Basin Futures

This unique book brings together 27 chapters from some of the world’s leading practitioners and experts on environmental water, communities, law, economics and governance. Its goal is to understand the many dimensions of water in the Murray- Darling Basin and provide guidance about how to implement a water management plan that addresses the needs of communities, the economy and the environment. The comprehensiveness of topics covered, the expertise of its authors, and the absolute need to take a multidisciplinary approach to resolving the “wicked problem” of governing our scarce water resource makes this volume a must read for all who care about Australian communities and the environment

Visitors’ learning for environmental sustainability: Testing short- and long-term impacts of wildlife tourism experiences using structural equation modelling

Wildlife tourism experiences have the potential to positively impact tourists' awareness, appreciation and actions in relation to the specific wildlife they encounter and the environment in general. This paper investigates the extent of such impact across multiple sites, and uses Structural Equation Modelling to identify factors that best predict positive long-term learning and environmental behaviour change outcomes. Three sets of variables were measured - visitors' entering attributes (including pre-visit environmental orientation and motivation for the visit), salient aspects of the experience, and short- and long-term learning and environmental behaviour change outcomes. Although attributes such as pre-visit commitment and motivation to learn were among the best predictors of the long-term impact of the experience, there was evidence that aspects of the experience were also important. In particular, reflective engagement which involved cognitive and affective processing of the experience was found to be associated with short- and long-term environmental learning outcomes. The implications for wildlife tourism managers are discussed. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

The role of valuation and bargaining in optimising transboundary watercourse treaty regimes

In the face of water scarcity, growing water demands, population increase, ecosystem degradation, climate change, and so on transboundary watercourse states inevitably have to make difficult decisions on how finite quantities of water are distributed. Such waters, and their associated ecosystem services, offer multiple benefits. Valuation and bargaining can play a key role in the sharing of these ecosystems services and their associated benefits across sovereign borders. Ecosystem services in transboundary watercourses essentially constitute a portfolio of assets. Whilst challenging, their commodification, which creates property rights, supports trading. Such trading offers a means by which to resolve conflicts over competing uses and allows states to optimise their ‘portfolios’. However, despite this potential, adoption of appropriate treaty frameworks that might facilitate a market-based approach to the discovery and allocation of water-related ecosystem services at the transboundary level remains both a challenge, and a topic worthy of further study. Drawing upon concepts in law and economics, this paper therefore seeks to advance the study of how treaty frameworks might be developed in a way that supports such a market-based approach to ecosystem services and transboundary waters

The challenges and opportunities in conserving wide-ranging cross-border species : a case study of the Greater Mapungubwe Transfrontier Conservation Area elephant population.

Doctor of Philosophy in Biology. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Westville 2015.Transfrontier conservation areas potentially play a key role in conserving biodiversity and promoting socioeconomic development. However, socio-political factors often affect their effectiveness in achieving biodiversity conservation and sustainable development objectives. Following a transdisciplinary approach, I assessed the challenges and opportunities in conserving and managing the African elephant (Loxodonta africana) population within the Greater Mapungubwe Transfrontier Conservation Area (GMTFCA) in Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe, southern Africa. The results showed that the current rate of offtake of bull elephant in the GMTFCA is unsustainable. At current rates of hunting, in fact, trophy bulls were predicted to disappear from the population in less than 10 years. Elephant densities were higher in South Africa and Botswana where the gross domestic product is higher. In addition, elephant densities were higher at sites where the proportion of agricultural land around them was the lowest and where vegetation productivity was the highest. Trophy hunting, as well as other localised human activities, also affected the distribution of elephant within sites, forcing them to trade-off between disturbance avoidance and the availability of food and water. While at the international level, a significant body of law and policy relevant to elephant conservation exists, I found that there was little cooperation among Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe, and a lack of implementation of these provisions on a national and trilateral level. Overall, this study confirmed that poverty was an important factor affecting elephant abundance at the country level, but highlighted that, at the site level, anthropogenic disturbance played a crucial role. A revision of the current hunting quotas within each country and the establishment of a single multi-jurisdictional (cross-border) management authority regulating the hunting of elephant is needed. Further, to reduce the impact of increasing human populations and agricultural expansion, the development of coordinated legislation and policies to improve land use planning, and the development of conservation corridors to link current protected areas, is needed. The issues regarding the management of this elephant population illustrate the significant challenges involved in achieving a comprehensive, consistent and effective implementation of a transboundary population approach. Southern African countries make an important contribution to elephant conservation and could soon become the last stronghold of elephant conservation in sub-Saharan Africa. Therefore, immediate actions are needed to reduce pressures from human activities in order to enhance the long-term persistence of the species

Integrating water footprint and sefficiency: overcoming water footprint criticisms and improving decision making

The Water Footprint Network (WFN) methodology has emerged as a major framework of/for policy analysis as water problems increase. Being addressed by a growing body of literature, water footprint (WF) accounting has advanced substantially in recent years, whereas its sustainability assessment has lagged behind. For this and other reasons, the suitability of WF in guiding water management and planning has been criticised. Simultaneously, water efficiency has gone through much discussion and a new framework called 'sefficiency' (sustainable efficiency) has been presented. It uses a universal law (water balance) to develop systemic and comprehensive performance indicators, integrating water quantity, pollution and value to reveal their trade-offs in multi-level governance with climate descriptors and stakeholder enablers. This article revisits WF criticisms in six categories and advances the sustainability assessment phase of the WFN framework via sefficiency. Starting from, and critically reviewing, a two-country example presented by Dennis Wichelns, we illustrate, through nine (3x3) scenarios, real possibilities of integrating WF and sefficiency. The results reveal that economic and/or WF perspectives alone are insufficient to improve water decision-making processes, not necessarily guaranteeing an increase in the performance of the full system. Consequently, policy makers should be doubly careful about, for example, WF reductions, if sefficiency also decreases.This work was partially financed by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) under the contract UID/ECI/04047/2013 for the Centre of Territory, Environment and Construction (CTAC) of the University of Minho. We would like to extend our appreciation to the editors of the journal and the two anonymous reviewers.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio