Ablaze Zine Issue 1 by Ablaze Zine

REF ERE NCES All article references are available on our website.

EDITORS

HEAD EDITORS

Louisa Russell & Tilly Doran

DESIGN TEAM Head: Lily Di Sciascio Layout Design: Lily Di Sciascio (lildsas@gmail.com) Dawn Liu (xiaolinngliu@gmail.com) Graphics: Abbie Whitton (amwhitton44@gmail.com) Steve Lo Casto (www.studiolocasto.com)

CREATIVE NON-FICTION Scan the link to access the reference lists. All articles have gone through an editing process to ensure factual integrity.

Head: Noa Abrahams Edwina Jackson Isabelle McConaghy Jamisyn Gleeson Maddison Moore Louisa Russell

NON-FICTION Head: Ruby Craven Caitlin Ward Louisa Sheridan Mahalah Mullins Max Lowman Meera Sivasubramanian Nina McLean Tilly Doran

ART + PHOTOGRAPHY Head: Finley Tobin Caitlin Ward Danielle Mallon Louisa Sheridan

06 09 013 017 020 026 030 033 037 040 044 049 050 054 058 060 062 067 070 074 076 082 084 088 090

CONTENTS

Climate Adaption + Indigenous Knowledges Jemma Bryce Altered Carbon Willow Culbert The Climate Crisis Is Affecting Everyone Worldwide Nina McLean The Cost of Cotton Kate Fleming Bin Diving Caitlin Ward How Australia Is Cheating Its Paris Agreement Targets Conrad Linder Black Summer Adelle Xue Who Inherits the Earth? Mariam Nadeem Khan Ecological Thinking as a Response to Climate Change Toby McCarney The Age of Activism Jamisyn Gleeson What is a Story Without a Setting? Emma von Bardeleben What’s the Deal with our Politicians? Jack McMahon Playgrounds Can Be More Than Just Child’s Play Isabelle McConaghy The Menstrual Cup Edwina Jackson Climate Stories Katherine Doherty “History” Darcy Brumpton Has the Environmental Movement Inhibited the Voices that Need to Be Empowered? Jay COVID-19, Recovery, Opportunity Max Lowman Climate Change and the Risk of Pandemics Caitlin Ward H’mong Children by Incinerator Amanda Reid Shifting the Overton Window Noa Abrahams Consumerism Ibrahim Kamit COVID-19 + Climate Activism Meera Sivasubramanian + Finley Tobin Cultural Burning for Carbon Abatement: A Viable Option? Louisa Sheridan SOS Bethany Cherry

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University of Melborune Student Union Environment Department

DEAR ABLAZE READERS Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, along with other First Nations people around the world, stand at the forefront of the climate and wider environmental movement. We acknowledge that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people maintain an intimate connection with the environment, and that the strength and sustainability of this relationship has allowed it to endure for thousands of years, even throughout the atrocities committed against these people and the Earth. And so we thank these Traditional Custodians for their protection of the land and waters on which we live, work, and depend, and we pay our deepest respects to their Elders, past, present, and future. In her essay, Indigenous Prophecy and Mother Earth, Sherri Mitchell Weh’na Ha’mu Kwasset writes ‘Racist ideologies are not only responsible for the aberrant social thinking that led to the exploitation of Indigenous peoples. They are also responsible for the creation of a racially exclusive framework that has bolstered colonial scholarship and relegated Indigenous knowledge to obscurity.’ Two of our essential intentions for Ablaze relate to this issue. Firstly, we want Ablaze to accelerate recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge as rich and immensely valuable. This knowledge is based on thousands of years of observations and interactions. It is far older than the dominant scientific paradigm, yet far too often ignored. In addition, we are committed to ensuring that Ablaze acts to amplify Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices in the mainstream climate conversation. We hope to do so, not only as an act of reconciliation, but because the world-centred, holistic frame practiced by Indigenous people must replace the reductionist, categorical frame of Western

thought if we are to rescue the Earth from the climate crisis. Society, the environmental movement, and the climate conversation is held back by this dismissal of Indigenous, and other voices- women, people of colour, the disabled, LGBTQIA+ people, the elderly, and the poor. Power and voice belong to only a select few and the climate movement suffers as a result of this homogenisation. It suffocates our access to knowledge, ideas, creativity, and perspectives when it is diversity that we require to solve the problem at hand. The current system is self-harming, it hinders its own intelligence, abilities and achievements. Flooded islands, hurricane-stripped cities, and communities turned to ash are a testimony to this. We know that addressing the climate crisis necessitates diversity, this truth is proclaimed by the world around us. Like diversity is key to the health of an ecosystem, diversity is key to the health of society, and the health of this movement. And so, another aim of Ablaze is to contribute to the diversification of the climate conversation, to seek and relay a wider spectrum of perspectives than those which have traditionally been heard. Finally, we want to speak on the tinder for Ablaze, the Australian bushfires of the 20192020 summer. At this time, the term ‘new normal’ was commonplace in conversation. It was devastating to think that every summer from here on out, we would be plagued by fear regarding the safety of our communities, kept inside by toxic air, and deprived of witnessing the intensely rugged, ethereal, and unique beauty of our country by impenetrable smoke. Just weeks later however, we were forced into a new, ‘new normal’, the COVID-19 pandemic. It was jarring. It seemed rude that fate, nature, God, whatever controlling force you believe in, had thrown another lifechanging event our way when we hadn’t yet adapted to the old ‘new normal’. In competition with this frustration, were our feelings of amazement. Mass change unfolded before our

eyes. It was the degree of change we knew was necessary to combat the climate crisis, change previously considered impossible. Before these events and within our increasingly polarised context, we had forgotten that our species is evolutionarily hardwired to act in the interest of each other, to cooperate in pursuit of a common purpose. The bushfires and the pandemic are tragic in many respects, but the change we have seen as a result serves as a reminder and a reason to persevere at a critical time for climate action. It was with this energy that we started Ablaze. Curbing climate change will require the same level of cooperation we have witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic. It will require compromise from both sides of politics and the implementation of policies that will lead to a redistribution of economic capital and jobs. That is to say, addressing climate change will generate opportunities. It is important to consider how these opportunities are distributed, and continuously critically analyse the ways in which these decisions are made. We want Ablaze to be a space for this kind of critique. We also want Ablaze to remedy some of the climate anxiety faced by many; to communicate the sense of hope that continues to drive the environmental movement and the good work being done by so many. Keep in mind that we will not be perfect and we ask that you assume good intentions. We will always look to be better: we embrace criticism, we strive for transparency, we welcome dynamicity, we desire challenge and we crave dialogue. With all that said, welcome to our first edition! Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re so happy that youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re here, and we hope that you continue to engage with us in the future, whether that be as a reader, a contributor, a team member, or as part of the community we envision will evolve.

LOUISA & TILLY

CLIMATE ADAPTION + INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGES It is time to listen by Jemma Bryce Aboriginal people have created flourishing terrains through their use of Traditional Ecological Knowledge for thousands of years. A shift in both human consciousness and practice is required to strengthen humanity’s relationship with country and adapt to fluctuations within the environment. Traditional Ecological Knowledge of the Indigenous people goes beyond science, academia and technology. It is a deep connection that has evolved over generations and can never be truly understood. There is a bond between the people and the land that is integral to Aboriginal existence (Stevens, 1997). This relationship, spanning over 60,000 years, involves environmental management, kinship with nature, a strong culture of ceremony, history and complex ecological knowledge (McGregor et al., 2010). Traditional Ecological Knowledge can be defined as a collective of knowledge, practices and values regarding the interactions between the natural environment, humans and animals. These sacred practices are handed down through generations (Dudgeon & Berkes, 2003). Aboriginal people are custodians of the land; it is understood, named, celebrated, danced, painted, and cared for, as the land cares for the people living upon it (Rose, Commission, & Rose, 1996). The country is life for Aboriginal people and a well-nourished country is one

where all elements work together as one (Rose et al., 1996). Increased recognition by non-Indigenous people of the deep spiritual value of the land could shift humanity’s relationship with the natural environment. Such an understanding encourages humans to work with the land rather than on it, and subsequently increases our ability to adapt to the issues surrounding climate change. Tony Birch’s novel, Climate Change, Recognition and Caring for Country, proposes that a change in consciousness is required to increase humankind’s capacity to adapt to climate change (Birch, 2016). Tony believes that through the adoption of Traditional Ecological Knowledge, non-Indigenous Australians can elicit an acceptance of, and a subsequent ability to embrace, the realities of living on Indigenous country (Birch, 2016). Furthermore, disciplines from anthropological and ethnobiological research have found that Traditional Ecological Knowledge acts to sustain biodiversity and ecosystems, improves livelihoods, and builds resilience in social economic systems (GómezBaggethun, Corbera, & Reyes-García, 2013). A great deal can be learnt from Aboriginal people’s methods of managing the land, and from their overarching knowledge of its resources and requirements (Rose et al., 1996). This has been

demonstrated in the Savanna Landscape, located in Northern Australia, where Traditional Ecological Knowledge is used to manage and monitor vital cultural and natural resources. As a result, there has been a dramatic enrichment of biodiversity (McGregor et al., 2010). These practices also provide models for how Traditional Ecological Knowledge can be adapted to manage climate change. Kakadu National Park, situated in the Northern Territory, is recognised as Aboriginal-owned land belonging to the Gagudju Traditional Owners. Savanna woodland covers 70% of the park (Stevens, 1997) and these Kakadu soils are home to extraordinary plant and animal life, food plains, freshwater grasslands, paperbark swamps and mangrove systems (McGregor et al., 2010). Recent studies have concluded that Aboriginal burning practices are directly responsible for the development of the species-rich Savanna forest, as prior to the practice of such burning, there is no evidence of rainforest across Northern Australia (Rose et al., 1996). All over Australia, Aboriginal people describe their burning practices as ‘cleaning up the country’ (Rose et al., 1996). For many Australian plants, fire is an essential part of their lifecycle; vegetation and animals alike are dependent upon the effects of fire. Aboriginal burning practices involve patch-burning with low intensity fires over a number of years to create a mosaic of habitats (Rose et al., 1996). These practices consider the annual hydrological cycle of the rainforest. During the wet season, grass and sedge plains are covered by floodwaters, billabongs and swamps. During the dry season, these areas gradually dry out and are reshaped into extensive areas of bare cracking clays. It is here where floodplain burnings take place at the end of the season. Such rituals were driven by variation in timing and seasons (McGregor et al., 2010). These fire management practices improve the availability and accessibility of essential food resources and maintain a population of favoured prey (McGregor et al., 2010). The spoken understanding of such detailed and complex wetland health is passed down through generations of Indigenous owners. Thus, Aboriginal perspectives on cultural and natural resource management are honed over generations of experimentation and through intimate interaction with the landscape (McGregor et al., 2010). The patterns of burning are essential to maintaining the food chain; areas burnt early provide early hunting and foraging grounds for both people and animals, whilst trees burnt early provide earlier fruiting (Rose et al., 1996). Aboriginal people understood and worshipped fire, they worked with it rather than against it. Integration of Indigenous knowledge systems with Western technology has the potential to achieve positive outcomes for both traditional resource use and the conservation of biodiversity (McGregor et al., 2010). Indigenous knowledge refers to systems of monitoring, recording, communicating and learning about the deep relationships between humanity, plants and animals and the landscape’s natural systems that are essential to thrive and survive (Whyte, 2017). When the first European settlers arrived, they did not view Australia as a managed ecosystem, but rather as a potentially hostile environment that needed to be tamed (Stevens, 1997). Prior to settlement there was no pollution or erosion, rivers were crystal clear, there was no runoff in the Great Barrier Reef. Australia’s plains, bush country and rainforests had

never suffered from infestation of pigs, goats and rabbits, nor had native species been overrun by introduced weeds. Containers were made of shells and wood, there were no plastic bottles or coke cans. The only greenhouse effect was the changing colour of leaves (Stevens, 1997). The underdeveloped regions of Northern Australia, in particular, Indigenous lands, have committed to substantial cuts in greenhouse gas emissions through a natural trading system that respects the country and its vulnerability (Whitehead et al., 2008). If only national policies adequately acknowledged the potential of Traditional Ecological Knowledge, it could be used to significantly mitigate greenhouse gas emissions (Whitehead et al., 2008). In their fourth assessment report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) noted the importance of Traditional Ecological Knowledge in addressing climate change, stating that it was ‘an invaluable basis for developing adaptation and natural resource management strategies in response to environmental and other forms of change’ (Laltaika & Faida, 2013). Nevertheless, such knowledge falls outside the peer-reviewed academic forums and so was unable to be accessed by the IPCC for their official report (Laltaika & Faida, 2013). It is evident how the limited representation of Indigenous knowledge at an institutional level drives the profound significance of applying such information and practices on a global scale into the shadows (Laltaika & Faida, 2013). A shift in consciousness is essential to increase humankind’s capacity to adapt to climate change and to accept the importance of traditional Indigenous practices in climate change mitigation. Climate assessment approaches are heavily influenced by Western scientific frameworks that analyse the impacts of climate change upon the environment. The incorporation of Traditional Ecological Knowledge has the potential to inform various aspects of climate change assessment (Laltaika & Faida,

2013). Both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians must work and learn together to adopt a proposal that makes ethical, intellectual and common sense (Birch, 2016). In doing so, it is important to recognise the differences in cultural values between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people to reach a mutual understanding of land management. Living together in the world depends on communication - listening and speaking with an attitude of attentiveness and respect (Rose et al., 1996). Acknowledgement of Indigenous structures of governance and the equal distribution of power must be made in policy and partnerships to create an effective governing institution (Nursey-Bray et al., 2019). Such an approach will create a more fair and honest relationship between knowledge and power of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. Furthermore, collective action against climate change can increase humanity’s capacity to adapt. Traditional Ecological Knowledge of Indigenous people refers not only to their centuries-old practice of caring for country, but the deep-rooted connection and mutual understanding the people have with the environment’s natural systems. Humans must strengthen the link between themselves and the environment. They must recognise themselves as a part of the environment’s systems, as well as respond and adapt to its changes. Traditional Ecological Knowledge provides an invaluable approach to climate assessment and adaption; one where Indigenous and non-Indigenous people work together to strengthen humanity’s resilience and response to global environmental change. Recognition of the importance of Tradition Ecological Knowledge by those in power could lead to a substantial increase in humanity’s capacity to adapt to environmental change.

altered carbon by Willow Culbert

Raindrops hung from the eucalypt leaves. Scintillating, the bush full of tiny chandeliers. Last July in the Otway Ranges National Park, after a cold and cramped drive, I was eager to stretch my legs. That specific morning volunteered a moment of great joy! At about chest height sat a koala so well-integrated to the wide fork of the tree that I had to double take. Nestled in on itself, grizzled grey and scraggly from the rain. I could have touched it. I didn’t. But I took some photos. We wandered amongst blue gums, mountain ash and bracken ferns. Inhaling each moment, the crisp mountain air. Deep into my brain as oxygen, or perhaps you’d call it memory, fuelling myself for future days amid the concrete jungle. Later, I read some articles from the ABC and Otway Ranges Environment Network (2008) which revealed that logging of the Great Otway National Park was only banned in 2008. Like much native forest logged in Australia, the Great Otway National Park had suffered great biodiversity threats, and as the only high-rainfall tall forest in Australia, it held particularly high conservation significance. Yet it was logged, predominantly for woodchips. Before 2008, the towering stands that I walked through last

year would’ve become Kleenex tissues. The Otway National Park is now free of logging and once again boasts a thriving koala population - biodiversity is bouncing back. Not all native forests are so lucky. Since colonisation, up to 40% of Australia’s forests have been lost due to logging (Bradshaw, 2012). State-owned companies harvest timber from two sources: radiata pine and blue gum, or native old growth forest. The former produces a more environmentally viable product but needs to be grown and maintained. The latter is ‘public’ land and can be logged, essentially, for free. Logging of native forest that occurs on public land is exempt from the Commonwealth environmental laws (Jelinek 2019), also known as the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act of 1999. Instead, VicForests operates under Victoria’s Regional Forest Agreements (RFAs), bilateral agreements between the state and federal governments (Cox 2020). It was revealed in 2018 by the ABC that widespread illegal logging throughout Victoria had occurred in state forests not owned by VicForests (Slezak 2019). These were acts of brazen theft. And how was this action

reprimanded? It wasn’t. After the Victorian government changed the laws that supplied the initial loophole, supposedly making it difficult to lay prosecutions against the (state-owned) VicForests, instead of punishment, they received a pay out! For the indiscriminate violations of environmental regulations, VicForests received some $4.8 million, amounting to more than double their 2018-19 profits (Slezak 2019). A conflict of interest perhaps? Between 1998 and 2018, some 161 million cubic meters of native forest was logged (Lindenmayer et al. 2020). In both Victoria and Tasmania, logging is well established, coming in as the fourth largest Tasmanian industry and contributing as much as half a billion dollars to the local economy. From this perspective, logging provides jobs, and people need toilet paper and the ability to print resumes. However, the concealed figures tell a much darker tale. Of all the native hardwood timber logged in Victoria, only fourteen percent is used for purposes such as construction of homes or furniture. The remainder is processed into items with short life cycles – pallets, woodchips, pulp – and which ultimately end up in landfill (Lindenmayer & Taylor, 2019). Many of my childhood recollections are intertwined with a love of sylvan adventure, from South Australia’s needled Kuitpo Forest to the far north of NSW. There, amongst coastal reserves and subtropic National Parks, the crunch and scrape of forest underfoot was lit by spangled light. Something always caught my eye. This fascination and deep appreciation has continued into adulthood, like last year in May. 150 million years old. I stood and looked around. Green. A deep fantasy emerald, Tolkienesque, complemented by icy streams and stippled light. Standing in the Tarkine, in the wild north-west of Tasmania, felt like stepping back in time. Steeped in such deep history that not only the trees –their tresses of pale mosses, lichens and the occasional vermillion fungi burst – but the very atmosphere felt ancient. Still. The trees reached up eighty metres, primordial sentinels. The tallest flowering plants on the planet. It’s difficult to describe the feeling of walking amongst these Gondwanan giants, one of the final remnants of a time before humans. It inspires a sense of awe, sorrow, and uncertainty for the future. There’s something about being engulfed by the beauty of the natural world. Silence is demanded. The mind quietens its constant self-chatter. Eyes and ears and brain consumed by the pure act of observation. One observation that stuck was that logging native forests, to put it bluntly, is a bad idea. When native forest is logged, especially if the method is clear fell cable logging, like most operations in Tasmania and Victoria, the ramifications are immense. With this process, all mature trees are lopped, stripped of branches, leaves, bark and removed from the forested area. The subsequent lack of mature trees has a flow on effect. Firstly, the wetter understory of ferns, shrubs, and mosses dehydrate due to lack of shade. Evaporation, combined with lower precipitation rates, leads to an overall drying effect (Bowd et al 2019). This can be particularly detrimental to rainforest or temperate areas, such as the Otway’s. The desiccation of the forest leads to a loss of nutrients, as the insect populations have no suitable habitat to commence nutrient cycling and the soil remains in a depleted state (Bowd et al. 2019). Drier soils lead to silt run-off, which goes on to impact local water quality. Not only the flora, but the fauna too suffer. 181 forest-dependent species have become listed as threatened from loss of habitat specifically due to logging (Lindenmayer et al 2020). Post logging debris dries to tinder and increases bushfire probability and severity. It contributed to this summer’s unprecedented fires (Cox 2020)

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What had once been forest floor was now rocks cracked open by the heat, and endless charcoal boughs...

and the consequent loss of animal and human life. Biodiversity snuffed out as surely as the fires were not. A similar series of unfortunate events unfolded at my family’s property, about an hour south of Hobart on fifty or so acres. Around the house and gardens the land is cleared of forest, but the rest remains untouched. It is part regeneration project and part animal refuge out of respect for the land. I can recall a phone conversation where my mother recounted to me her then most recent logging experience. According to her, the contractors from Sustainable Timber Tasmania (STT) had come up right to the boundary, where Crown land meets private property. Only a thin corridor of Eucalyptus delegatensis separated the coupe – the logged area – from the property. For about a week, incessant noise of heavy machinery had smothered the birdsong. My family ventured up afterwards only to find the entire area completely desecrated. Raped. The tall trees ripped out, leaving behind only saplings smashed by machine treads, discarded limbs and leafy crowns. My mother spoke of all the animals and insects that would have certainly lost their homes. When I told her I was writing this piece she sent a text, relaying her feelings “of utter disbelief and inability to act, once the logging is done...the depth of destruction all around.” Then, in the summer of 2018/19 the coupe burned. The fires were out by January and I visited about a month or so after. As my family and I broke into the open coupe, I felt as though I

had stepped back into another era. It was as if I’d stepped into No Man’s Land. An area the size of several football fields, stretched up the hillside, and over the crest. Anything that had attempted to grow between the logging and the fire was gone. Open to the sky, a wound in the side of the mountain. Fine silvery ash was disturbed with each step. It was postapocalyptic. There was no noise. It felt heavy, despite the blaring blue sky. I wandered off, looking at the ground. What had once been the forest floor was now rocks cracked open by the heat, and endless charcoal boughs. The twisted mess was hauntingly beautiful, patterned pure carbon that reminded me of a dragon. Obsidian scales fashioned from the bones of trees, curved branches like limbs, thrashing. This beastly chaos forged by flames. I crouched down. My eyes and mind just wandered. I couldn’t really absorb the desolation. Beside my shoe was what appeared to be a seashell. I realised it was a snail shell. I went to pick it up. But this was a ghost shell. It disintegrated under my touch. Crumbled to nothing but a pile of flaking ash. I felt something wither deep inside me. From where I sat, legs burning from too long too still, I noticed more and more of the ghost shells in the cracks of the rocks amongst the rubble. It probably sounds trivial, but it was really upsetting. When I got back to the house, the sliding glass exposed me. No one likes to look at themselves when they cry. I didn’t in that second either. But I caught a glimpse of glinting eyes. A twisted, pale face, smeared

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unconsciously with blackened eucalypt. Altered carbon. It was just last December, 2019, that a cache of documents received by the Wilderness Society under Right To Information laws indicated that STT and Tasmania’s Liberal government had slyly developed plans to access native Gondwanaland forest (Allen, 2019). For logging. At a time when biodiversity conservation must be of utmost importance! Trees are valuable carbon sinks, assets to combat climate change, and are better off left standing than pulped, or chipped and shipped offshore. Under the cover of the pandemic, the Victorian government also attempted some covert legislation manoeuvres. Following the devastating fires of 2019-2020, several ‘salvage’ logging operations were set to commence across the state. Salvage logging, also known as ‘post-fire logging’ takes mature trees out of fire affected zones to salvage them – or rather, harness their economic value. In total disregard of their ecological value. Where is the logic in devastating already ravaged habitats, to supply an industry running on deficits? Self-confessed in their Annual Report, between 2016 and 2018 VicForests’ Profit Before Tax fell from $6.8 million to $2.6 million, which is an almost forty percent decrease (VicForests, 2018). And yet logging of native forest continues. It’s a strange time to be alive. Truly. Imagine if transnational companies didn’t rule the world with a neoliberal iron fist, if politicians didn’t cherish press delivered smear campaigns and puppet coal in parliamentary question time... well, unfortunately, that is all that’s currently on offer. However, these strange and isolated times have also cultivated growth. And change. An ecological, economic, societal – planetary, tipping point has been reached. Presenting a choice between ‘business as usual’ or establishing a new normal. If not for the trees, if not for the animals, if not for the provisioning of our children and future generations, then for our collective legacy. When we are dust, or migrated to a distant galaxy, let this first Earth be something that thrives. Like the photos of Australia’s pyrophyte forests, post fire. Springing forth from a fork in the skeletal trees. Shy red tips unfurling amongst thrilling green. A new form, altered carbon. Burnt, but not dead. Resilient.

The climate crisis has highlighted the importance of cooperation amongst international states and governments to ensure solutions that support the sustainability of our planet. The climate change discourse has amplified in the past several years and has become a main contention of the 21st century. It is no longer possible, nor is it excusable, to only tackle climate change on an individual micro-level. Within 2020 alone, we have witnessed extreme weather problems such as the large bushfires in both Australia and the United States or the oil spill in Mauritius, as well as continued rising sea levels. In order to reach a state of environmental sustainability, the international sphere must work collectively to reduce these continued and any future environmental catastrophes. Policies, treaties and environmental reforms that are supportive of sustainability measures must be recognised and implemented on a universal level. This article explores why global politics are important to the environment by examining the current political system, the intersection of the hinge points of geopolitics and the environment, how global politics has influenced environmental sustainability and lastly how the United Nations has impacted international cooperation.

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Historically, we have seen that following international crisis, the international sphere has attempted to respond in ways that alleviate pressing problems. This is exemplified by the international response to World War 1, World War 2 and the Nuclear arms race between the US and the Soviet Union (Monash Sustainable Development Institute, 2020). World War 1 marked a pivotal starting point for the international system as subsequently, the Treaty of Versailles was born. Unfortunately, the Treaty of Versailles failed to address the needs at the time, leading to the Great Depression and eventually, the beginnings of World War 2 (Monash Sustainable Development Institute, 2020). By 1945, at the end of World War 2, the United Nations emerged, drawing on the lessons of the failed WW1 (Holmes, 1993). According to Jeffrey Sachs (2020) the United Nations’ focus on multilateralism was able to complete and pass initiatives in which the League of Nations failed to do so. The Nuclear Arms Race however, saw the two superpowers, the US and the Soviet Union, compete for greater global political power. However, with the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, this solidified the US’ political role in the world (Sachs, 2020). We now see the international system at a critical hinge point in relation to geopolitics and the ecological crisis. The current forces at play are making the environmental movement a very decisive and disruptive moment in history (Sachs, 2020). Firstly, the US’ role as a historic superpower is slowly coming to an end (Betsill, 2017). The US’ political hegemony is currently on the decline, largely due to Donald Trump’s presidency and the policies he has decided to enact or repeal. As we witness this decline, we are also interestingly seeing the rise of China as a new economic and political power. The international landscape is changing, but how does this impact the environmental movement? While the ecological crisis is becoming better understood and recognised in contemporary society, this discourse is not ‘new’ information. Scientists have observed and projected climate change for several decades. The United Nations Conventional framework on climate change was created in 1992 (Sachs, 2020). We are at a pivotal moment in history. There is an increasing urgency to enact environmental change within the next few months if we are

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to salvage environmental sustainability levels (Rockstram et. al, 2015). Unless the international sphere creates an integrated approach to tackle the environmental agenda, small scale changes will not be enough. Global politics largely influences environmental sustainability. The 2015 Paris Agreement was a monumental step forward in addressing and declaring the state of the climate crisis and the importance of reducing global emissions. The Paris Agreement gathered nations worldwide to discuss and sign their pledge to alleviate environmental degradation as concerns for the future of this planet grow. However, on the 1 June 2017, US President Donald Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement (Betsill, 2017). This withdrawal prompted a reduction in commitments for other key players such as Canada, Australia, Japan and Russia (Clemencon, 2016). These countries are some of the largest greenhouse gas emitters and their withdrawal from the treaty has stagnated environmental progress. Furthermore, developing countries such as China and India are also facing greater pressures from developed countries to control their emissions. However, these pressures from the West are somewhat hypocritical, as they push the responsibility towards Global South nations without accepting roles to decrease their own emissions. It is crucial, more than ever, for countries to put aside their national interests and political agendas to solve the climate crisis. Without a sustainable planet, the human race does not have a home or a platform to even discuss politics or economics. So how has the role of the UN changed or influenced these policies, if at all? The United Nations is critiqued for its outdated structure and model. The United Nations system does not reflect the state of political power in contemporary society and therefore allows the superpowers during WW1 and WW2 to dictate the status of global policies and frameworks (Iyase & Folarin, 2018). This is exemplified by the ‘veto’ power by outdated superpowers, which evidently have been used to inhibit environmental progress. The UN’s initiatives are also largely voluntary. This voluntary nature has meant that countries, like the US, Canada, Australia, Japan and Russia are able to withdraw from treaties with little to no legal consequences (Clemencon, 2016).

Other than a ‘name and shame’ tactic, these international governments are still able to continue their own agendas, even if they risk environmental progress. The World Trade Organisation (WTO), an affiliate of the UN, has also been critiqued for maintaining and upholding trade systems which harm the environment as they continue to prioritise economic growth and economic relationships over environmental sustainability (Eckersley, 2015). The WTO is a key player in the contemporary arena that facilitates the systematic degradation of the environment in favour of capitalism (Eckersley, 2015). However, the United Nations is the most authoritative platform we have in sustaining international relationships. The United Nations and its long-standing reputation is respected amongst nation states. The UN gathers countries from across the globe to foster conversations pertinent in contemporary society, like the carbon neutral goals. The UN provides smaller nation states with a platform to voice and express their concerns, placing them at the same table as larger nation states. For example, in 2019 a group of small island developing states made an agreement to pursue renewable environmental initiatives and to express their environmental leadership at the UN General Assembly (Davis, 2019). Furthermore, the UN’s rhetoric on rights, sustainability and their core values are rooted in creating social positive change. The Sustainable Development Goals are recognised globally and serve somewhat as an international constitution aiming for a more just and fairer world (Sachs 2020). The question then, isn’t whether to abolish or keep the UN? Rather, how can the UN be refined and updated in a way that progresses a successful environmental agenda while holding countries accountable? The future of the world is in question and politics must reflect an agenda that is inclusive of a fairer and just system that supports the environmental movement. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted how humans are negatively impacting the environment. A drastic decrease in

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world travel has seen strong decreases in air pollution worldwide. With this, the green recovery agenda has become emphasised in contemporary society and provides the international sphere an opportunity to increase global cooperation on climate issues. The current state of the world is not so bleak. Some countries have already begun to react environmentally - countries like Japan and the Netherlands - and we have even seen Australia implementing clean recovery policies, including banning the use of single-use plastic (Johnston 2020, Government of the Netherlands 2017, Government of South Australia 2020) . Countries have also begun to move away from fossil fuel production to prioritise biodiversity recovery. For example, the government of Zimbabwe has banned coal mining in its national parks (BBC 2020). An international green recovery movement provides a vital opportunity for countries to enact environmental policies that are supportive of environmental sustainability. There are ample solutions, large and small, that countries can enact. For example, governments worldwide must hold their environmentally degrading sectors accountable for their actions (OECD 2020). There must be greater investments and potentially subsidies towards renewable energy to support a just energy transition away from fossil fuels. Governments must also support the reskilling and retraining of the workforce to accommodate for this transition and to ensure that people are not being left behind economically nor socially. Governments must also advocate for the capitalisation on the efficiency of the digital era as a means to reduce transmissions. Hosting more virtual conferences, for example, allows us to efficiently create and sustain international dialogue without the need to consider travel expenses (Sachs 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic has proven that we are capable of this. Governments must also enact carbon taxes or other forms of consequential policies to punish actors who do not obey new environmental law. These are only a few changes, but if they were to be enacted like a domino effect, with almost every nation state playing a role, environmental alleviation would look more promising. International politics and the international sphere must work collectively to enforce positive environmental change. Every country, all governments and all political agendas must reflect supportive and inclusive environmental reform to maintain a global warming level of under 2Â°C. The United Nations serves as a platform for international relationships; however, it must do better in holding governments accountable for their actions. It must continue to foster international relationships, but in a way that progresses environmental discourses. The global historical powers are currently in a state of transition. The United Nations must act as a beacon and a pillar of stability despite the surrounding political turmoil. This article reviewed this argument by exploring why politics is important to the environment through examination of the current political system, the intersection of geopolitics and the environment, how global politics has influenced environmental sustainability and lastly, how the United Nations has impacted international cooperation.

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the

COST of

COTTON by Kate Fleming Tell me at the end if you still want it on your skin. Less than a year ago, a bulb of cotton was grown in the Punjab region. It took five months to grow under harsh light and thundering tropical rains. Progress was aided by pesticides, which seeped into roots, poisoning the soil in which it grew. The soil is damaged now and can no longer sustain the growth of food for farmers. It is exhausted. Farmers are exhausted, too. Their backs hunch, their feet blister, the flesh on their hands covered in boils, and over time their minds are sickened by the poison which is meant to be nourishing their crops. Their weary faces are burnt from years under the sweltering sun. The air they breathe is toxic from pesticide fumes.1 Their children cannot go to school, because their bosses want those delicate little hands for picking the cotton. But little hands are not always paid, and little stomachs are not always fed. Little bodies need water to grow, but the water is used to grow cotton instead. It is contaminated with poison, washing into the rivers and streams

which used to be the fresh and clean lifeblood of the community. Does this happen where you live? In India alone, there are nearly seven million cotton farmers.2 On top of this, The United Nations Childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Fund (UNICEF) estimates there are 10.1 million child labourers there too â&#x20AC;&#x201C; most of whom work in the cotton industry. They pick and feed the cotton with harmful pesticides to support their families.3 Once cleaned and baled, the cotton is transported to a mill. It is fed into a machine which combs and stretches the fibres. It is pulled from its natural bulb into a straight, thin, tightly wound fibre, then twisted and fed into looms. Weaving over and under, over and under, over and under, until it is webbed and then bleached â&#x20AC;&#x201C; drained of natural differences and imperfections, perfect for dyeing. Once dyed, the fabric is transported to Dhaka in Bangladesh, where it will be transformed yet again. The factory is humid from the air conditioning which was never installed. There are armed guards at

1 - 100 million households are directly involved in growing cotton worldwide (Minney, 29). 2 - Cotton farms consume an estimated 220,000 tons of pesticides and 8.8 million tons of fertiliser every year (Cline 167-168). 3 - Poisonings from industrial and agricultural chemicals are one of the top five causes of death worldwide (Cline 168).

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the exits keeping the 300 workers locked in. There are rows and rows of women. Young women. Girls actually. Stitching and cutting and sweating and fatiguing. Prodding the fabric with needles and threads to earn their minimal wages.4 One of these girls is called Mukta. She is twelve years old and works in the factory to support her parents who are unwell in her hometown, Mymensingh. She earns US$79 a month and sees her parents three times a year. Jahanara is fourteen years old and works as a tailor. She says that half the workers in the factory are fourteen or younger. She earns US$66 a month. Most of her income is used to repay the loans she took out for the shops her brother and father run. She holds garment labels in her hands which are covered in small Japanese symbols. Rabeya and Razia are sisters, both working in the knitwear factory. Rabeya is fourteen and earns US$50 a month as a helper, Razia is sixteen and earns US$85 as a screen printer. They work to support their mother who is ill, and their father who earns just US$38 a month as a rickshaw puller. Mukta, Jahanara, Rabeya and Razia all started work before the age of sixteen, and all work overtime.5 What are these clothes (and these workers) worth to you? Across Australia, you will find piles of knitwear in Kmart stores – most of which are made in Bangladesh from non-organic cotton. For just AUD$10 you can buy a sweatshirt or a cardigan or a knit jumper. There are several colours to choose from too, with patterns or plain options, and a wide size range for you and your family. You have an abundance of choices. Choice is a privilege. How much of your $10 goes to the garment worker? I don’t know the answer, and I don’t know if anyone does. But let’s look at it this way - for one item of clothing, approximately eighty-five people will touch it at some point in production before it reaches the shop floor (Eyskoot 2019, p.40). There are the cotton farmers and pickers, the mill workers, the garment workers, the drivers, the quality checkers, the packers and the retail workers. $10 simply doesn’t cover all that. Yes, companies save money by ordering and manufacturing in bulk, but their profits do not go into the pockets of their supply chain workers. What did you do to deserve the choices you have? Nothing. You were born in a country where choices are abundant. Just as Mukta, Jahanara, Rabeya and Razia were born in Bangladesh. Girls like them continue to be exploited so you and I can buy cheap clothes. If you think that’s wrong – why do you still have these clothes on your skin?

4 - The average wage for garment workers is just US$63 a month (US$756 a year). 5 - Child labour is one of the most profitable crimes in the fashion supply chain. Child labourers often go untraced and unchecked, and the cycle perpetuates itself by keeping children out of schools and in vulnerable financial situations. In some cases, children are trafficked, and in most cases they are underpaid and overworked. In Bangladesh, it is legal for those between the ages of sixteen and eighteen years old to work in the factories, but only for five hours a day.

