University of MelbourneMelbourne Sustainable Society Institute

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The Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute fosters sustainability research on large public issues, by integrating research expertise from a range of disciplinary perspectives, taking a particular focus on Australia and the Asia-Pacific region. It is a hub for sustainability at the University.

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Melbourne Climate Policy Forum Oct-Dec 09

Melbourne Climate Policy Forum Oct-Dec 09

 A joint initiative of Victoria University, through the Centre for Strategic Economic Studies (CSES) and Carbon Market Economics Pty Ltd (CME).

1. Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change: The Dynamics of Global Action
Thursday 29 October, 5-7pm Professors Roger Jones & Peter Sheehan (CSES)
2. Making Adjustment Payments to Electricity Generators Effective
Thursday 5 November, 5-7pm Mr Bruce Mountain (CME)
3. Australia’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme: Can Carbon Markets Deliver?
Thursday 12 November, 5-7pm Professor Peter Sheehan (CSES) & Mr Rob Jolly (CME)
4. Australia’s Approach to Renewable Electricity Generation
Thursday 19 November, 5-7pm Mr Rob Jolly & Mr Bruce Mountain (CME)
5. The Challenge of Adaptation: Victoria as a Case Study
Thursday 26 November, 5-7pm Professor Roger Jones (CSES)
6. The New Industrial Revolution: Implications for Australia and Victoria
Thursday 3 December, 5-7pm Professor Peter Sheehan & Dr Kim Sweeny (CSES)

VENUE: Victoria University City Campus - Level 11, Room 1101, 300 Flinders St, Melbourne
RSVP: Attendance is free but please register by sending the number of the briefing you wish to attend, plus your contact details to Nupur Sethia by phone on 03 9919 1340 or by email to nupur.sethia@vu.edu.au
 
Please click on the pdf link below for full details.
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Public symposium: Our Governments’ Response to Climate Change

Public symposium: Our Governments’ Response to Climate Change

Hamer Oration on Good Government

A public symposium - 'Fiddling While Australia Burns: Will this be History's Judgement of Our Governments' Response to Climate Change?'

TIME & DATE: 6.00pm (for 6.30pm), Tuesday 24th November 2009
VENUE: Copland Theatre, Economics and Commerce Building (Building 148), University of Melbourne [click here for map]

SPEAKERS:
Professor David Karoly - ARC Federation Fellow, Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne
Ms Amanda McKenzie - National Director of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition
Mr Tim Colebatch - Economics Editor of The Age newspaper

This event is free, but please book as this will assist with catering.
RSVP to Dr Lauren Rosewarne
lrose@unimelb.edu.au
03 8344 6820

For more information, please download the flyer below:

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Deakin Lecture: Shaping the Low Carbon Economy

Deakin Lecture: Shaping the Low Carbon Economy

The Alfred Deakin Eco-Innovation Lectures

Presented by The University of Melbourne, VEIL, Sustainability Victoria, Design Victoria, City Of Melbourne, and the British Council.

Shaping the Low Carbon Economy - New Agencies, New Business

                                        
SPEAKER: Peter Madden - CEO Forum For The Future (UK)
VENUE: BMW Edge at Federation Square, Melbourne
TIME & DATE: 12.00-1.00pm Monday 9 November 2009
COST: Free, but please register.

To register, click here.

To read more, click here or download the pdf document below.

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Symposium - Collaborative Approaches to Natural Resource Management

Symposium - Collaborative Approaches to Natural Resource Management
On Wednesday 25th November, The Centre for Public Policy will be hosting a day-long symposium on the topic of Collaborative approaches to natural resource management.

This event will feature three leading experts including: Associate Professor Edella Schlager (Arizona University), Dr Graham Marshall (University of New England) and Andreas Ernst (Kassel University, Germany).

Environmental issues, from climate change to water catchment management to the devastation wreaked by bushfires, tsunamis and hurricanes, are crucial issues for governments around the world. There is a growing need to find novel ways to deal more effectively with these issues using collaborative approaches. This symposium brings together local and international experts on this topic to describe contemporary research on collaborative approaches to natural resource management, and to discuss ways forward in meeting the governing challenges related to these issues.

This one day event will be of interest to anyone concerned with environmental issues, and specifically to those working in policy development and service delivery, and to public policy researchers.

