Heritage designation and scale: a World Heritage case study of the Ningaloo Coast

© 2015 Tod Jones, Roy Jones and Michael Hughes As heritage research has engaged with a greater plurality of heritage practices, scale has emerged as an important concept in Heritage Studies, albeit relatively narrowly defined as hierarchical levels (household, local, national, etcetera). This paper argues for a definition of scale in heritage research that incorporates size (geographical scale), level (vertical scale) and relation (an understanding that scale is constituted through dynamic relationships in specific contexts). The paper utilises this definition of scale to analyse heritage designation first through consideration of changing World Heritage processes, and then through a case study of the world heritage designation of the Ningaloo Coast region in Western Australia. Three key findings are: both scale and heritage gain appeal because they are abstractions, and gain definition through the spatial politics of interrelationships within specific situations; the spatial politics of heritage designation comes into focus through attention to those configurations of size, level and relation that are invoked and enabled in heritage processes; and researchers choice to analyse or ignore particular scales and scalar politics are political decisions. Utilising scale as size, level and relation enables analyses that move beyond heritage to the spatial politics through which all heritage is constituted

United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: Promoting health and well-being through physical education partnerships

The United Nations recently approved the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which forms a guideline policy for all nations. While the UN have strongly advised that partnerships are essential for the implementation of these global goals, within local communities there is little evidence of how this is best done or what it looks like in practice. This paper shares a health and wellbeing community initiative that achieves goals three and four of the SDGs, and in doing so models how to implement physical education partnerships as advocated by the UN. The highly successful innovative initiative is “Best Start: A community collaborative approach to lifelong health and wellness” (2011–2014).This paper shares a health and wellbeing partnership, modelling implementation of physical education (PE) advocated by the United Nations (UN). The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) exemplifies global efforts towards equality, specifically Goal 3 and 4 address health and wellbeing. The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into cross sector “partnerships”, identified as essential for the implementation of the SDGs. This is significant as the UN acknowledge a present gap of information on partnerships in action and a need for reporting from the ground level. The project “Best Start: A community collaborative approach to lifelong health and wellness”, began as a partnership between a university and nearby schools and quickly grew to involve Australian Registered Training Organisations, the local health industry, Education departments and sport governing bodies. The collaborations involved pre-service teachers teaching Health and PE lessons to children in a disadvantaged socio-economic area, creating valuable learning experiences for stakeholders. Local and global communities were involved in research and reform. The project creatively optimised resources available through state, Australian and international connections. International partnerships enabled identification of unique contextual opportunities. Programme planning was strengthened with data gathered from an England and Wales Ofsted awarded Primary Physical Education course. Various methods, including; semi-structured interviews, reflective journal, observations, document analysis, and Student Evaluation of Teaching Units (SETU) were adopted. SETU is valid and reliable data collected by the university for the purposes of research. The findings support that partnerships enable SDG implementation and the research paper offers direction for localisation

Greenhouse gas emissions from a Western Australian finfish supply chain

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the form of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2 - eq) from two Western Australian finfish supply chains, from harvest to retail outlet, were measured using streamlined life cycle assessment methodology. The identification of interventions to potentially reduce the GHG emissions was determined from the results obtained. Electricity consumption contributed to the highest GHG emissions within the supply chains measured, followed by refrigeration gas leakage and disposal of unused fish portions. Potential cleaner production strategies (CPS) to reduce these impacts included installing solar panels, recycling the waste, good housekeeping in refrigeration equipment maintenance, and input substitution of refrigeration gas. The results show a combination of these strategies have the potential to reduce up to 35% of the total GHG emissions from fillet harvest, processing and retail

Plant profit maximisation improves predictions of European forest responses to drought

- Knowledge of how water stress impacts the carbon and water cycles is a key uncertainty in terrestrial biosphere models. - We tested a new profit maximisation model, where photosynthetic uptake of CO2 is optimally traded against plant hydraulic function, as an alternative to the empirical functions commonly used in models to regulate gas exchange during periods of water stress. We conducted a multi-site evaluation of this model at the ecosystem scale, before and during major droughts in Europe. Additionally, we asked whether the maximum hydraulic conductance in the soil-plant continuum

Health effects and wind turbines: A review of the literature

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Wind power has been harnessed as a source of power around the world. Debate is ongoing with respect to the relationship between reported health effects and wind turbines, specifically in terms of audible and inaudible noise. As a result, minimum setback distances have been established world-wide to reduce or avoid potential complaints from, or potential effects to, people living in proximity to wind turbines. People interested in this debate turn to two sources of information to make informed decisions: scientific peer-reviewed studies published in scientific journals and the popular literature and internet.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The purpose of this paper is to review the peer-reviewed scientific literature, government agency reports, and the most prominent information found in the popular literature. Combinations of key words were entered into the Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge^SMand the internet search engine Google. The review was conducted in the spirit of the evaluation process outlined in the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Conclusions of the peer reviewed literature differ in some ways from those in the popular literature. In peer reviewed studies, wind turbine annoyance has been statistically associated with wind turbine noise, but found to be more strongly related to visual impact, attitude to wind turbines and sensitivity to noise. To date, no peer reviewed articles demonstrate a direct causal link between people living in proximity to modern wind turbines, the noise they emit and resulting physiological health effects. If anything, reported health effects are likely attributed to a number of environmental stressors that result in an annoyed/stressed state in a segment of the population. In the popular literature, self-reported health outcomes are related to distance from turbines and the claim is made that infrasound is the causative factor for the reported effects, even though sound pressure levels are not measured.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>What both types of studies have in common is the conclusion that wind turbines can be a source of annoyance for some people. The difference between both types is the reason for annoyance. While it is acknowledged that noise from wind turbines can be annoying to some and associated with some reported health effects (e.g., sleep disturbance), especially when found at sound pressure levels greater than 40 db(A), given that annoyance appears to be more strongly related to visual cues and attitude than to noise itself, self reported health effects of people living near wind turbines are more likely attributed to physical manifestation from an annoyed state than from wind turbines themselves. In other words, it appears that it is the change in the environment that is associated with reported health effects and not a turbine-specific variable like audible noise or infrasound. Regardless of its cause, a certain level of annoyance in a population can be expected (as with any number of projects that change the local environment) and the acceptable level is a policy decision to be made by elected officials and their government representatives where the benefits of wind power are weighted against their cons. Assessing the effects of wind turbines on human health is an emerging field and conducting further research into the effects of wind turbines (and environmental changes) on human health, emotional and physical, is warranted.</p