Impacts of Climate Change on Livestock Systems: What We Know and What We Don’t Know

Climate changes and the associated increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration are just two of many possible future drivers of change in grassland systems and whilst there are significant uncertainties around these, they are probably more effectively characterised than many other drivers. The challenge for grasslands systems research is not so much trying to precisely predict future climate in the face of unresolvable uncertainty but rather to work with decision-makers to enhance their decisions for a range of possible climates, build their capacity to make sound risk-based and informed decisions and increase the array of options available for adaptation. There are many adaptations possible to address key climate impacts such as increased heat stress, altered pests and disease risk, vegetation change, increased risk of soil degradation and changes in forage quantity, quality and the variability of these. Many of these adaptations are extensions of existing best management practice. However, it is important to explore adaptations that are beyond incremental change to existing systems to be inclusive of more substantial systems change and even transformational changes. There is a need also to consider adaptations beyond the farm scale including in relation to value chains, institutional change and policy development. It is these areas in particular where there are likely to be increasing demands for research

The Extreme Precipitation Event of 11 to 16 February 1996 over South Africa

The extreme precipitation event of 11 to 16 February 1996 was one of four signi®cant events during the 1995/96 rainfall season over southern Africa. Extensive ¯ooding and related damage was recorded at this time, with historical records showing one of the highest ¯ood peaks of the past century. This extreme event is analysed using a combination of mesoscale numerical modelling and Lagrangian trajectory analysis, allowing a comprehensive three-dimensional reconstruction of the associated atmospheric structure and its evolution. The adjustments in the circulation patterns as well as the timing and contribution of different moisture source regions are clearly important in in¯uencing the duration and intensity of this extreme rainfall event over southern Africa. The moisture that contributed to precipitation during the event, as well as to the south-western part of the country, was imported mainly from the Indian Ocean to the east and south-east, suggesting that the equatorial Indian Ocean may not be the predominant source of moisture as previously believed

Informing the future of Australian mining through climate change scenarios

Abstract: Mining value chains are vulnerable to a changing climate mainly due to the likelihood of increases in the incidence of extreme weather events. As such events will potentially become more frequent and more intense, the associated impacts such as infrastructure damage, production delays and downtime may damage mine profitability, staff safety, company reputation, regional 'liveability' and government revenues. Mining adaptation strategies to better deal with such impacts can be developed but the options available cannot simply be applied 'across the board' at all mines and in all situations. Various types of mining in Australia occur across 11 main geographic areas, each with its own processes and needs, its own climate signature and its own extreme-event profile. To provide some context for the likely changes in future climate, CSIRO has developed mining region-specific scenarios in association with the OzClim Climate Change Scenario Generator. OzClim generates climate change scenarios using pattern scaling where the change at a particular grid point is normalised by the mean global warming produced by the model for a doubled CO 2 concentration in the atmosphere. The patterns of change are produced for each of the 23 global climate models and for the purposes of the Australian mining regions, we have expressed changes consistent with an historical baseline in order to make the projection information as contextually relevant as possible. To bridge the gap between scenarios and users, CSIRO facilitated workshop events in mining regions. Representatives of a cross-section of the mining chain (including energy, mining, transport, research, water and community stakeholders) were invited to attend, some of whom were first interviewed by facilitators to gain an insight into their operations, understandings, and needs with regard to the workshop. The attendees were presented with future regional climate scenarios, additional information from other studies and climate location analogues helping to further 'set the scene' for the future and helping to facilitate discussion around potential impacts and adaptation needs. Discussions at the workshops provided the means for the scenarios to be placed in their local context, whilst hearing how others in the chain may be directly and indirectly impacted and how they may adapt. Mines and their related infrastructure are frequently long-term investments for all concerned. Therefore, future climate scenarios are valuable for mining value chains and the decision-makers to envisage and plan the future, including adaptation at established sites, alternative processes at new sites and contingency plans that accommodate new levels of variability. Utilising workshops to link future climate scenarios to the value chain and its operational components assisted the end-users to visualise, conceptualise and engage with adaptation decision-making scenarios. The event also brought together participants from different parts of the mining chain who were able to share knowledge and discuss needs that may in the future aid adaptation and avoid maladaptation

