Democratizing Accounting Technologies: the Potential of the Sustainability Assessment Model (SAM)

There is widespread recognition both in and outside of the accounting discipline of the need for 'accountings' that facilitate more participatory forms of decision-making and accountability. This is particularly evident in the social and environmental accounting literature, which has long sought to take pluralism seriously. Theoretically, these calls are embedded in the democratic rather than capitalist traditions of neo-liberal Western societies. This article draws on the work of ecological economist Peter Söderbaum to argue the case for a 'positional' approach to decision-modelling. It also builds on Baxter, Bebbington, Cutteridge & Harvey (2003) to illustrate how this approach could be operationalised through development of the sustainability assessment model (SAM)

Democratizing Accounting Technologies: the Potential of the Sustainability Assessment Model (SAM)

There is widespread recognition both in and outside of the accounting discipline of the need for 'accountings' that facilitate more participatory forms of decision-making and accountability. This is particularly evident in the social and environmental accounting literature, which has long sought to take pluralism seriously. Theoretically, these calls are embedded in the democratic rather than capitalist traditions of neo-liberal Western societies. This article draws on the work of ecological economist Peter Söderbaum to argue the case for a 'positional' approach to decision-modelling. It also builds on Baxter, Bebbington, Cutteridge & Harvey (2003) to illustrate how this approach could be operationalised through development of the sustainability assessment model (SAM)

Hatched: The capacity for sustainable development

Hatched: The capacity for sustainable development is edited by Landcare Research scientists Bob Frame, Richard Gordon and Claire Mortimer and is a collection of research findings, stories and tools exploring five key areas of capacity required for New Zealand’s long-term success. It covers innovative research undertaken with businesses, across policy sectors, communities and individuals and was funded by the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology

New Zealand, new futures, new ways of science engaging with society?

​Science and innovation are largely valued in New Zealand as drivers of economic growth. Yet society, in charting growth, is facing increasingly real resource limits and impacts threatening the integrity of life-supporting aspects of our environment. Through a deeper understanding of what we mean by science and society, New Zealand has the potential to be truly innovative, both locally and internationally, around complex issues such as sustainable use of natural resources and reducing the use of damaging materials and processes, while keeping growth firmly on the agenda. In this paper we argue that, though gains could be made through a changed science agenda, the most significant step-change could occur at the interface between science and society – particularly in the way science engages, motivates, and drives the future

How the COVID-19 pandemic signaled the demise of Antarctic exceptionalism

This paper explores how the COVID-19 pandemic affected science and tourism activities and their governance in the Antarctic and Southern Ocean. The pandemic reduced the ability of Antarctic Treaty Parties to make decisions on policy issues and placed a considerable burden on researchers. Tourism was effectively suspended during the 2020–2021 Antarctic season and heavily reduced in 2021–2022 but rebounded to record levels in 2022–2023. The pandemic stimulated reflection on practices to facilitate dialog, especially through online events. Opportunities arose to integrate innovations developed during the pandemic more permanently into Antarctic practices, in relation to open science, reducing operational greenhouse gas footprints and barriers of access to Antarctic research and facilitating data sharing. However, as well as the long-term impacts arising directly from the pandemic, an assemblage of major geopolitical drivers are also in play and, combined, these signal a considerable weakening of Antarctic exceptionalism in the early Anthropocene

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Antarctica’s fifth age? Some supporting evidence

Ten years ago, Alan Hemmings proposed that Antarctica had entered a Fifth Age identified by a much more complex global context. This paper examines evidence from recent biophysical and socio-economic literature on the Antarctic which show an increasing number of papers identifying changes which appear, at least in part, to be attributable to global change processes. These are often in highly specialised topics that are identified as exhibiting early stages of potentially significant transformations with specific changes mooted and, in some cases, projected out several decades or more. Collectively these provide early indications of a shift to the Anthropocene, estimated, by some sources, as having started in the post-war period and coinciding with establishment of the Antarctic Treaty and the concept of setting Antarctica aside for peace and science. Papers published over the last decade or so have been selected that identify specific significant changes in Antarctica in the coming decades as identified by PCAS presenters. The papers are classified according to the criteria established in the global climate change scenarios architecture. The review then identifies that there is evidence of a Fifth Age but that it needs much more nuanced research than thisinitial overview