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Bin Diving by Caitlin Ward. 020

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Article by Conrad Linder

HOW HOW AUSTRALIA AUSTRALIA IS IS

CHEATING ITS ITS PARIS PARIS AGREEMENT AGREEMENT TARGETS TARGETS ITS PARIS AGREEMENT TARGETS

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1. Easy-to-reach Kyoto targets. While most industrialised nations pledged to REDUCE emissions to 5.2% below 1990 levels (between 2008 and 2012), Australiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Kyoto Protocol pledge was to INCREASE emissions to no more than 8% above 1990 levels.

2. More lenient Kyoto targets. Over the second Kyoto period (2013-2020), Australia pledged to reduce emissions to just 0.5% below 1990 levels (5% below 2000 levels). Unsurprisingly, Australia met both targets by hardly lifting a finger. In fact, it beat the two targets by a combined total of 411 million tonnes of emissions.

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3. An unfairly high baseline. In 1990, the year against which reductions were measured, Australia had extremely high deforestation emissions. The so-called ‘Australia clause’, introduced last-minute, allowed Australia to include these deforestation emissions in its 1990 baseline, effectively rewarding Australia for mass deforestation.

4. Carry-over credits. Under the rules of the Kyoto Protocol, if a nation ‘overachieved’ its targets, it could count the surplus reductions towards future reporting periods, as ‘carry-over credits.’ Surplus Reduction Actual Reductions

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Carry Over Credits Actual Reductions

Emissions Target

Many nations voluntarily ditched their carry-over credits, opting to count only genuine reductions in emissions. The Australian government claims that its 411 million tonnes of surplus emission reductions over the first and second Kyoto periods can be counted as carry-over credits towards its Paris Agreement target. Exactly why this should be allowed is unclear, as carry-over credits only apply to the Kyoto Protocol. Even then, credits can’t be carried over beyond the second reporting period.

5. Where are we at now? No decision was reached at the 2019 United Nations Climate Change Conference as to whether Australia can count its carry-over credits towards its Paris Agreement targets. There is hope that the ‘Rulebook for Paris’ will be finalised at next year’s Climate Change Conference.

6. How are we actually tracking? Australia’s claim to be on track to reach its Paris Agreement target of reducing emissions to 26% below 2005 levels by 2030 is largely reliant on using carry-over credits, which are not true emissions reductions. In fact, with carry-over credits, ‘only about 10 percent of [Australia’s] Paris target needs to be achieved using actual emissions reductions between 2020 and 2030’ (Slezak, 2019a).

7. Some more numbers. Australia’s actual emissions are projected to be around 16% below 2005 levels in 2030. This is disappointing, because even Australia’s Paris Agreement target of 26% below 2005 levels by 2030 is inconsistent with keeping global warming to below 1.5°C, or even 2°C.

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In December 2019, I went on a road trip with my family. It was supposed to be a relaxing vacation – something we’d never done before. My dad invited me to come along, and despite my apprehension and our failing family dynamic, I decided to take him up on his offer. After all, I’d never been on a road trip before. We drove from Melbourne to the touristfriendly beaches of the Gold Coast – right through the middle of bushfire season. My dad and stepmum decided to go on the trip before they’d truly checked the state of the fires. Their ignorance was infuriating. My dad didn’t trust anyone else to drive his car. Judging by who was available, I guess that was a fair decision; I didn’t have a license, and my little stepsister was enraptured by her iPad and her Beats headphones beside me in the back. My step-mum was either sleeping or worrying about

hotels and budgets. The atmosphere in the car was suffocatingly silent. The radio was going in and out of signal, crackling until we turned it off with a decisive click. We travelled for hours each day, stopped in hotels during the nights and explored sites before continuing. We passed devastated forestland and quiet rural towns. We stopped by the lush vineyards of the Hunter Valley and zigzagged around the treacherous burning roads of the Blue Mountains. The Blue Mountains was one of the worst affected areas. I remember walking up to Echo Point; a lookout overseeing the Three Sisters, a culturally significant rock formation near Katoomba. It was supposed to be one of the great landscapes of Australia. By the time we got there, the wind had blown great waves of smoke over the

by Adelle Xue

black summer mountainside, and there was nothing to see. It was a memorable trip. Not because we went to the Gold Coast, but because of the everpresent smoke, the fire, the economic slump, and the silent anxiety that plagued every town we stopped in. We weren’t exploring the wonders of Australia; just its ravaged remains. My eyes were glued to the winking dots on the map on my phone, looking out for nearby fires as we passed. ‘There’s an active fire a kilometre away,’ I said once. My dad didn’t always reply when I spoke, usually focused on the road. But he did then, and glanced around the area with a, ‘Really? You sure?’ I nodded, but he didn’t see. My stepfamily didn’t so much as look up. I’d stare out of the window, squinting through my fatigue, and glance back down at

my phone. I started to wonder if I was taking the threat too seriously. If I was seeing things. If the fire I thought I saw next to the road was a figment of my imagination. As we continued to travel, the car began to feel claustrophobic. I was alone in my anxiety, almost trapped in the rumbling black machine. I simply watched from the car window. Helpless. Australia regularly suffers from bushfires that crackle and burn over our dry forests and burst to life in deadly waves of heat and wind. The summer of 2019 was one of Australia’s worst bushfire seasons to date. Colloquially called the Black Summer (Stayner, 2020), millions of acres of land were lost, and it is estimated that a billion animals were killed (Werner, 2020).The deep orange sky, coupled with the sharp tang of smoke in the air, plagued our cities and doubled our fears. ‘It’s climate change’, the youth say, over and

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over, rampant on the streets, carrying homemade signs and yelling at our dismissive elders. But our leaders don’t listen to us. We are the ones who are going to suffer the consequences. We are the ones who will step out of our cars, excited for our next summer getaway, only to realise that we haven’t gotten away from anything at all; instead of fresh air, we will be greeted by pungent smoke. Instead of blue skies, there will just be a burnt orange haze that hides the sun. We are the ones who will live with this for the rest of our lives. Climate change. The reality of the situation is easy to ignore. You can hide in your echo chamber, comfortable in your bubble. But one day, that bubble will pop and instead of the endless, sweeping landscapes of the Blue Mountains, you’ll just see the smog. You’ll feel the fear and exhaustion in the wind, and you’ll see the bits and pieces of your life turn to ash.

Our summers are getting longer and harsher, the temperatures more extreme. Rain falls more sparingly inland and the land is getting drier. I can smell it in the air, feel the unnatural heat in spring. 2019 was the driest year on record (Bureau of Meteorology, 2020). Climate change is licking at our heels, ripping scars into our trees and ravenously devouring all our water. Bushfires smell of despair. They smell sharp, if not predatory, and hang in the air long after they’re gone. They steal the colour from the land, the life from its roots, and the carefree joy of people. Traditionally, Indigenous Australians backburn in preparation of the fires. By burning the land early, in a controlled manner under wet weather conditions, Indigenous peoples have fought fire with fire for generations, using it for food, camping and hunting (Robinson, C. J.,arber,

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M., Hill, R., Gerrard, E. & James, G., 2016). It has cultural significance – it doesn’t just mean death and destruction. Fire instead brings new life. We can look at Darwin, where fires are managed by Indigenous ranger groups (Altman & Fisher, 2020). The rangers burn away vegetation early in the dry season and map out where fires are likely to go. We have a chance to combine traditional and modern firefighting techniques, so why don’t we? There is no reason not to. The Australian government cuts costs and leaves its responsibilities to volunteers who sometimes don’t return from the frontline. In particular, funding for the New South Wales Rural Fire Service has staggered in an downward trend over the past three years (West, 2020). There are less vehicles, less equipment, less support. Dozens of people were killed in the Black Summer bushfires, including civilians and volunteers. What we are doing now isn’t working. We have not learned from the graphs, the tables, the reports every year that tell us the world is warming. Australia was, on average, 1.52 degrees higher in 2019 than it was the year before (Bureau of Meteorology, 2020). Every year our average temperatures climb, but it seems we are blinded in our complacency. I remember driving with my family through a quiet, winding path in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by the charred remains of hundreds

of trees. I remember cows walking on the side of the road as we passed. They were stranded, with only the blackened husks of trees left to keep them company. The fires had licked away all the vegetation. It was disquieting. When I read articles about the fires later, there was no good news. There were pictures of half-melted skeletons of animals trapped on wirefences. Animals surrounded by the ashy graves of their homes. Pictures of death. We didn’t stop for those cows. I thought of videos I’d seen of firefighters and volunteers providing food, water, and shelter to animals in need, and wanted to tell my dad to stop. I didn’t. We kept going. I chewed my lip and cracked my shoulder as I turned to watch the cows fade into the distance. Their coats blended in with the trees. We eventually reached the Hunter Valley, where the rolling mountainsides sat still, despite the wind. The valley felt quiet. It was isolated. By this point, tourists had been warned away from Australia, and the tourism industry was suffering. No one wanted to venture into Australia’s firestricken towns, so the locals were desperate. We made a stop at Blueberry Hill Vineyard. It was a beautiful place, with vibrantly green grass and a winding gravel road that wound around our enemy, but a tool.

its rows and rows of grape trees. It was a bit like walking into a dream. I remember the sun being out with a smattering of clouds, but it wasn’t too hot. There were chairs scattered around a picnic table. Reception was a simple one-story building on the top of a hill. When we went inside, there were only two staff. They told us how their crop might be affected by the smoke. That they hadn’t received many customers since the fires had started. We were their second visitors all day. They were warm and welcoming, and we tried a few of their wines, but ultimately, we thanked them without buying anything. I felt sorry for them. They didn’t deserve it any more than anyone else. Before we left, I took a seat on an egg chair under a tree and stared into the mountains. The view was stunning. At my side, my stepfamily murmured some Mandarin to one another. I don’t remember what they said. I felt alone. It was somewhat distressing, getting used to the smell of smoke, but I sat there, breathing our bushfires in, and wondered what it could have been like if the fires weren’t there. I do not know how to fight fire. But Australia does. We can learn from each other to stop our tragedies from occurring again and again. I can learn. You can learn. Perhaps then, fire will not be

Ruminating on an image of the Earth taken from the Voyager 1 space probe, astronomer Carl Sagan (1994) noted that the total aggregate of human civilization exists on a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;pale blue dotâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; in a vast, uncaring universe. In recent decades, this idea of a common civilization that will inherit and must protect the Earth has evolved to characterize environmental activism and governance models. The insufficiency of this idea however, is evident in the failure of the Kyoto Protocol and the gridlock we have seen in climate negotiations since. In this paper, I explore two reasons for this gridlock: (a) failing to consider the economic interests of future people and (b) the challenges to equity associated with using a false, eroding concept of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;generationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. Both uphold structures that inhibit our ability to survive climate change. Furthermore, I will demonstrate how they stem from an over-reliance on state action. They can be resolved however, through a shift in one of our cultural norms- the way we view ourselves as a generation. This norm may be nudged through the formation of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;climate clubsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, a form of economic policy that accounts for the economic factors underlying state (in)action on climate change.

