‘Research to ‘make a difference’ with Traditional Owners in the Martuwarra/Fitzroy River Catchment’

In 2015-16, NESP Northern Australia Environmental Resources Hub worked with Traditional Owners in the Kimberley region to identify their research priorities. While the projects will conclude in 2021, here we present some results from three projects identified as important. In the first project, the “Showing and sharing knowledge in the Fitzroy River Catchment”, ten Traditional Owner groups used participatory mapping tools to share traditional knowledge and learn from western scientific and political knowledge together. They reported feeling empowered to use these knowledges to inform conservation and development decisions on Country. In the second project, “Indigenous land, sea & water management” Emile and Celia Boxer helped conduct interviews and run workshops with four language groups to learn more about how these programs did (and did not) benefit Traditional Owners in the Fitzroy River Catchment. In the third project focusing on “Indigenous water values”, we worked together with collaborators from eight language groups in the Martuwarra/Fitzroy River catchment to understand the significance of water for Traditional Owners. Here we highlight the links between water and ethics in Traditional Owners’ relationships with their Country and present collaborative work with Nyikina women Annie Milgin, Linda Nardea and Hilda Grey. What these projects have in common is they involve local people contributing to their ecosystem and lifestyles – that is looking after their own people, economy and natural environment within their own ‘backyards’

Editorial: Adaptation to psychological stress in sport

First paragraph: Psychological stress is ubiquitous in sport. Unsurprisingly then, research that examines the antecedents, correlates, consequences, and interventions pertaining to psychological stress in sport is sizable and broad. With this Research Topic we aimed to capture the breadth and depth of work taking place around the theme of adaptation to psychological stress in sport. Pleasingly, 111 authors responded to our call for papers, contributing 25 papers between them. In this Editorial we undertake the difficult task of synthesizing these contributions, and highlight important implications that could influence future research and practice

Transdisciplinary environmental research: trial and evaluation. Final report

A group of four NESP Northern Australia Environmental Resources Hub projects operating in the Fitzroy River catchment (Western Australia) used a transdisciplinary (participatory, interdisciplinary and outcomes-focused) approach by having water resource management as a common theme. The projects partly integrated their research processes and outputs and developed strong links with research users. The transdisciplinary project team included researchers from four projects, who integrated their research processes and outputs in pairs: 1.3.3 (Environmental water requirements) and 1.5 (Indigenous water requirements); 1.6 (Multi-objective planning) and 5.4 (Showing and sharing knowledge). Project 6.2 (this research) aimed to support the development of a transdisciplinary research (TDR) approach in the Fitzroy catchment and contribute to the emerging body of knowledge on transdisciplinarity more broadly. We achieved that aim by conducting a formative evaluation (i.e. during project implementation) of the collaboration between the four projects above. This involved: (1) the development of the Theory of Change of this collaboration, (2) a literature review, (3) interviews of research users, and (4) researchers’ reflection on the previous steps. The team identified different research impacts occurring because of people’s participation in, or access to the outputs of research. Research impacts, on both researchers and research users, included: • learning and increased understanding of scientific information • development of new skills or social learning (i.e. learning from working together with other stakeholders) • empowerment (e.g. meeting and deliberating with peers regarding collective action because of the projects) • enhancing communication with other groups and a better understanding of their perspectives • creating new contacts (e.g. meeting new people) and strengthening existing relationships. Two projects (Environmental water requirements and Indigenous water requirements) have directly contributed to the Fitzroy catchment water allocation plan and to stakeholders’ submissions on the draft water plan consultation (i.e. Western Australian Department of Water and Environmental Regulation [DWER] Discussion Paper). The Multi-objective planning and Showing and sharing knowledge projects contributed with less tangible outcomes such as enhancing communication, and strengthening relationships and Indigenous institutions. Researchers identified processes or outputs that contributed positively to knowledge uptake by research users, for example, the use of videos and interactive maps, which can help users such as Traditional Owners to assimilate and use project information. They also identified things that hindered the use of project outcomes, such as confusion between the roles of research and government planning, and the limited capacity of some organisations to use research outputs

When to Use Transdisciplinary Approaches for Environmental Research

Transdisciplinary research (TDR) can help generate solutions to environmental challenges and enhance the uptake of research outputs, thus contributing to advance sustainability in social-ecological systems. Our aim is to support investment decisions in TDR; more specifically, to help funders, researchers, and research users to decide when and why it is most likely to be worth investing in TDR approaches. To achieve our aim, we: 1) define TDR and use a decision tree comparing it with alternative modes of research (i.e., basic, applied, disciplinary, multi-disciplinary, and interdisciplinary research) to help researchers and funders distinguish TDR from other research modes; 2) identify features of the research problem and context (complexity, diverse knowledge systems, contestation, power imbalance, and disagreement on the need for transformative change) where a TDR approach could be more appropriate than the alternative research modes; and 3) explore the idea that the intensity of the contextual features in (2), together with the problem at hand, will help determine where a research project stands in a continuum from low- to high-TDR. We present five studies exemplifying lower- to higher-TDR approaches that are distinguished by: 1) the number and variety of research participants engaged; 2) the strength of involvement of non-academic actors; and 3) the number and variety of disciplines and knowledge systems involved in the research

Emotional Intelligence as a Moderator of Stressor-mental Health Relations in Adolescence: Evidence for Specificity

