The Western Australian regional forest agreement: economic rationalism and the normalisation of political closure

This article explores the constraints imposed by economic rationalism on environmental policy-making in light of Western Australia\u27s (WA) Regional Forest Agreement (RFA) experience. Data derived from interviews with WA RFA stakeholders shed light on their perceptions of the RFA process and its outcomes. The extent to which involvement of science and the public RFA management enabled is analysed. The findings point to a pervasive constrainedness of WA\u27s RFA owing to a closing of the process by the administrative decision-making structures. A dominant economic rationality is seen to have normalised and legitimised political closure, effectively excluding rationalities dissenting from an implicit economic orthodoxy. This article argues for the explication of invisible, economic constraints affecting environmental policy and for the public-cum-political negotiation of the points of closure within political processes

Societal Vulnerability to Climate Change and Variability

societal adaptation, globalisation, institutional capacity, resilience, uncertainty, vulnerability,

An Ontology Design Pattern for Referential Qualities

Abstract. Referential qualities are qualities of an entity taken with ref-erence to another entity. For example the vulnerability of a coast to sea level rise. In contrast to most non-relational qualities which only depend on their host, referential qualities require a referent additional to their host, i.e. a quality Q of an entity X taken with reference to another en-tity R. These qualities occur frequently in ecological systems, which make concepts from these systems challenging to model in formal ontology. In this paper, we discuss exemplary resilience, vulnerability and affordance as qualities of an entity taken with reference to an external factor. We suggest an ontology design pattern for referential qualities. The design pattern is anchored in the foundational ontology DOLCE and evaluated using implementations for the notions affordance, resilience and vulner-ability.