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The consolidation of a nation-state based on ethnicity, religion and language was the defining project of the West, but the nation-state has since evolved to become the primary tool of political organization (Walker, 1990). Therefore, governments are the primary mode of political action in the world. This idea has been operative in the handling of many transnational issues, both cooperative (global trade) and threatening (nuclear weapons proliferation). When dealing with climate change however, state negotiation does not encompass the scope of action required. Meanwhile, international climate diplomacy is in a gridlock, the Kyoto Protocol provides evidence for this. Although it was the first legal regulatory model, the Kyoto Protocol lacked the

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ability to enforce its regulations amongst signatories. Moreover, it placed strict carbon budgets on historically high-emissions countries, while failing to outline even voluntary commitments for developing countries (Held and Roger, 2018). The United States was in strict opposition to this and as a consequence, they refused to sign the protocol. Asymmetry is the primary reason behind this, that is, the populations who stand to suffer the worst effects of climate change also bear the cost of mitigative action. Vulnerability, in relation to climate change, refers to the level of risk individuals face in terms of their health, wellbeing and income at the hands of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;environmental shocksâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; such as high temperatures, floods and droughts, or sea-level rise

(Eriksen and Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Brien, 2011). This vulnerability also includes the capacity of those affected to adapt to both the physical and socio-political effects of climate change (Smit and Pilifosova, 2003). The ability to adapt can be threatened by reduced employment opportunities, weakened social networks and incompetent local governance. These at-risk populations include our descendents, as well as those in developing countries vulnerable to flooding, as is the case in the Philippines, drought, as is likely in Kenya, and other impacts brought about by climate change. This stems from the fact that, to a great extent, markets and economies guide state action. Climate agreements, such as the Paris Agreement, often forgo this and fail to

acknowledge the level of influence large corporations and businesses exert over state decisions. The Rio Summit (1992), for example, was the first international ‘Earth Summit’ designed to address environmental protection and equity on a global level. Yet, entrenched in its framework was the idea that the actions employed to combat climate change should not be a ‘disguised restriction on international trade’ (Held and Roger, 2018). Thereforth, climate agreements have followed suit and continued to neglect economic actors. One such economic issue overlooked by climate diplomacy agreements is what economist William Nordhaus (2015) calls the ‘free-rider’ problem. The environment is a public good, which means that enjoying its benefits does not require payment. Moreover, one person’s enjoyment of the environment does not diminish the potential for others to enjoy it (Stern, 2007). It follows then, that without appropriate public policy, a market cannot provide the required quantity and type of public good. This is because there would be limited returns to private investors for doing such. Therefore, allocation and distribution of public goods, like energy and land use, do not reflect the true impacts of consumption nor investment for the climate. More specifically, the Earth’s capacity to absorb anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide could be characterized as a common resource. Since that capacity is limited, its allocation becomes a principle of justice. As it stands, this principle is deeply violated with less than 4% of countries being responsible for more than 50% of the world’s emissions. More importantly, 20 of the 36 countries with the highest emissions are also those who are the least vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change (Althor et. al. 2016). In this way, developed nations like Australia are ‘free-riding’ the environment, that is, causing the majority of its erosion while incurring few of the associated costs. Nordhaus (2015) argues that this behavioral issue is not restricted to developed nations. Furthermore, it is also the reason previous treaties, such as the Kyoto Protocol, have failed. It follows then, that the voluntary commitments included in the Nationally Determined Pledges of the Paris Agreement (United Nations, 2016) are likely to fail too. To tackle this, Nordhaus (2015) suggests a ‘climate club’. This would work to create incentives to meet greenhouse gas mitigation targets. In essence, members would enjoy benefits if they were to adhere to the rules. Domestically, nations would put a price on carbon that is reflective of its true social cost. This carbon tax would use the concept of discounting to pull the future impacts of greenhouse gas emissions into the present. At the international scale, sanctions would be imposed on non-members and in addition, members would tax goods and products imported from non-member nations. Nordhaus’ model found that these tariffs acted as the strongest incentive to join ‘climate clubs’. Given a low tariff, the model predicts most countries would benefit greatly from joining such an organization as long as carbon is domestically priced at $50 per ton or less.

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This model undoubtedly operates on the assumption that international cooperation is doomed to fail. The abatement such climate clubs would achieve would be less than that achieved through optimised international cooperation. This is because climate clubs will make climate change agreements redundant, and although these agreements are flawed, they benefit from the fact that they incorporate international law into their fabric. Climate clubs however, operate solely on the assumption that a country will act rationally. Moreover, Nordhaus fails to account for the poorest nations who do not have full control over their exports due to factors such as exploitation and civil war. This is why I believe we need to reimagine the concept of ‘generation’. Although the environmental movement began as a reaction to local concerns, its scale of concern has since extended to include the concept of a generation. It is evident how this idea permeates climate activism when Generation Z cites their intention to protect their future as their reason for engaging in rallies, protests and shutdowns (Farber and Reichert, 2019). However, in the context of climate activism, the term, generation, refers to a very specific group- the Western middle class. And so, this conception of generation, one devoid of gender, class and race, is perceived as a ‘cause’ and is relegated to the fringes of political discourse. Community forums present a possible solution whereby the concerns of disproportionately affected populations could be addressed and planned for. Issues around international equity might be better solved through a version of climate clubs. If planned efficiently, these clubs could prove useful in limiting the emissions of companies like Saudi Aramco- the largest corporate emitter in the world- a task which has proven impossible to achieve through state governance due to the Saudi Arabian monopoly on oil (Lerner and Fang, 2019). Furthermore, whilst the climate change regime does focus on the future, its concept of the future is relatively short-term. A shift in favour of long-term, ‘existential risk’ is needed in order to address the impacts that would severely curtail the potential of intelligent life on Earth and so lead to the worst possible ethical outcome (Bostrom, 2013). This is the ethical ‘paradigm shift’ required to tackle climate change and in turn, its ramifications for life on Earth (Gardiner, 2004). If we are to consider this through the utilitarian framework, it is important to note that the Earth could remain hospitable for another 700 million years. This equates to a possible 21 million future generations and thus, business-as-usual emissions would threaten a vast number of humans (Beard, 2019).Alternatively, we may employ the value-ethics framework whereby increasing the social cost of carbon can be justified in order to preserve whatever it is one may value- justice, science and art, all have the possibility to exist in greater quantities in the future (Beckstead, 2013). By generating strong incentives to decarbonise, new models of governance, such as ‘climate clubs’, present a potential resolution for the gridlock faced by climate diplomacy. In addition, the changing of norms to achieve equity for vulnerable and future populations will herald changes in consumption patterns, behaviors and both the national and international imaginations.

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ecological thinking as a response to

climate change

by Toby McCarney Ecology is a term we are all too familiar with, yet its overuse and appropriation has rendered it essentially meaningless. It has become synonymous with the natural environment and all things sustainable; marketers realised long ago that slapping eco in a product name made it more appealing to environmentally â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;consciousâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; consumers. However, if we are to survive the very real existential threat posed by the climate catastrophe then we must rediscover the potential of true ecological thinking. Ecology, as a science, is concerned with the relationships between living things and their environment. The modern roots of ecological research emerged in the early 20th century, but it was popularised decades later at a time of growing environmental concern. This association between ecological science and environmental degradation has led to a perception of ecology being a normative science that exists to restore ecosystems (Reed & Lister, 2020). Therefore, ecological thinking has become increasingly relevant for a diverse range of fields dealing with the environmental crisis; as a landscape

architecture student, my studies focus on how we can begin to design in a way that supports open-ended ecosystems rather than just creating human spaces. To better understand the basis for transdisciplinary ecological thinking we can look to the insights of Felix Guattari, a French psychoanalyst, social theorist and radical activist, who wrote an influential essay on the subject of ecology in 1989, titled The Three Ecologies. Guattari argues that emerging environmental crises can be directly attributed to global capitalism, and therefore continuing to treat environmental destruction as a purely environmental issue is an ineffective solution. Instead, Guattari believes that the degradation of natural systems is happening in parallel with the straining of social relations and declining health of the human psyche, and thus proposes a framework of three interconnected ecologies; environmental ecology, social ecology, and mental ecology. This expanded conception of ecology allows for the identification of a common threat, namely global capitalism and mass

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media’s tendency to destroy specific value systems (for example, wildlife, culture and satisfaction) and standardise them into the homogenising language of profit. An environmental example is ‘ecosystem services’, a movement within ecology that sought to determine the monetary value of specific ecosystem functions. The idea behind ecosystem services was that if ecologists could communicate the value of ecology in a language that decision makers understood, then the environment’s intrinsic value as an unspoilt resource would lead to its protection. However, it has since become clear that once you put a price on something, it becomes a commodity which is subject to market forces – for better or worse. Thus ‘ecological services’ has seen little success, and in some ways even legitimised environmental degradation, as it can now be accounted for on a balance sheet (McCauley, 2006). Why is it that, despite living in an era characterised by rapid accelerations in science and technology, we seem unable to organise social formations to address our most pertinent issues? In some ways we are becoming incapable of imagining potential lines of escape from total crisis, further exacerbated by the despair and distress that mass media constantly bombards us with. It goes without saying that climate change is definitely upon us, unfolding before our eyes as we still scramble to organise the most rudimentary responses. Where does this leave the future of the world’s ecosystems? Now more than ever, we need to be reconsidering our relationships with the environment and each other. Our only chance to save Earth’s ecosystems in the face of the climate crisis is to move beyond looking for a generalised and universal solution to environmental degradation and instead adopt a creative mindset towards ecology and its management. We must embrace the open-endedness and complexity of ecology; it is characterised by uncertainty and dynamism, and so we must manage it as such. This means overcoming our conception of the environment consisting of stable and self-sufficient systems that we have a responsibility to maintain. Forget restoration and conservation, a changing climate means we must work towards changing environments. Guattari calls on us to adopt the mindset of an artist who must alter their work after the intrusion of an accidental detail. Climate change has to be responded to like an intrusion into ecology’s perpetual movement, rather than treating it as force to be negated. Many ecologists are quick to point out that climate change is nothing new for our earth’s ecosystems, it is only the speed of its current occurrence that is unprecedented. If we are to adopt Guattari’s interconnected ecological framework for explaining the source and salvation of environmental catastrophe, then it is imperative that we must also reinvent ourselves and our greater social relations in response to this

... we must experiment as the artist does ...

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... we must also reinvent ourselves and our greater social relations in response to this crisis ... crisis. We must experiment as the artist does; a painter does not spend their life creating the same scene but rather constantly searches for new subjects. We must individually and collectively discover creative autonomy as an antidote to self-objectification from social media, fast fashion conformism, and marketing manipulation. We must learn to become more united and increasingly different, akin to an artist’s development of a personal style of expression. Just as the environment is dynamic and in perpetual flux, organisations must also continually develop their practise and theoretical basis, including how educational institutions teach and charities provide care. This logic of experimentation must eventually occur at every level

of social interaction, from how we define our family collectives to new forms of citizenship. This constant dynamism is difficult to imagine in a world increasingly subject to inert institutions, however real change arises at the ‘molecular’ level; the micro-politics of our everyday lives are always in flux and have the potential for unbounded creation. The emergence of global concern for climate degradation has coincided with the rise of countless charismatic climate leaders, ideological movements, and eco-consumer options; none succeeding in solving our dire situation. Guattari does not intend to become a voice calling for a collective revolution or ideology to respond to our current climate crisis – singular responses are

guaranteed to be neutered by capitalist economies and mass media. Instead, only increased experimentation and differentiation will create space for alternate value systems that are not subject to capitalism’s balance sheets. We must learn to value wildlife and cultural assets on their own grounds, without resorting to heritage systems that restrict change and impose boundaries. It is not enough to limit ourselves to restoration and prevention – we need to understand climate change as a dynamic, open-ended, and generative process. We must therefore adopt the same qualities in our thinking and actions if we are to meet its challenge.

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The Age of Activism. By Jamisyn Gleeson Illustration by Steve Lo Casto / www.studiolocasto.com Disclaimer: A name in this piece has been changed to provide ethical anonymity

lems that they, and their ancestors, had helped to create.

I sat in the passenger seat, watching the green of the world turn to a blur as my friend’s father, Harley, drove. His age was starting to show; the only hair left on his waxy head was grey and stubbly, and the wrinkles on his face looked deeper in the sunlight. The radio was on, and a broadcaster mentioned Greta Thunberg.

‘Yeah, I get that, but she doesn’t have to yell,’ Harley said. He continued to tell me that Thunberg should be in school instead of initiating, and participating in global school strikes for climate. That she shouldn’t yell at the men sitting in the conference rooms she speaks in. That she should be kind and civil and diplomatic.

Harley’s eyes remained on the road ahead, but his mouth twisted into a scowl as he considered how to best express his distaste, or perhaps even hatred, of the then 16-year-old activist. ‘She’s a brat,’ Harley said. ‘Who does she think she is?’ I stiffened in my seat. I didn’t think Thunberg was a brat, but rightfully angry at the world for its inability to take serious preventative measures against climate change. I said that it was important for young people to express their anger when nothing was being done to fix the prob-

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He was, of course, referring to the speech that Thunberg gave at the United Nation’s Climate Action Summit in 2019. With her eyes filled with a mix of disappointment, anger and frustration, her voice livid and shaking, she urged us to acknowledge how: People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you! (National Public Radio, 2019.)

