School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences - Research Publications

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Transgressive Capabilities: Skill Development and Social Disruption in Rural India

Brown, T ; Ali, SS (ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2022-05-04)

Under what conditions might the acquisition of new skills challenge discriminatory social norms? We interrogate this question through reference to a study on the social impacts of an agricultural skill development scheme in rural India. We present detailed vignettes drawn from this study, which illustrate the social consequences of acquiring and utilizing skills that transgress local gender and caste norms. Engaging with themes from capabilities theory, we highlight how, although not all skills are transgressive, for some, acquiring “transgressive skills” not only enhanced life opportunities for themselves, but also did so for others within their communities. The form of their transgressions and their social consequences varied, however, based on their relative privilege and the operation of place-specific social norms and systems of oppression. We argue that transgressive skills might drive progressive social change, but distinguish between two types of transgression. Individual, brash, heroic transgressions against the status quo are more accessible to the relatively privileged, whereas marginalized people are more likely to engage in nested transgressions, which form part of long-term, collective struggles for empowerment. The latter, although often overlooked, might offer sustainable pathways to progressive change that reflect local aspirations.
Hath se sikhna: geographies of practical learning and India's agricultural skills agenda

Brown, T (ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2022-05-30)

A significant challenge of skill development in the Global South is providing meaningful opportunities for practical learning. While previous studies have explored this as a pedagogical challenge, in this paper, I take a geographical perspective, arguing the barriers to practical learning extend beyond pedagogy and often relate to socio-economic conditions. I draw on a study of a new agricultural skill development scheme in the states of Punjab and Himachal Pradesh in north India. Trainees enrolled in the scheme expressed strong desires for opportunities to ‘learn by hand’ (hāth se sīkhna), which training rarely provided and which were often availed in informal settings. The extent to which trainees found useful practical learning opportunities varied based on gender, caste and locality. Drawing on theories of communities of practice, I argue that the desired practical learning was marred not only by the inability or unwillingness of trainers to provide practical classes, but also by regionally specific factors, such as administrative constraints, local agrarian structure and regional patriarchies. This suggests that coordinating effective forms of practical learning requires regional-level strategies that are attentive to social and economic context.
Skill ecosystems in the global South: Informality, inequality, and community setting

Brown, T (Elsevier BV, 2022-06-01)

The concept of ‘skill ecosystems’ considers how contextual and institutional factors shape the acquisition and utilisation of skills. Although initially developed in the global North, there is value in applying this concept in the global South, where large-scale skill development and vocational education reforms are underway, many of which struggle with post-training skill underutilisation. The concept requires modification, however, if it is to be meaningfully applied in the global South. To date, skill ecosystem research has focused on skill utilisation in contexts of formal employment and the institutional actors who support it. In the global South, where most people are employed in the informal sector, a different approach is required, more sensitive to regional power structures and social inequalities. Geographical research on skills can help develop a more dynamic, relational, and power-inflected version of the skill ecosystem concept. Drawing on a short-term longitudinal study of agricultural skills trainings in India, this paper argues a geographically sensitive skill ecosystems perspective helps identify how context shapes the outcomes of skill development programs. To be meaningfully deployed in relation to informal sector work in the global South, however, it must be extended in at least three ways: (1) a different set of institutions and actors must be recognized as comprising the ‘ecosystem,’ particularly those supporting entrepreneurship; (2) the community and family settings in which informal sector work takes place must be recognized; and (3) social inequalities must be considered to promote greater skill utilisation and more equitable outcomes.
The Broker: Inequality, Loss and the PNG LNG Project

Minnegal, M ; Dwyer, P ; Beer, B ; Schwoerer, T (ANU Press, 2022)

In this chapter, we trace processes and consequences associated with one man’s ventures into those new worlds, and the shifting motivations and mechanisms that framed his journey. Bob Resa has played a crucial role in brokering relationships between Febi and Kubo people from tributary watersheds of the upper Strickland River (Western Province) and others who, it seems, control access to the possible futures that those people now imagine for themselves.
Variable exhumation history between the central and eastern Xigaze fore-arc basin, south Tibet: Implications for underthrusting Indian slab dynamics

