School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences - Research Publications
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ItemNo Preview AvailableA systematic review of climate change science relevant to Australian design flood estimation(COPERNICUS GESELLSCHAFT MBH, 2024-03-15)Abstract. In response to flood risk, design flood estimation is a cornerstone of planning, infrastructure design, setting of insurance premiums, and emergency response planning. Under stationary assumptions, flood guidance and the methods used in design flood estimation are firmly established in practice and mature in their theoretical foundations, but under climate change, guidance is still in its infancy. Human-caused climate change is influencing factors that contribute to flood risk such as rainfall extremes and soil moisture, and there is a need for updated flood guidance. However, a barrier to updating flood guidance is the translation of the science into practical application. For example, most science pertaining to historical changes to flood risk focuses on examining trends in annual maximum flood events or the application of non-stationary flood frequency analysis. Although this science is valuable, in practice, design flood estimation focuses on exceedance probabilities much rarer than annual maximum events, such as the 1 % annual exceedance probability event or even rarer, using rainfall-based procedures, at locations where there are few to no observations of streamflow. Here, we perform a systematic review to summarize the state-of-the-art understanding of the impact of climate change on design flood estimation in the Australian context, while also drawing on international literature. In addition, a meta-analysis, whereby results from multiple studies are combined, is conducted for extreme rainfall to provide quantitative estimates of possible future changes. This information is described in the context of contemporary design flood estimation practice to facilitate the inclusion of climate science into design flood estimation practice.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableRainforest response to glacial terminations before and after human arrival in Lutruwita (Tasmania)(Elsevier BV, 2024-04-01)
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ItemNo Preview AvailableHistorical Agrarian Change and its Connections to Contemporary Agricultural Extension in Northwest Cambodia(ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2024-01-02)This historical overview uses a political ecology approach to examine agricultural change over time in Northwest Cambodia. It focuses on key historical periods, actors, and processes that continue to shape power, land, and farming relations in the region, emphasizing the relevance of this history for contemporary investments in agricultural extension services and research as part of the Zero Hunger by 2030 policy agenda for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Agricultural extension projects need to engage critically with historically complex and dynamic power, land, and farming relations – not only as the basis of social relations but as central to understanding the contemporary manifestation of farmer decision making and practice. Initiatives such as the SDGs replicate long histories of externally driven power-relations that orient benefits from changed practices towards elites in urban centers or distant global actors. Efforts to realize zero hunger by 2030 are endangered by neglect for the path-dependency of powerland-farming relations, which stretch from the past into the present to structure farmer decision making and practices.
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ItemPrecarity, illicit markets, and the 'mystery' of prices(Taylor and Francis Group, 2023)Stand-alone price analysis of illicit opium and coca does not explain why smallholders turn to illicit crops for coping and survival. Under conditions of precarity, illicit crop markets can stimulate productivity. They generate returns that can tame crises and relieve pressures. To smallholders facing marginalisation, violence, and climate change – growing opium and coca, despite their illegality, can reduce or spread risks and provide more predictability. Thus, rather than fix on the ‘invisible hand’ of price theory, the focus should be on the ‘visible hand’ of political entrepreneurship, interdependent relationships, and the metrics of precarity. To do this, this paper retrospectively compares illicit crop prices before and after certain historical moments in Bolivia, Myanmar, Colombia, and Afghanistan.
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ItemCriminal entrepreneurs as pioneers, intermediaries, and arbitrageurs in borderland economies(ELSEVIER, 2021-03)Many discussions of mafia and criminal entrepreneurs typically focus on violence and illegality, and less on their possible roles in rural transformation, even when they are located in borderland economies linking the subsistence cultivators of illicit crops to regional and global markets. This paper assesses the life stories of drug lords, the Castaño brothers of Colombia and Roberto Suárez Gomez of Bolivia, to draw inferences into how such rural elites in the illicit drugs trade are not only specialists in crime but are also actors who regulate and manipulate, often coercively, access to land and resources, mobilise labour and shape its divisions, and promote certain forms of capital accumulation. This paper contends that a better understanding of the roles of these rural elites as pioneers for capital, intermediaries in commodity chains, and arbitrageurs between state and borderlands may provide ways of unpacking key challenges to peacebuilding and economic transformation in borderlands where illicit economies thrive.
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ItemThe paradox of illicit economies: survival, resilience, and the limits of development and drug policy orthodoxy(Taylor and Francis Group, 2020)The illicit drug crops opium and coca are conventionally regarded as sources of instability, an ‘evil’ that breeds fragility and violence. Fragile states are supposed to be most vulnerable to their production and consequent harms. Yet by looking into the local contexts of the world’s leading opium and coca producers – Afghanistan, Myanmar, Colombia and Bolivia – these illicit crops are found to also be sources of stability, even drivers of economic growth. They enable marginalized communities and territories abandoned by the state to be reinserted into national and global markets. Within so-called ‘fragile’ and conflict-affected areas are displaced and dispossessed households adopting innovative and unorthodox strategies for coping and survival in changing and insecure environments. This paper maps out an approach, useful for examining the resilience that has emerged amidst violence and uncertainty in illicit-crop-producing territories, and which can hopefully tackle the continuing disconnect between drugs and development policy.
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ItemLand Reform, Conflict and Local Development on “Grande Terre”(Springer, 2024-04-12)New Caledonia-Kanaky has operated customary and European models of land tenure in parallel for almost 170 years, since the early days of colonisation when francophone governance was imposed to enable settlement, and Kanak populations on prime agricultural were forcibly displaced onto “reserves”. This “historic dualism” has been at the heart of lengthy political discussion and the demands of the Kanak independence movement to reclaim its land and sovereignty. While debates about the development of customary land continue in times of political uncertainty, since the late 1970s re-allocation of land to Kanak clans by the state, latterly through the Agence de développement rural et d’aménagement foncier (ADRAF), has been substantial. We assess this process, offering two examples from the Northern Province where land conflicts remain and where “modern” development has taken place on customary land now controlled by clans, under their stewardship. This partial integration into the market economy has addressed many, but not all, of the problems of “historic dualism”.
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ItemGeographies of New Caledonia-Kanaky(Springer International Publishing, 2024)This open access book provides a unique overview of geographical, historical, political and environmental issues facing the French overseas territory New Caledonia, also called “Kanaky” by the indigenous Kanak people, who outnumber citizens of European and other origin. New Caledonia has seen a long and complex struggle for decolonization, but is still on the United Nations’ list of “Non-Self Governing territories” and there is little sign of change following three referendums on independence and extensive negotiations with France. The archipelago possesses around a quarter of the world’s nickel deposits, giving it additional strategic importance when demand for the mineral is strong. The islands have unique biodiversity, and Caledonian coastal lagoons have been listed as UNESCO world heritage sites since 2008. The book offers detailed insights into the environmental and human geographies of the archipelago, with a focus on the linksbetween environmental protection and extensive mining operations, between political independence struggles and continued wellbeing and economic development, and the differing visions for the future of the islands. This multidisciplinary volume, one of the few to appear in English, appeals to researchers, students and policy makers across the environmental, social and political sciences.