For more information or to download a registration form, please visit: http://www.public-policy.unimelb.edu.au/events/colloborative_approaches.html

ARCUE research publicised on BBC Earth News

ARCUE research publicised on BBC Earth News
Researchers from the Australian Research Centre on Urban Ecology (ARCUE) - Department of Botany in conjunction with the Royal Melbourne Botanic Gardens - and international collaborators compared extinction rates of plants within 22 cities around the world.

Their findings were picked up by the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8295000/8295738.stm

Unless more is done to intervene, the researchers expect Melbourne to lose more than half its 1200 original plant species over the next 100 years. If you are interested in the original article published in the journal Ecology Letters please contact us.

GCALL, Natopia - Community Garden Toolkit

GCALL, Natopia - Community Garden Toolkit
As an interdisciplinary institution Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute (MSSI) is interested in all intitiatives that encourage interdisciplinary thought and research. It is for this reason that MSSI is involved with the Graduate Certficate in Advanced Learning and Leadership (GCALL) run by the University’s Melbourne Graduate School of Research.

For 2009 MSSI and MGSE came together create the theme for the Futures Projects: Sustainable Communities. One of these projects, Natopia, is a great case study on sustainability, community and interdisciplinarity.

Please click on the file link below to download the report by Liam Connell, Virginie Tassin, and Lenka Vodstrcil.
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Call for papers - Sociology of Food and Eating

Call for papers - Sociology of Food and Eating

Journal of Sociology: A special issue on Sociology of Food and Eating, to be published December 2010

Guest Editors: Paul Ward, John Coveney and Julie Henderson Discipline of Public Health, Flinders University, SA.

Key contemporary sociological issues in the Special Issue may relate, but are not restricted, to governmentality (and critiques of neoliberalism), identity, consumerism, theories of trust and risk, gender, reflexive modernisation, and social systems theory.

Papers are being sought in the following areas:
• Food choice and identity
• Food 'choice' for Indigenous Australians
• Trust in the food supply and dietary information
• Consumerism and morality within high modernity
• Healthism and food consumption
• Governance of food and eating

Deadline for abstracts: 2 November 2009
Email to: Trish.Clark@flinders.edu.au

Deadline for submission of full papers (7,000 words max): 15th February 2010

Enquiries: Paul.Ward@flinders.edu.au

Job Opportunity: Coordinator, The Victorian Food Policy Coalition

Job Opportunity: Coordinator, The Victorian Food Policy Coalition
The Victorian Food Policy Coalition seeks a Coordinator to take an energetic role in managing the operations of the Coalition, providing resources to a growing community movement, analysing food policy and advocating for change.

See Position 90389 at http://www.deakin.edu.au/hr/employment/academic.php

University leads partnership to cut greenhouse emissions

University leads partnership to cut greenhouse emissions
The University of Melbourne in collaboration with Monash University and RMIT University and Fujitsu Australia have entered into a collaborative venture to develop a shared data centre.

This data centre, launched on 7 october, will make a significant contribution to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by storing data from the three institutions at one site, instead of at multiple smaller sites. It will cut energy use through improved design and use of the latest energy efficient technology.

Greenhouse gas emissions from the ICT sector are forecast to increase from 2 per cent in 2009 to 6 per cent by 2020 as a proportion of global total emissions, according to Fujitsu’s research report “Green ICT: The State of the Nation”.

For the full story, visit the MUSSE Newsletter.

Survey: NCCARF Adaptive Capacity Synthesis Project

Survey: NCCARF Adaptive Capacity Synthesis Project

This survey by the Australian National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF) is being conducted to assess the nature and utility of adaptive capacity research in relation to climate change. Please go here to complete the NCCARF survey.



The survey takes less than 10 minutes to complete. Your identity will be kept anonymous. The results will be reported to NCCARF as well as published in the near future. The survey is being conducted by the University of the Sunshine Coast and is funded by NCCARF as a Synthesis Project. Your participation in the survey is greatly appreciated. If you have any queries please contact Dr. Phillip Daffara at pdaffara@usc.edu.au

Media Release: Victoria Takes the Lead on Climate Change Adaptation

Media Release: Victoria Takes the Lead on Climate Change Adaptation

Wednesday, 16 September, 2009

To read about the Victorian Centre for Climate Change Adaptation Research, click on the pdf link below.

Media contact: Lyall Johnson on 9651 5799 or 0400 422 142  www.premier.vic.gov.au

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Story: Webpage on climate change links University

Story: Webpage on climate change links University

MUSSE (Melbourne University Staff/Student E-news), the monthly newsletter for staff and students, is featuring MSSI's Climate Change Research website in its latest online edition.