Ma, Z ; Li, G ; Xu, Z ; Kohn, B ; Zheng, Y (WILEY, 2021-04-07)
High resolution images from an 1890 Cloud Atlas

Bye, J (Wiley, 2021-01-01)
Editorial

White, R (Wiley, 2021-01-01)
Introducing long-term trends into subseasonal temperature forecasts through trend-aware postprocessing

Shao, Y ; Wang, QJ ; Schepen, A ; Ryu, D (WILEY, 2022-01-06)

Skilful subseasonal forecasts are crucial for issuing early warnings of extreme weather events, such as heatwaves and floods. Operational subseasonal climate forecasts are often produced by global climate models not dissimilar to seasonal forecast models, which typically fail to reproduce observed temperature trends. In this study, we identify that the same issue exists in the subseasonal forecasting system. Subsequently, we adapt a trend-aware forecast postprocessing method, previously developed for seasonal forecasts, to calibrate and correct the trend in subseasonal forecasts. We modify the method to embed 30-year climate trends into the calibrated forecasts even when the available hindcast period is shorter. The use of 30-year trends is to robustly represent long-term climate changes and overcome the problem that trends inferred from a shorter period may be subject to large sampling variability. Calibration is applied to 20-year ECMWF subseasonal forecasts and AWAP observations of Australian minimum and maximum temperatures with forecast horizons of up to 4 weeks. Relative to day-of-year climatology, raw week-1 forecasts reproduce temperature trends of the 20-year observations in many regions while raw week-4 forecasts do not exhibit the 20-year observed trends. After trend-aware postprocessing, the behaviour of forecast trends is related to raw forecast skill regarding accuracy. Calibrated week-1 forecasts show apparent trends consistent with the 20-year observations, as the calibration transfers forecast skill and embeds the 20-year observed trends into the forecasts when raw forecasts are inherently skilful. In contrast, calibrated week-4 forecasts exhibit the 30-year observed trends, as the calibration reverts the forecasts to the 30-year observed climatology with trends when raw forecasts have little skill. For both weeks, the trend-aware calibrated forecasts are more reliable, and as skilful as or more skilful than raw forecasts. The extended trend-aware method can be applied to deliver high-quality subseasonal forecasts and support decision-making in a changing climate.
Existing fossil fuel extraction would warm the world beyond 1.5 degrees C

Trout, K ; Muttitt, G ; Lafleur, D ; Van de Graaf, T ; Mendelevitch, R ; Mei, L ; Meinshausen, M (IOP Publishing Ltd, 2022-06-01)

Abstract The Paris climate goals and the Glasgow Climate Pact require anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to decline to net zero by mid-century. This will require overcoming carbon lock-in throughout the energy system. Previous studies have focused on ‘committed emissions’ from capital investments in energy-consuming infrastructure, or potential (committed and uncommitted) emissions from fossil fuel reserves. Here we make the first bottom-up assessment of committed CO2 emissions from fossil fuel-producing infrastructure, defined as existing and under-construction oil and gas fields and coal mines. We use a commercial model of the world’s 25 000 oil and gas fields and build a new dataset on coal mines in the nine largest coal-producing countries. Our central estimate of committed emissions is 936 Gt CO2, comprising 47% from coal, 35% from oil and 18% from gas. We find that staying within a 1.5 °C carbon budget (50% probability) implies leaving almost 40% of ‘developed reserves’ of fossil fuels unextracted. The finding that developed reserves substantially exceed the 1.5 °C carbon budget is robust to a Monte Carlo analysis of reserves data limitations, carbon budget uncertainties and oil prices. This study contributes to growing scholarship on the relevance of fossil fuel supply to climate mitigation. Going beyond recent warnings by the International Energy Agency, our results suggest that staying below 1.5 °C may require governments and companies not only to cease licensing and development of new fields and mines, but also to prematurely decommission a significant portion of those already developed.
Early diagenetic constraints on Permian seawater chemistry from the Capitan Reef

Bryant, RN ; Present, TM ; Ahm, ASC ; McClelland, HLO ; Razionale, D ; Blättler, CL (Elsevier BV, 2022-07-01)