Adapting the Australian livestock and wheat farms to climate change: value of adaptation at cross-regional scale

The GRAZPLAN biophysical models were used to simulate the dynamics of coupled climate-soil-grassland-livestock systems at 25 representative farms across Australia’s extensive grazing region under historical and a range of projected climates (4 GCMs at 2030, 2050 and 2070 under SRES A2 scenario). The modelling analysis suggests that primary production of grasslands and livestock are likely to decrease across most of southern Australia’s grazing lands under future climate. By including changes in on-farm management in our models we were able to evaluate the effectiveness of certain adaptation options. Options considered individually were not always effective but a combination of Incremental grassland management and animal genetic improvement options (currently available to graziers) was able to offset productivity declines at cross-regional scale. Through implementation of the optimal combination of adaptation options, profitability across southern Australia was shown to increase by +69%, +84% and +116% in 2030, 2050, and 2070, compared to no adaptation. Optimal systemic adaptation could make addition of $A 2.00 billion in 2030,$A 2.10 billion in 2050, and $A 2.12 billion in 2070 to industry with current farm management. In comparison with historical production, adaptation value to industry would be$A 1.51 billion in 2030, $A 1.51 billion in 2050, and$A 1.12 billion in 2070 (all for a full adaption). If the most-profitable combination of adaptations is used at the baseline instead of the current-practice, then the optimal combinations of grassland adaptations would provide a further increase in operating profitability at 28%, 28%, and 16% of sites in 2030, 2050, and 2070. If the livestock genetic adaptations –cannot be adopted at the present for lack of seed stock – are also included, the optimal systemic adaptations would be more profitable than the alternative baseline including grassland management options at 60%, 56%, and 48% of the locations in 2030, 2050, and 2070. We discuss 3 conceptual issues which arose during our study: (i) how to estimate impact when current management is environmentally infeasible under future climates; (ii) estimating the effectiveness of combinations of adaptations, only some of which are currently available to graziers; and (iii) dealing with the tension between modelling best-practice systems, so that present and future can be compared, versus modelling typical practice for economic valuation

Provinciality and the Art World: The Midland Group 1961- 1977

This paper takes as its focus the Midland Group Gallery in order to first, make a case for the consideration of the geographies of art galleries. Second, highlight the importance of galleries in the context of cultural geographies of the sixties. Third, discuss the role of provinciality in the operation of art worlds. In so doing it explicates one set of geographies surrounding the gallery – those of the local, regional and international networks that connected to produce art works and art space. It reveals how the interactions between places and practices outside of metropolitan and regional hierarchies provides a more nuanced insight into how art worlds operated during the sixties, a period of growing internationalism of art, and how contested definitions of the provincial played an integral role in this. The paper charts the operations of the Midland Group Gallery and the spaces that it occupied to demonstrate how it was representative of a post-war discourse of provincialism and a corresponding re-evaluation of regional cultural activity

Photography as an act of collaboration

The camera is usually considered to be a passive tool under the control of the operator. This definition implicitly constrains how we use the medium, as well as how we look at – and what we see in – its interpretations of scenes, objects, events and ‘moments’. This text will suggest another way of thinking about – and using – the photographic medium. Based on the evidence of photographic practice (mine and others’), I will suggest that, as a result of the ways in which the medium interprets, juxtaposes and renders the elements in front of the lens, the camera is capable of depicting scenes, events and moments that did not exist and could not have existed until brought into being by the act of photographing them. Accordingly, I will propose that the affective power of many photographs is inseparable from their ‘photographicness’ – and that the photographic medium should therefore be considered as an active collaborator in the creation of uniquely photographic images