                           Associate Professor Jon Barnett, climate change researcher.

 Please click here to read the article: http://blogs.unimelb.edu.au/musse/?p=2249

And click here to visit MSSI's Climate Change website: http://www.climatechange.unimelb.edu.au

Bill McKibben - 350: The Most Important Number in the World

Bill McKibben - 350: The Most Important Number in the World

Renowned American environmental author and activist, Bill McKibben, recently visited the University of Melbourne to deliver a public lecture before a packed audience at the Prince Philip Theatre.

During his visit to Australia, Bill also spoke as a guest of Sydney Ideas, The University of Sydney. As he did in Melbourne, he promoted the '350.org' global campaign to reach an upper limit of 350 parts per million of CO2 in our atmosphere. The following video podcast, filmed on 6 May 2009, was produced by the ABC as a 'Fora TV' programme.

LINK: http://www.usyd.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2009/350_most_important_number.shtml
DOWNLOAD:
Click here. 253.9Mb, 82 Min 27 Sec, MP4 Format

Robyn Eckersley: Time to take the lead

Robyn Eckersley: Time to take the lead
Australia, with its abundance of energy sources, has no excuse for political inaction.

 

This opinion piece appeared in The Age newspaper on Thursday 28 May 2009.
Please click here for the link to this piece on Australia's response to climate change and the upcoming Copenhagen Climate Conference.

Professor Robyn Eckersley is Head of Political Science at the University of Melbourne and a member of the Climate Change Research Group at the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute.

The Costs of Climate Change - slides from our public lecture

The Costs of Climate Change - slides from our public lecture

Recently, the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute (MSSI) and the Office for Environmental Programs (OEP), in association with the Victorian Government’s Department of Sustainability and Environment, hosted a public lecture on 'The Costs of Climate Change'.

Here are pdf files of the slides used by our guest speakers, by kind permission. Please click on their names for the files.
                                              
           Dr Hans-Martin Fuessel                                    Dr Samuel Fankhauser
           Senior Research Fellow                                   Senior Research Associate
           Potsdam Institute                                           Grantham Research Institute
           for Climate Impact Research                            on Climate Change, LSE

Our discussant for this event was Ms Rebecca McNaught, Senior Programme Officer for the Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre.

Please visit the Climate Centre website for information about its activities.

Ross Garnaut: Everyone must do their bit

Ross Garnaut: Everyone must do their bit

Professor Ross Garnaut, Vice-Chancellor's Fellow at the University of Melbourne, discusses the 'diabolical policy problem' of mitigating climate change and the problem of 'free riding'. This opinion piece was published in The Age on June 25, 2009.

Please click on this link for the full article: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/everyone-must-do-their-bit-20090624-cwp...

Dreamlarge Knowledge Transfer Excellence Award: Prof Ruth Fincher

Dreamlarge Knowledge Transfer Excellence Award: Prof Ruth Fincher
Professor Ruth Fincher from the Department of Resource Management and Geography, has been awarded a staff Dreamlarge Knowledge Transfer Excellence Award.

This award is for Professor Fincher’s leadership in the project ‘Transnational and Temporary: students, community and place-making in central Melbourne.’ (2009)

For further information on the project visit: http://www.transnationalandtemporary.com.au

To download a summary of the report, or the full version, click below:
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Go8 European Fellowship: how do plants live with pollution?

Go8 European Fellowship: how do plants live with pollution?
Dr Klaudia Borowiak from the Poznan University of Life Sciences will be a visitor to the University until January 2010.

Klaudia is on a Go8 European Fellowship, and her key interests are:
• What aspects of plant physiology defend it from stress?
• How does this work together with pollution tolerance?

She will be working with A/Prof Michael Tausz and the Ecophysiology and Ecosystem Processes group at the Melbourne School of Land and Environment’s Creswick campus.

Driving the world to a better place

Driving the world to a better place
Ending the world’s dependence on oil is becoming more and more important for both the environment and economy as we approach "peak oil". Electric vehicles are one solution, and the University of Melbourne is exploring the political, social and environmental impact of this through a partnership with Better Place Australia.

In this episode of the University's Visions series, Director of the Melbourne Materials Institute (MMI), Professor Steven Prawer, discusses the advantages of electric vehicles.

For more information on the venture, visit the MMI website and The Melbourne Newsroom.
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