking to dismantle oppressive structures failed to reconstruct new roles for society, community and the individual. The un-tethering of social life from tradition in the latter stages of the twentieth century has produced unprecedented freedoms and unparalleled uncertainties, at least in the West. Although Bauman’s elaboration of some of the features and drivers of liquid modernity – increased mobility, rapid communications technologies, individualism – suggests it to be a neologism for globalisation, it is arguably also the context which has allowed this phenomenon to flourish. The qualities of fluidity, leakage, and flow that distinguish uncontained liquids also characterise globalisation, which encompasses a range of global trends and processes no longer confined to, or controlled by, the ‘container’ of the nation or state. The concept of liquid modernity helps to explain the conditions under which globalisation discourses have found a purchase and, by extension, the world in which contemporary children’s literature, media, and culture are produced. Perhaps more significantly, it points to the fluid conceptions of self and other that inform the ‘liquid’ worldview of the current generation of consumers of texts for children and young adults. This generation is growing up under the phase of globalisation we describe in this chapter.

Developing a social justice framework to ensure good practice in higher education

As higher education institutions respond to government targets to widen participation, their student populations will become increasingly diverse, and the mechanisms in place to support student success and retention will be more closely scrutinised.

Ethics and Socially Responsible Investment : A Philosophical Approach

This volume breaks new ground by approaching Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) as an explicitly ethical practice in financial markets. The work explains the philosophical and practical shortcomings of ‘long term shareholder value’ and the origins and conceptual structure of SRI, and links its pursuit to both its deeper philosophical foundations and the broader, multi-dimensional global movement towards greater social responsibility in global markets. Interviews with fund managers in the Australian SRI sector generate recommendations for better integrating ethics into SRI practice via ethically informed engagement with invested companies, and an in-depth discussion of the central practical SRI issue of fiduciary responsibility strengthens the case in favour of SRI. The practical and ethical theoretical perspectives are then brought together to sketch out an achievable ideal for SRI worldwide, in which those who are involved in investment and business decisions become part of an ‘ethical chain’ of decision makers linking the ultimate owners of capital with the business executives who frame, advocate and implement business strategies. In between there are investment advisors, fund managers, business analysts and boards. The problem lies in the fact that the ultimate owners are discouraged from considering their own values, or even their own long term interests, whilst the others often look only to short term interests. The solution lies in the latter recognising themselves as links in the ethical chain.

A critical analysis of global BPM demand

Business Process Management is accepted globally as an organisational approach that can be used to enhance productivity and drive cost efficiencies. Whilst there are numerous research articles that discuss this management approach, none clearly articulate the preferred BPM capabilities sought across geographic regions. This study aims to address this through a structured content analysis of leading on-line recruitment websites, supported by essential BPM capabilities - identified through leading academic BPM capability frameworks. Whilst the skills of process modelling, documentation and improvement were commonly sought, Enterprise level factors such as strategic alignment and process governance were less frequently mentioned. In addition, there are geographical differences in the BPM skill set requirements with an emphasis on process governance and organisational culture in European countries. This analysis can be used by prospective and current BPM professionals to understand organisational requirements globally, and academics to structure BPM education to suit these differing geographic demands.

Legal ethics in a post-Westphalian world : building the international rule of law and otehr tasks

The emergence of strong sovereign states after the Treaty of Westphalia turned two of the most cosmopolitan professions (law and arms) into two of the least cosmopolitan. Sovereign states determined the content of the law within their borders – including which, if any, ecclesiastical law was to be applied; what form of economic regulation was adopted; and what, if any, international law applied. Similarly, states sought to ensure that all military force was at their disposal in national armies. The erosion of sovereignty in a post-Westphalian world may significantly reverse these processes. The erosion of sovereignty is likely to have profound consequences for the legal profession and the ethics of how, and for what ends, it is practised. Lawyers have played a major role in the civilization of sovereign states through the articulation and institutionalisation of key governance values – starting with the rule of law. An increasingly global profession must take on similar tasks. The same could be said of the military. This essay will review the concept of an international rule of law and its relationship to domestic conceptions and outline the task of building the international rule of law and the role that lawyers can and should play in it.

Re-conceiving the good life : the key to sustainable globalisation

Resource-intensive, high-carbon, Western lifestyles are frequently criticised as unsustainable and deeply unsatisfying. However, these lifestyles are still attractive to the majority of Westerners and to a high proportion of the developing world’s middle classes. This paper argues that the imminent threat of catastrophic climate change constitutes an immediate political, economic and ethical challenge for citizens of the developed world that cannot be tackled by appeals to asceticism or restraint. There can be no solution to climate change until sustainable conceptions of the good life are developed that those in the west want to live and which others might want to live. While the ultimate solution to climate change is the development of low carbon lifestyles, it is important that government initiatives, governance arrangements and economic incentives support rather than undermine that search. Like the global financial crisis, the climate change crisis also demonstrates what happens when weaknesses in national, corporate and professional governance are exacerbated by weaknesses in global governance. In tackling the latter, it is critical the mistakes now evidenced in the former are avoided – including a rethinking of carbon market and carbon tax alternatives. It is also critical that individuals must take responsibility for their actions as consumers, voters and investors.

The contribution of maize cropping in the Midwest USA to global warming: A regional estimate

Agricultural soils emit about 50% of the global flux of N2O attributable to human influence, mostly in response to nitrogen fertilizer use. Recent evidence that the relationship between N2O fluxes and N-fertilizer additions to cereal maize are non-linear provides an opportunity to estimate regional N2O fluxes based on estimates of N application rates rather than as a simple percentage of N inputs as used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). We combined a simple empirical model of N2O production with the SOCRATES soil carbon dynamics model to estimate N2O and other sources of Global Warming Potential (GWP) from cereal maize across 19,000 cropland polygons in the North Central Region (NCR) of the US over the period 1964–2005. Results indicate that the loading of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere from cereal maize production in the NCR was 1.7 Gt CO2e, with an average 268 t CO2e produced per tonne of grain. From 1970 until 2005, GHG emissions per unit product declined on average by 2.8 t CO2e ha−1 annum−1, coinciding with a stabilisation in N application rate and consistent increases in grain yield from the mid-1970’s. Nitrous oxide production from N fertilizer inputs represented 59% of these emissions, soil C decline (0–30 cm) represented 11% of total emissions, with the remaining 30% (517 Mt) from the combustion of fuel associated with farm operations. Of the 126 Mt of N fertilizer applied to cereal maize from 1964 to 2005, we estimate that 2.2 Mt N was emitted as N2O when using a non-linear response model, equivalent to 1.75% of the applied N.

Developing ethical identities in young offenders through restorative justice practice in Australia

Restorative justice is firmly established in Australian juvenile justice. While the official language used to describe restorative initiatives varies across states and territories, the most common form is a meeting or conference between young offenders and their victims (most commonly known as a family group or youth justice conference). During the past decade, an impressive amount of empirical research has examined how the restorative justice process affects offenders, victims and other participants (such as supporters for young offenders and victims). Results from this line of research are remarkably consistent and show that participants generally regard restorative conferences as procedurally fair and that they are satisfied with the outcomes (eg what young offenders agree to do to make up for their offending behaviour, such as offer a sincere apology or perform work for the victim or the community). What is less common, however, is the perception among participants that restorative conferences achieve the key aim of restoration.By ‘restoration’ we refer to encounters where ‘offenders apologise, their apologies are accepted, victims offer forgiveness,and conferences conclude with a feeling of mutual good will’.