Foucault, the museum and the diagram

Foucault’s work on the museum is partial and fragmentary but provides an interesting opportunity through which to explore issues of power, subjectivity and imagination. Following a discussion of Deleuze’s reading of Foucault and his introduction of the issue of diagram as a way of understanding the discursive and visual operation of power, the paper explores some of Foucault’s work from the period around 1967-9 on the non-relation to explore how he engaged with the question of seeing/saying that Deleuze identifies as a key problematic in his work. Through analysis of Foucault’s discussions of the themes of the outside, heterotopia and the work of the painter Manet, in the context of the museum, the paper explores how power operating through the diagram of the museum allows us to understand the space of imagination as one in which subjectivity is constituted

Introduction : narcissism, melancholia and the subject of community.

Sigmund Freud’s twin papers, ‘On Narcissism: An Introduction’ (1914) and ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ (1917 [1915]), take as their formative concern the difficulty of setting apart the ‘inner’ and the ‘outer’ worlds, and of preserving a stable image of a boundaried self. Whilst it is true that the term narcissism especially has come to be deployed in ways that seem foreign to the complexities of Freud’s 1914 paper (by its reduction to a personality disorder or its use as a broad-brush cultural diagnosis), we suggest in this introductory chapter that neither narcissism nor melancholia can be thought about today without expressing some debt to Freudian metapsychology. However, whereas Freud was most evidently concerned to describe the structure of ego-formation, subsequent commentators have preferred to emphasize the cultural and normative dimensions of these terms. Accordingly, we consider the respective discursive histories of narcissism and melancholia and find that although they have been put to work in very different ways they remain grounded by a shared concern with mechanisms of relation and identification. Indeed, this shared concern is the basis upon which they’ve been most productively reanimated in recent years: the rise of melancholia as a critical aid to the study of cultural displacement and dispossession, and the determined redemption of narcissism from its pejorative characterization as fundamentally anti-social. We argue that what is most noteworthy in this post-Freudian literature is the increasing relevance of metapsychology to social and political theory. The language of psychoanalysis, extrapolated from the clinic, permits a detailed examination of the boundaries which construct and challenge the terms of social solidarity. Specifically, this takes place though careful reading of the complex practices of (dis)identification at the heart of ego-formation (at both individual and group levels), and the associated mechanisms of defence, for example: introjection, incorporation, projective-identification, and splitting. By recognising the complexity of how communities get made, and connecting this with recent literature on counter publics and the commons, we demonstrate that Freud’s frameworks of narcissism and melancholia remain essential for any contemporary understanding of political association

A rapid assessment framework for food system shocks: lessons learned from COVID-19 in the Indo-Pacific region

The frequency and severity of shocks to food systems is accelerating globally, exemplified by the current COVID-19 outbreak. In low- and middle-income countries, the impacts have exacerbated existing food system vulnerabilities and poverty. Governments and donors must respond quickly, but few tools are available that identify interventions to build food system resilience, or emerging opportunities for transformation. In this paper we reflect on the application of a systems-based rapid assessment which we applied across 11 Indo-Pacific countries in May-July 2020. Our approach was shaped by three design parameters: the integration of key informants’ perspectives engaged remotely within the countries, applicability to diverse food systems and COVID-19 experiences across the region, and the consideration of food systems as complex systems. For the rapid assessment we adopted an analytical framework proposed by Allen and Prosperi (2016). To include a development lens, we added the analysis of vulnerable groups and their exposure, impacts, recovery potential and resilience, and pro-poor interventions. We concluded that the framework and approach facilitated integration and triangulation of disparate knowledge types and data to identify priority interventions and was sufficiently flexible to be applied across food systems, at both national, sub-national and commodity scales. The step-wise method was simple and enabled structured inquiry and reporting. Although the systems concepts appeared more easily transferrable to key informants in some countries than others, potentially transformational interventions were identified, and also some risks of maladaptation. We present a refined framework that emphasises analysis of political, economic and institutional drivers of exposure and vulnerability, the constraints that they pose for building recovery potential and resilience, and trade-offs amongst winners and losers inherent in proposed interventions