At first, I couldn’t understand why Harley held such contempt for someone who was trying, and certainly doing more than he was, to change the world for the better. Thunberg’s speech had left me awestruck; she had the courage to stand up for the environment, and she was desperate to inspire us to save it. I’ve developed a few theories since then. The first is that Harley might have been unwilling to accept Thunberg because of her age. This argument is supported by journalist Linda Givetash, who claims that ‘the age of the activists is … triggering backlash, as it flies in the face of ideals that children should be taught and supervised, not the other way around’ (2019). Harley’s contempt, therefore, might have stemmed from his belief (which he frequently expressed) that it was an adult’s role to use such language to chastise a child, not the other way around. My second theory is that Harley, as a straight, white, cisgender male, felt intimidated by a young, female-identifying activist. To me, he looked uncomfortable about being addressed by someone the patriarchy had already deemed as ‘less than.’ Indeed, Harley was not accustomed to being addressed by an angry young girl and thought her speech was disrespectful. When thinking about Harley’s desire to be ‘respected,’ I believe that his true wish was to suppress any beliefs that came into conflict with the patriarchal social structures that empowered him.

Indeed, his comments echoed that of British television presenter Jeremy Clarkson (2019) who implored Thunberg to ‘be a good girl [and] shut up.’ This belittling comment shows us how people of power, when they have no factual evidence to substantiate their claims, often resort to prejudice and dismiss those they deem as ‘less than’. Notice how Clarkson, similarly to Harley, called Thunberg a ‘spoilt brat’ (2019). This comment reinforces patriarchal attitudes towards powerful young women, and was ultimately used to shut us down. Finally, it seems to me that Harley felt embarrassed about his own actions – or in this case, his inaction. Thunberg asked, ‘how dare you?’ which forced him, along with the rest of us, to accept responsibility for climate change. To my knowledge, Harley had never thought to feel sorry, or assume responsibility, for contributing to the destruction of our environment. So, the moment someone called him out for his inaction, he attempted to do whatever he could to hold on to his own ‘reputation,’ as well as his socioeconomic power and privilege; he commented on Thunberg’s mannerisms. Harley is not the first person to have done this: Thunberg has been called ‘freakishly intellectual’, ‘deeply disturbed’ and ‘strange’ by the Herald Sun’s social and political commentator, Andrew Bolt (2019), who then went on to state that she possessed ‘so many mental disorders.’ Michael Knowles, as a guest speaker on Fox News, called her ‘mentally ill’ (Chiu, 2019). The President of the United States, Donald Trump, sarcas-

Here, we have a straight, white, cisgender male who feels intimidated by ... someone the patriarchy has deemed as ‘less than.’

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tically remarked, ‘she seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future’ (Duncan, 2019). In addition to these men, Instagram trolls have commented on Thunberg’s stature, the tone of her voice, the way her eyes look (O’Connell, 2019) and the clothes she wears (Rowlatt, 2019). They have even debated how much her parents influence her beliefs, forgetting that her opinions are based on scientific evidence (Dickson, 2019). There’s a pattern here: these people are attempting to undermine Thunberg’s social presence by flinging petty comments about her appearance to the media, and by suggesting that she has no valid arguments, despite the fact that her speeches are consistently grounded in scientific evidence. What’s interesting about this is that we don’t see it happening to male-identifying climate change activists, such as David Attenborough. You might be thinking, but Attenborough doesn’t go around shouting to politicians. He doesn’t push his beliefs into our faces. If this is the case, then you’re wrong again. Attenborough made a speech at the United Nations Climate Meeting in 2018, and much like Thunberg, used this time to warn us against ‘the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world’ (Domonoske, 2018). Yet, he was never criticised for this. Like Thunberg, Attenborough has urged ‘leaders of the world … [to] lead’ (Rizzoli, 2018). However, he never received any backlash for his words. This doesn’t even cover half of Attenborough’s activism. He’s delivered speeches against plastic usage and has given lectures about the animal kingdom at educational institutions such as the University of Leicester (Green, 2018). He’s also released several documentaries, includ-

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ing Planet Earth and The Blue Planet, in an attempt to educate the masses about the devastating effects of climate change (IMDb). In fact, his newest filmic project, A Life On Our Planet, has been described as ‘majestic’ (Natalia Winkelman, 2020) and ‘poignant’ (Patrick Cremona, 2020) by the media – creating a stark contrast to the aforementioned descriptors that are thrown Thunberg’s way. This reminds me of another memory I have of Harley. In 2014, he committed to purchasing every Attenborough documentary that was serially released by The Herald Sun for his daughter. He even bought her a case for them to all go inside. Not once during this did he ever mention his disdain for activists. Why was this? Was it because he perceived Attenborough to be an older, more ‘respectable’ activist? Was it because he thought he was more ‘mature’? Because he was a man? I might be generalising here, but I think these characteristics certainly come into play. Attenborough’s documentaries, which express his desire to save the planet, are celebrated and renowned. So why is Thunberg, who mimics his plea through global school strikes, ridiculed? On 20 September 2019, I was on a train heading into Flinders Street. Dozens of kids, some of them with parents and some on their own, sat around me with cardboard signs displaying drawings of the Earth on fire. ‘I don’t think that’s right,’ said a guy next to me, who wore a backpack over his Kathmandu-clad shoulders. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘I just think kids should be at school instead of protesting.’ He said. Some of the kids shot us disconcert-

It’s time to understand that there is no ‘right’ age or ‘gender’ to be an activist. It’s time to get out there and help us demand our environmental wrongs to be set right.

ed and angry looks. I nodded and said, ‘yeah’ without really knowing why. Maybe it was too early for me to concentrate. Maybe I had shoved any thoughts about climate change into the back of my mind, because I was privileged enough to do so. I can’t remember why I didn’t go to the protest, which Thunberg inspired. Now, looking back, I wish I had. Over 100,000 Melbournians attended (Henriques-Gomes et al., 2019). They filled our streets, raised their signs and demanded change. These activists, these primary school kids, teenagers and young adults, stood up for what they believed in without feeling the guilt that older people, particularly men, attempted to make them feel. They showed me how much good can come from harnessing our emotions to create change. There are people who believe that there is a particular age you must be in order to become an activist. There are people who think that we must behave a certain way or ‘look the part’ in order to engage with the masses. These beliefs are harmful, because they only allow one type of person to pave the way to our future. It’s time to understand that there is no ‘right’ age or ‘gender’ to be an activist. It’s time to get out there and demand our environmental wrongs to be set right.

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What is a story without a seting? What is a story without a setting? What is a stoy without a setting? What s a story without a setting? What is a story without a seting? What is a story without a setting? What is a stoy without a setting? What s a story without a seting? What is a story without a setting? What is a stoy without a setting? What s a story without a setting? 044

Climate change doesn’t just affect sea levels, it can stand to impact the entire setting of your life — your story. Having moved to Australia when I was 17, my teenage angst propelled me to travel shortly after school. I had to see what the world had to offer, a clichéd find-myself-In-Europe type thing. As I travelled, I realised my identity is not tied to a geographic location, but rather to the experiences and moments around the globe that have made up my life. Not only did I see some of the most exquisite scenes, I noticed the fluidity of the modern world we find ourselves in. Attitudes about climate change differ from nation to nation and state to state, which is ironic because the effects do not recognise borders, but this means the solutions shouldn’t either. Within this ever-changing landscape there is a constant, and that is nature — something we need to cherish not only for our own health and wellbeing, but for the wellbeing of the planet and the wildlife that inhabits it. In the movement of globalisation, we are able to dissolve these boundaries and hopefully work together in the pursuit of a sustainable future. It is equally important to not get swept up in the charm of our interconnected world. Buying local and embracing native vegetation is something to focus on. Our backyards no longer need to mimic a British garden but rather celebrate and prioritise Australian flora and fauna. Native plants can provide a wildlife corridor which helps connect local animals and vegetation. Better yet, they can survive solely on rainfall. Although I am conscious that travelling by air is terrible for the environment, I was able to educate myself while travelling. It helped me shift my behaviours back in Australia. This issue is not something that can change overnight, but each conscious decision can be made with the consideration of our planet — from where you buy your food to how you dispose of waste, and what you do to benefit the plants and animals in your area. I know it is clichéd and everyone from influencers to your green uncle says it, but it’s true. It really does start with you. You get to control the narrative and preserve your setting. Emma von Bardeleben Bachelor of Design, Major in Architecture

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Sa Pa, Vietnam, 2017

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Photo series by Emma von Bardeleben

Berchtesgaden, Germany, 2017

Berchtesgaden, Germany, 2018 Photo series by Emma von Bardeleben

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KZN, South Africa, 2018

Hout Bay, South Africa, 2018 048

Photo series by Emma von Bardeleben

by Jack McMahon

WHATâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S THE DEAL WI

TH OUR POLITICIANS? Contrary to popular belief, politicians are in fact human. The people that are entrusted with governing the nation must maintain a plethora of portfolios. Why is it that even though there seems to be public pressure to act on climate action that the psyche of politicians remains seemingly unchanged? Australia is a democracy, and not only is Australia bound to a democratic way of governing, but it is driven by neoliberal doctrines. Australia is the quintessential capitalist dream. It has been highlighted that humans value immediate reward as opposed to waiting for a long-term one, even if that long-term reward is promised to be greater than that of the immediate reward. This is called temporal discounting (Ballard & Knutson, 2009). A reward that is far away has a greater risk of not actualising, thus there is safety in taking the immediate reward. An economic example is the rise in High Frequency Trading (HFT). This has promoted quick buying and selling of stocks to the point where the average HFT share is now held onto for an average of just 22 seconds: a very small window of risk (Chlistalla, Speyer, Kaiser & Mayer, 2011). This aversion to risk permeates throughout the psychology of climate inaction. Consider a governmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s term in Australia, lasting just four years. Not a long time to implement a substantial environmental overhaul with no guarantee that if the party is voted out that the policies will remain. Therefore, the party prioritises being re-elected, to get that next four years. Alas, they are back at square one, having not enforced the policies at fear of public disapproval in the first term, now fearing disapproval once again. Thus, the cycle continues. The Gillard-led Labor Party championed the implementation of the 2012 carbon pricing scheme as part of the Clean Energy Act of 2011. This plan focused on the long-term and was met with a critical response from the people of Australia, as the scheme offered no immediate rewards. The result was the abolishment of the policy by the 2014 Abbott-led Liberal Party and public approval to do so. As humans, we have a generally poor magnitude receptiveness which in turn impacts our estimation of risk. We are far more receptive to visuals of which we can emotionally gauge. When we talk about climate change, we are discussing a drawn-out event, which can at times be difficult to quantify or more importantly, engage with. In 2003, a European heatwave killed approximately 35,000 people, yet this is an event that is hardly in the conscience of anyone. One event that occurred two years prior was the September 11 attacks, killing 2,977. Although both events caused extreme loss of life, society only stops to mourn for one. Nine days after September 11, George Bush famously launched a War on Terror. To this day climate goals are still not taken seriously. Our politicians are at the whim of the publicâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s temporal discounting. Political parties pandering to the short term will continue the cycle of climate inaction. It is not until that trend is broken that Australia will be able to implement long-term plans.