Emotional intelligence (EI) has been reliably linked to better mental health (Martins, Ramalho, & Morin, 2010), though descriptive associations reveal little about how and when such adaptive outcomes arise. Whilst there is some evidence to suggest that ‘trait’ EI may operate as a protective resource within stress-illness processes (e.g., Mikolajczak, Roy, Luminet, Fillée, & de Timary, 2007), the role of ‘ability’ EI in this regard appears unclear (e.g., Matthews et al., 2006). Moreover, few studies have simultaneously examined relations between EI, chronic stressors and mental health in adolescents. The current study explored whether EI moderated the relationship between a range of stressors (family dysfunction; negative life events; and socio-economic adversity) and self-reported mental health (depression and disruptive behaviour symptomotology) in a sample of 405 adolescents (mean age 13.09 years). Moderated regression analyses found that whilst high levels of trait EI attenuated stressor-mental health relations, high levels of ability EI amplified associations, although both effects showed specificity with respect to stressor type and disorder. Implications for the EI construct and related intervention programmes are discussed

Agricultural Investments and Hunger in Africa Modelling Potential Contributions to SDG 2 - Zero Hunger

We use IFPRI’s IMPACT framework of linked biophysical and structural economic models to examine developments in global agricultural production systems, climate change, and food security. Building on related work on how increased investment in agricultural research, resource management, and infrastructure can address the challenges of meeting future food demand, we explore the costs and implications of these investments for reducing hunger in Africa by 2030. This analysis is coupled with a new investment estimation model, based on the perpetual inventory methodology (PIM), which allows for a better assessment of the costs of achieving projected agricultural improvements. We find that climate change will continue to slow projected reductions in hunger in the coming decades—increasing the number of people at risk of hunger in 2030 by 16 million in Africa compared to a scenario without climate change. Investments to increase agricultural productivity can offset the adverse impacts of climate change and help reduce the share of people at risk of hunger in 2030 to five percent or less in Northern, Western, and Southern Africa, but the share is projected to remain at ten percent or more in Eastern and Central Africa. Investments in Africa to achieve these results are estimated to cost about 15 billion USD per year between 2015 and 2030, as part of a larger package of investments costing around 52 billion USD in developing countries

Learning together for and with the Martuwarra Fitzroy River

Co-production across scientific and Indigenous knowledge systems has become a cornerstone of research to enhance knowledge, practice, ethics, and foster sustainability transformations. However, the profound differences in world views and the complex and contested histories of nation-state colonisation on Indigenous territories, highlight both opportunities and risks for Indigenous people when engaging with knowledge co-production. This paper investigates the conditions under which knowledge co-production can lead to improved Indigenous adaptive environmental planning and management among remote land-attached Indigenous peoples through a case study with ten Traditional Owner groups in the Martuwarra (Fitzroy River) Catchment in Western Australia’s Kimberley region. The research team built a 3D map of the river and used it, together with an interactive table-top projector, to bring together both scientific and Indigenous spatial knowledge. Participatory influence mapping, aligned with Traditional Owner priorities to achieve cultural governance and management planning goals set out in the Fitzroy River Declaration, investigated power relations. An analytical framework, examining underlying mechanisms of social learning, knowledge promotion and enhancing influence, based on different theories of change, was applied to unpack the immediate outcomes from these activities. The analysis identified that knowledge co-production activities improved the accessibility of the knowledge, the experiences of the knowledge users, strengthened collective identity and partnerships, and strengthened Indigenous-led institutions. The focus on cultural governance and management planning goals in the Fitzroy River Declaration enabled the activities to directly affect key drivers of Indigenous adaptive environmental planning and management—the Indigenous-led institutions. The nation-state arrangements also gave some support to local learning and decision-making through a key Indigenous institution, Martuwarra Fitzroy River Council. Knowledge co-production with remote land-attached Indigenous peoples can improve adaptive environmental planning and management where it fosters learning together, is grounded in the Indigenous-led institutions and addresses their priorities

Tumor Transcriptome Sequencing Reveals Allelic Expression Imbalances Associated with Copy Number Alterations

Due to growing throughput and shrinking cost, massively parallel sequencing is rapidly becoming an attractive alternative to microarrays for the genome-wide study of gene expression and copy number alterations in primary tumors. The sequencing of transcripts (RNA-Seq) should offer several advantages over microarray-based methods, including the ability to detect somatic mutations and accurately measure allele-specific expression. To investigate these advantages we have applied a novel, strand-specific RNA-Seq method to tumors and matched normal tissue from three patients with oral squamous cell carcinomas. Additionally, to better understand the genomic determinants of the gene expression changes observed, we have sequenced the tumor and normal genomes of one of these patients. We demonstrate here that our RNA-Seq method accurately measures allelic imbalance and that measurement on the genome-wide scale yields novel insights into cancer etiology. As expected, the set of genes differentially expressed in the tumors is enriched for cell adhesion and differentiation functions, but, unexpectedly, the set of allelically imbalanced genes is also enriched for these same cancer-related functions. By comparing the transcriptomic perturbations observed in one patient to his underlying normal and tumor genomes, we find that allelic imbalance in the tumor is associated with copy number mutations and that copy number mutations are, in turn, strongly associated with changes in transcript abundance. These results support a model in which allele-specific deletions and duplications drive allele-specific changes in gene expression in the developing tumor