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playgrounds can be more than just child’s play by Isabelle McConaghy

We all have fond memories of our favourite local playground growing up as kids – the moment the gate is unlocked we sprint towards the rainbow coloured, plastic wonderland eager to start exploring. We start climbing as we build our make-believe world where we are princesses, racing car drivers or astronauts. Who doesn’t remember sliding down a curly slide and peeling your skin off its hot, plastic surface as your legs stick and you get the shock of that exhilarating electric zap! Imagine if play spaces could spark this joy without a sea of plastic that takes 200 years to decompose (Wright et al.,2018); outliving two generations of the children who play on it. What if instead, they were designed in a more natural, sustainable way? My uncle, Ric McConaghy, is doing just that. One of Australia’s leading play space designers, he is taking a more sustainable approach to children’s playgrounds with a philosophy focused on creating natural spaces rather than plastic spaces. Entering one of Ric’s community play spaces, there’s an immediate sense that this is not the sparse, primary-coloured plastic

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playground most of us grew up with. Instead, his spaces incorporate trees, rocks, water features, wooden playing frames and metal slides. The space is slowly revealed as paths twist and turn, and tunnels and bridges emerge through thickets of native trees and shrubs filled with the sound of native birdsong. Turning a corner, a large lady bird sculpture is perched on the side of a tree and you can hear water trickling down a nearby stream, your senses are immersed. Hopping across a row of wooden toadstools, a giant wombat appears carved out of a rock – a place to sit and let your imagination run wild. Ric’s playgrounds are an ode to Australia, using primarily native bush, native animal sculptures and Australian timbers. Musical and art features, like metal xylophones, create a cacophony of sounds that make you feel as if you’re in a magical garden. A crucial element to Ric’s play spaces is a slow reveal. “I hate the idea that you can walk in and just see everything all at once,” Ric explains, “I’d rather there were little twists and turns and hidden discovery elements – things you may not catch the first time you come.” Ric continues, “I’d love to think that you’d go to the same place

and after, you know, half a dozen visits, you might actually still see something or discover something you didn’t know was there.” Growing up in Wahroonga, in Sydney’s leafy Upper North Shore, Ric credits his earliest experiences as a child with cementing his deep connection to nature. “I was outside in the bush all the time and you just couldn’t help but fall in love,” he explains. “It was just so diverse and so exciting, engaging, scary and unpredictable.” From childhood, Ric recalls, “I’d throw my school bag on the bed and run out the door, and as long as I was back in time for tea I wouldn’t get in trouble”. This is what Ric is trying to create in his designs; a place where nature is a wonderland to explore, rather than an excess of plastic man-made structures. Every step of the way, Ric aims to tread lightly on the environment and be inclusive of every member of the community. “I think it’s really important for children in particular to have a deep connection to nature, so they feel connected to it, love and engage with it, and want to explore it,” he says. “Nature is absolutely critical to children’s wellbeing,” continues Ric. “If you look around

at the communities that are really struggling, they are the places nature has been absolutely desecrated. I want to offer some respite from the concrete and, more particularly, some respite from the planning around commerce and cars in our cities, and reintroduce humanity to nature.” Ric’s process is also about balancing community needs and ensuring his spaces are as sustainable as possible. “It’s not just making a play space out of timber instead of plastic, but also incorporating trees and rocks and plants and growing things so children learn to interact with and engage with nature while they’re playing,” explains Ric. Ric comments that traditionally, “playgrounds were created by going to a catalogue and picking a swing and a slide and then moving them around - that was it”. Instead, he likes to factor in every element of a site to create a space that is uniquely special to its landscape. “I want to walk around it, first thing in the morning, last thing at night and in the middle of the day, when it’s raining, when it’s cold, to just feel the thing.” Ric views sustainability as “holistic” and this informs his choice of materials- from sourcing

Nature is absolutely critical to children’s wellbeing...

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sustainable timber to buying local wherever possible. He adds, “Why ship something from overseas that could be built here?” “It’s also about making sure that whatever we design is relatively manageable and selfsufficient in an ongoing way, making deliberate plant selections so that once they’re established, they’ll look after themselves and therefore require less water and maintenance.” Across all of Ric’s play spaces is a celebration of Australian native plants which require less water and so add another element of sustainability to his work. “I choose plants that are not only native, but native to that area. So if I’m doing a job in Western Sydney, I want to use typically Western Sydney plants.” “Once you get a plant established that was already endemic to that area, it’s obviously going to be easier to look after.” Ric, who now lives on five hectares of land in Sydney’s Blue Mountains, continues, “Ultimately, what it’s going to do is sustain itself in the same way that looking out my window now, I’m surrounded by bloodwoods, and angophora’s, stringybark and ironwood, because that’s what grows here. I don’t go out and water the bush.” “I am very keen on collaboration, inclusion,

nature and creating a space that will continue to evolve. I don’t want to put it in and watch it deteriorate,” he explains. “For shade, instead of plastic-shade cloth that needs to be replaced within five years, I put in a big, beautiful tree, which in five years, is going to be bigger and more beautiful and give more shade.” No wastage is spared. Ric is mindful of how precious a resource water is in Australia, and so ensures that any water features used within his playgrounds are redistributed back through the garden beds to feed the plants. “It becomes a kind of symbiotic relationship between kids and plants and the ecosystem.” In Ric’s first collaboration with a disability organisation, another focus is to create play spaces that ensure inclusivity. Ric describes working with communities as, “a very open hearted, open minded process, where I go in with no preconceived notions and just try and find out what it is that they think they want. And that means including and engaging with children right down to kindergarten level as well as working with special schools to consult with children with disabilities”. Ric describes an interaction with a nine year-old boy, a recent immigrant to Australia, as

I’ve done my job right, if ten years down the track everything is still sustaining itself

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an “absolute epiphany” that led him to fiercely fight for inclusion throughout his career. Ric recounts, “I’ll never forget this little boy who said, ‘You know, when I first got here, the reason I never went to playgrounds is because if they were fenced, I thought they were for somebody else.’ It broke my heart. Coming from his cultural understanding, if it’s fenced, he’s not allowed to go in there.” “He probably forgot all about me four seconds after I left the classroom, yet his story lives on in me,” says Ric, “that’s why my playgrounds rarely have a fence, instead I’ll use trees so everyone feels very welcome.” Ric also engages with local Indigenous representatives when designing his playspaces to ensure that he knows the historical significance of the site and that their voices are being heard. “On one site, we’ve had a cultural representative

from the local mob on site for a good portion of the excavations.” Ric’s sustainability mission works in harmony with his determination to build inclusive spaces for all abilities and cultures. His holistic approach ensures that his play spaces are a celebration of Australian nature and its people. He says, “it is about creating a space where everyone feels welcomed, everyone is valued, and everyone’s opinions are heard. My goal is to deliver a great space for the community.” When I ask Ric what he hopes to see when returning to visit one of his play spaces, he responds, “full of people where everything’s robust and surviving, and the plants are thriving”. “I’ve done my job right, if ten years down the track everything is still sustaining itself.”

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Shiny Pink Beacon The The of Sustainable Menstrual Australia’s Menstrual Revolution Cup by Edwina Jackson

They look like a small acorn. But they’re usually pink. And squishy. Using one eradicates one wheelie garbage bin of waste, per person, per year. They weren’t spoken about much. But that’s changing. They are menstrual cups. These humble little objects, that embody the monumental push for sustainability and period normalisation in Australia today. In conversation with Carol Morris and Matilda Marsh, two of Australia’s leading sustainable sanitary products gurus, I discuss the ongoing environmental innovations occurring in their industry. I explore the evolution of period positivity and finally, how this revolution can be exhibited in one single object – the menstrual cup.

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Carol Morris co-founded the Sustainable Period Project in 2016 with her two sisters, Elizabeth Chapman and Susan Johns. Their aim: to inform all menstruating people about the sanitary products available to them, by starting a conversation that normalises periods. ‘We do this by providing schools with boxes that hold samples of all of the menstrual products: pads, tampons, cups. A kit we put together, that has an option for everyone, no matter your flavour of menstrual product.’ Skip forward four years, and the Sustainable Period Project kits have reached every single high school in Australia and New Zealand. This is a hefty achievement in the way of menstrual education, as normal, everyday conversations about periods are facilitated within school classes. ‘The kits get the students talking about periods. They have natural curiosity, so being able to touch the products, play with them, talk about which ones they would want to use, it’s really beneficial,’ Carol says. These conversations also play a major role in shifting the taboo surrounding menstruation, explains Carol: ‘Years ago, if we were going to talk about periods at a school or a health expo, we were definitely met with absolute embarrassment,’ she says. ‘People would visibly try and avoid our stand, as if we would infect them with some sort of weird period energy.’ ‘But now, we’ve actually found that people will see us and come up and interact with our samples. It’s definitely become a more comfortable situation.’ The comfort in talking about periods, the de-stigmatisation, is the crucial catalyst in creating more sustainable menstrual practices. This is because conversation opens up the awareness of just how wasteful conventional, single-use sanitary products are. ‘We need to talk about this. We need people to know that the average person uses around twenty-two products per period. That’s pads, tampons, panty liners, night nappies. That’s about one shopping bag full of waste, per cycle,’ Carol says. ‘If we have twelve cycles per year, that’s about a wheelie bin’s worth of waste per menstruating person, per year.’ When you consider that roughly half of the world’s population menstruates, this figure, and the problem, becomes insurmountable.

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Luckily, the environmental war against period waste has started and is continuing to be waged. ‘Over the past eighteen months, we have definitely seen media covering menstrual cups, period underpants and reusable pads. We are seeing them put a sustainable angle into the period pieces in magazines. It is a massive positive change,’ Carol says. At the forefront of the menstrual revolution is the menstrual cup. It is the pinnacle of sustainability, the enviro-warrior’s favourite weapon. A conversation with Matilda Marshall, co-founder of leading Australian brand Myoni Cups, further documented the trail that menstrual cups are blazing towards zero-waste periods. ‘At Myoni we wanted to ensure that our cups were designed for less waste,’ Matilda says. ‘This meant designing a robust product, something that would last forever, and that we could recycle.’ As a result, all the cups at Myoni are made through Australian supply chains, from locally sourced recyclable materials. This means that instead of contributing to landfill every cycle, the menstrual cup creates a ‘closed loop life process,’ as Matilda puts it. But the menstrual cup goes further than just being recyclable. The inherent reusability of the cup means that you only need to buy a new one every four or five years, Matilda explains. This dramatically decreases the total amount of waste a menstruating person creates. It’s the phenomenal, zero-waste capacity of the menstrual cup that makes it the beacon of sustainability in the sanitary industry, and the go-to for more and more people these days. ‘With the environmental conversation becoming more and more in depth, and people becoming more aware of how they are spending their money, the menstrual cup is definitely a growing product,’ Matilda says. ‘And it is this environmental awareness, together with the awesome groundswell of period positivity, that is driving the sustainable menstrual revolution, as we call it.’ An incredible revolution that is gaining perpetual momentum. So much so, that the Victorian Government outlined in August that they are ensuring every government school student has access to free sanitary products. This is a $20.7 million initiative that started in term three of the last school year, continuing to the present (Victoria State Government, 2020). They began this release with the simple sentence: This is a superb step towards circulating a nationwide attitude of period normality, which further

‘In Victoria, periods are no longer taboo.’ acts as a springboard for swelling the consciousness of sustainable period practices

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When asked for their tips on how to menstruate in a more period-positive, sustainable fashion, both Carol and Matilda expressed the same final remark; ‘Just have a rethink... is what you are doing the best thing?’ Matilda says. ‘Even just having a look around at different sustainable options is a great start.’ ‘And if the concept (of using a menstrual cup) just seems too enormous, try bite sized products,’ Carol suggests. ‘Trust me, using a menstrual cup does become really normal.’ It’s not like periods are normalised, not yet. Menstrual cups aren’t either. But through the groundswell of progress made by the sustainable period revolution, it’s obvious that people are questioning their everyday habits. They are embracing the new.

It is this invigorating embracement that will normalise periods, someday. And zero-waste cycles too.

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climate stories climate st ries climate stories clima climate stories climate st ries climate stories clima by Katherine Doherty People will always try to control you by constraining your sense of what’s possible in the world. They want to tell you that reality consists of only the things that they are willing to recognize, and anything else is foolishness. – Charlie Jane Anders

People tell many stories about climate change. There is the story told by the traditional climate deniers, who say it is a myth, a lie, a conspiracy. This idea is dangerous, of course, but it is increasingly fringe – it’s hard to insist that nothing is changing as more and more people see the evidence of our turbulent earth in front of their eyes. On the other hand, there are the stories that branch out from scientific consensus about the physical facts of global warming. Some people tell stories of how we can save the planet and ourselves, with individual action or political revolution. Some say the planet will save us, that Gaia will adapt. Others believe that nothing can save us. All of these stories are embedded in certain paradigms, worldviews, ideas about how the world is and can be. So far, our story is one in which the wicked problem of climate change is too complicated to tackle given conflicting interests, needs and desires, in which inaction is a reasonable response to the threat. It is a story in which powerful people and businesses make every decision, because someone has to do it, and politicians and capitalists consider themselves more qualified or practical than the people who are affected by their choices. It is a

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story in which the polluting Global North (despite being ‘developed’ with the plundered wealth of the Global South) can demand the South not build its own wealth, lest their emissions rise. It is a story in which ‘development’ is always linked to rising emissions and rising wealth, in which time is a straight line of progress from bad to good. Clearly, we need to change the story. However, we cannot do this if we don’t recognise that this is a story, that it is not just ‘the way the world is.’ There is no physical, scientific fact governing how we must structure our society and economy. It is all a system of beliefs, of fictions, which is not to say that any of it is less real as a result, but simply that it can change. So many narratives that are presented as ‘solutions’ to the climate crisis essentially derive from the same paradigm we are currently working with. They are not changing the story. There are politicians and entrepreneurs who are concerned but comfortable, who insist that it is enough to mitigate the impacts of climate change with a ‘green economy’; a more thoughtful form of capitalism. There are those who think that the infinite ingenuity and might of the human race will develop

tories ate stor tories ate stor

technology that can clean up the mess we have made, and allow us to continue to make it. They believe we can keep mining the earth for lithium for solar batteries, or for more fossil fuels because we can always scrub the carbon out of the air. There are those who believe we can adapt, build our cities so they are more resilient and then watch the forests burn and the oceans become empty of life as we sit safe within our seawalls. People have proposed so many ways to survive the coming centuries without really, fundamentally changing what we are doing. These all seem like different stories, and in some ways they are. But really, they are all permutations of a capitalist, neo-colonial, anthropocentric narrative which says that our current model of injustice and destruction can be cleaned and greened, reformed and refined, but never truly changed. I don’t believe this. I don’t believe that the way we live now is the only way we ever can live. We are killing ourselves on every scale – our communities, our people and every other living being on the planet. People often act as though the idea of a different world is unrealistic – as though a society built on care and cooperation cannot exist. They point to the failures of the 20th century and socialism as evidence that neoliberal capitalism is the only way an economy can function – a false binary between two economic systems – which downplays the failures and violence of capitalism and ignores alternative economic systems, both theoretical and historical. Furthermore, they act as though the anthropocentrism – the idea that humans are the centre of the universe – that underlies so much of the devastation we have wrought upon this planet is simply an unchangeable reality. They pretend to have ‘progressed’ but fundamentally cling to old ideas such as the Great Chain of Being, a tenet of mediaeval Christianity. This idea places everything in the universe in a hierarchical order; God above angels, angels above humans, humans above animals, animals above plants. Whether or not we believe in God and angels, many still cling to the hierarchy that tells them they are uniquely important amongst the world’s beings, and act as though humans are incapable of valuing and preserving the more-than-human world as equal to ourselves. A small group of selfish and violent people claim that selfishness and violence are inherent to the human species. They believe that we will always harm and exploit one another, and the rest of the world around us. They believe that the world is a place of scarcity and brutality, and always will be. None of this is scientific fact – it is a failure of imagination, a trick played by people who benefit from this story, in order that they should not lose the power and privilege this system affords them. Ursula Le Guin famously wrote: ‘We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in... the art of words.’ We need to tell ourselves a new story (or perhaps a very old one). There is no physical fact that means we cannot live with care and purpose, that we cannot value each other and the more-than-human world in which we live. It is the idea of continuing as we are that is unrealistic. What the science says – the only thing that the science says – is that we must change, or we will die. It is up to us to decide what new stories we will live in.

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“HISTORY” by Darcy Brumpton. 061

has the environmental movement inhibited the voices that need to be empowered? by Jay In the last five years, a new wave of environmentalism has seen the formation of organisations such as the Climate Council, Extinction Rebellion and the Australian Youth Climate Coalition. These bodies have advocated for a new line of thinking whereby climate action is underpinned by concepts such as gender equality, environmental justice and ‘decolonization’. There is no doubt that these notions are shared by most climate and Indigenous allies. However, many of the organisations which promote these ideas maintain a sense of exclusivity and to some extent, unconsciously enforce the exact structural barriers that they claim to be breaking down. This forces us to consider whether the environmental movement has inhibited the voices that need to be empowered. It’s important for me to acknowledge that I am a straight, white male, a youth worker and a former bricklayer, now in my final year of a Bachelor of Public Health & Sustainability degree. I wasn’t fully aware of my ancestry until the age of 13. It was then that I became curious as to why my mum, and some of her family members, had a darker skin tone than others in the family.

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When I questioned her on the matter, I was told that I was Aboriginal. Since then, I have often found myself feeling juxtaposed- I identify with my Aboriginal background as much as I do with my Swedish and Italian heritage, I have never felt completely comfortable acknowledging this when asked by others due to the questions it often prompts about my own skin colour. I acknowledge that there are many privileges that come with being a Caucasian male. For instance, I feel comfortable walking through the streets of my neighbourhood, Frankston, at night despite its enduring stigma as a place of few opportunities and high rates of criminal activity. I also acknowledge that my appearance may assist me in acquiring prestigious positions in the workforce. Whilst I acknowledge these privileges, I also acknowledge my experiences. Having grown up in a highly disadvantaged environment and having worked within Indigenous communities in Far North Queensland and in the south-eastern suburbs of Naarm, I feel qualified to speak on these matters. So, let’s take a look at the environmental movement, the people within it, and who it benefits. I hope to open up conversation about

how we can break down some of the barriers that perpetuate the inequality experienced by Aboriginal communities. There are characteristics common to many of the people within not-for-profit environmental organisations; they are often young, white, and university or private school educated. They often come from a stable family environment, a financially sound background, and live within a metropolitan area. Environmental activists are usually social media savvy and well-connected to a variety of opportunities and organisations. For these people, opportunities to be heard within the environmental movement have and will continue to be far more accessible than they are for Indigenous people. This is evident when we look at university environmental clubs, such as Fossil Free RMIT and the plethora of clubs offered by the University of Melbourne Student Union. For those activists who are not old enough to be at university, many have the privilege of attending affluent schools. From my own experiences attending environmental camps in high school, and now facilitating community development training, I know these schools are privy to some of the most well-resourced environmental clubs in the education system. Many Aboriginal people arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t as fortunate. Throughout Australia, 43 percent of the Indigenous population live in regional and remote areas, compared to only 19 percent of the non-Indigenous Australian population (Australian Institute of Health & Welfare 2015). Differences in literacy levels are unacceptable and only 65 percent of Indigenous people attain their higher school certificate, compared to 90 percent of the non-Indigenous population (National Indigenous Australians Agency 2020). For those Indigenous people who do make it to university, they must continuously defy barriers. They make up less than 2 percent of all onshore domestic students, and generally attend universities with poorer reputations. In addition to this, Indigenous people are three times more likely to withdraw from university, citing isolation and homesickness as the main reasons for leaving (Creative Spirits 2018). These statistics, while not new, present insights into the elite tendencies of environmentalist circles. It is due to these disadvantages that young Indigenous people face difficulty when asserting themselves within the environmental movement.

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As stated, I am an Indigenous youth worker. I actively design, implement and evaluate culturally tailored programs to engage and empower young Indigenous people. To provide context, many of my clients have experienced violence and oppression of many forms. Unfortunately, some have even fallen into this cycle and ended up in the juvenile justice system. Yet despite these obstacles, Indigenous ecological knowledge has, and continues to be, passed on through generations of communities stretching as far south as Paredareme country in Oyster Bay, to as far north as Miriwong in the Kimberleys. The breadth of their ecological knowledge has been unparalleled by that in any academic circle I have been involved with. Alarmingly, the issues surrounding violence and trauma are only being amplified by climate change and it is extremely rare to find a young Aboriginal person who hasn’t been personally impacted by one of these issues. As a result, their views on many aspects of life -friends, language, women, relationships and social outlook- have been

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constructed differently to those constituting the typical person in environmental circles. Many young Indigenous people exist within and are shaped by a social context that could not be more contradictory to the feelings of ease, hopefulness and inclusivity experienced by those within activist circles. However, Indigenous people and their knowledge is crucial to environmental and justice advocates. We need anecdotal evidence as to how community and culture are impacted by climate change, and we need this information to become mainstream. Thankfully, many of my clients are eager to create this change, as they know that the ecological health of their communities impacts their own wellbeing. But, as it stands, the movement’s fixation on political correctness, inclusion, language appropriation, and defying patriarchal dominance, creates an exclusive, selfserving group for the young, white and privileged. Furthermore, it develops a foundation for social exclusion to occur, making it an unsafe space for many others. TTo reiterate, Indigenous young people are a product

of their own life experiences and for many, trauma and intergenerational issues constitute these experiences. Despite this, many young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people maintain strong community ties, practice language and engage with their culture. A positive aspect of being a youth worker and an Indigenous person is seeing young men sharing jokes and being cheeky, it demonstrates their strong social ties and sense of security in a safe environment. Often my clients will swear, they’ll laugh, and they’ll talk about young women in a way that, in the context of their world-view, is not derogatory. In many environmental circles however, these behaviours may be misinterpreted and deemed unacceptable. For Indigenous people, with their vastly different experiences and understanding of the world, there is a risk that their interactions could be taken out of context By only accepting the modern ideas of political correctness and language appropriation that are prevalent in environmental circles, the person speaking on

Organisations entrenched in the environmental movement have experienced a paradigm shift in the way that climate action is being provisioned. Finally, they are making a conscious effort to empower Indigenous people in their approach to climate change.

behalf of white fragility fails to recognise the behaviour and language of young Indigenous people as equal to their own. Some Aboriginal peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s experiences of violence and oppression have dictated the way they react to cues within the social environment. Trauma has shaped their world-view, which can often lead to feelings of discomfort when wanting to speak of their own truths amongst people who have been protected by their privilege. For many young Aboriginal people, there is an element of intimidation: a fear of being too different from the majority in the activist landscape, a fear of accidentally upsetting the wrong person, a fear of ostracization. These feelings may hinder their ability to rise in the activist landscape and so they may prevent Indigenous people from engaging in these groups in a way that would not only be beneficial to their communities, but in a way that would see it become a financially viable option for career progression. I experienced similar feelings at a climate justice facilitation skills workshop I attended. While discussing experiences of conflict in our own lives, my peers brought up examples regarding their friends. Regrettably, I brought up a time when I was 16 and involved in a situation where I saw two women violently assaulted by three men. It was a shocking experience, but the truest form of conflict I could convey. My peers seemed to react with horror. As I remember, it was rather awkward, people were looking with shock at the person next to them. It became clear that my peers had probably never encountered such an experience. Environmentalists often fail to realise that this is very real in the lives of Indigenous young people. But itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the effects of situations like these that cause Indigenous people to feel different, that make them feel socially vulnerable and unsafe amongst privileged groups. And so, the differences in their life experiences and their fear of being ostracised hinders their willingness to engage with, and potentially lead, conversations about environmental issues. This is

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because environmental organisations are dominated by privileged individuals who have, in general, been shielded from the violence, dysfunction, and traumas that are so influential on how some Indigenous people interact with the world. As a result, social discrimination can occur inadvertently when people within the majority react unfavourably to the behaviours, language and anecdotes which Indigenous youth would otherwise display in a culturally safe setting. By no means am I taking aim at my peers, and I sincerely hope that this has not come across in that manner. I am so grateful to have met people within the environmental movement, to have shared ideas with them, to have learnt from other young leaders, and to have progressed towards a more climate-friendly future. But we must become braver. We must acknowledge that people are subjected to vastly different realities in life, and that these shape our language and behaviour. Moving forward, we must make a commitment to reflect on our own unconscious biases and understand how

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our privilege can affect the outcomes of others trying to assert themselves in the environmental movement. The idea of decolonisation has become sought after in our environmental circles. This is practical and backed up by 80,000 years of ecological research. Decolonisation provides access to the untapped wealth of knowledge and prospective leaders within Indigenous communities who would be beneficial in our attempt to transition to a more sustainable society. But environmentalists must realise that, in order to promote Indigenous voices, Indigenous youth must feel safe in social settings dominated by non-Indigenous people. This cannot occur when the same privileged groups that preach the notions of decolonisation and inclusion are the same groups that enforce their desired behavioural and linguistic ideals upon people who have experienced vastly different challenges.

COVID-19, RECOVERY, OPPORTUNITY an unlikely opportunity to fast-track Australiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s green economy

1 - Currently, every Australian State and Territory has committed to achieving net zero emissions by 2050, with Soiuth Australia commited to 2030, although the Morrison Government officially opposes these goals (Mazengarb, 2020).

by Max Lowman

COVID-19 presents an unlikely opportunity to fast-track Australiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s green energy economy. Australia could be part of a global movement towards a green energy recovery from a pandemic-caused recession. By investing money in renewable energy infrastructure, the Australian Government could stimulate jobs, the economy and supply sustainable energy for the future. Christiana Figueres, Costa Rican diplomat and former executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, says governments across the globe are collectively injecting at least $12 trillion into the world economy in light of the pandemic (Nicholson, 2020). The scale and speed of this investment will define the global economy for the next three decades. Investing money into renewable energy would define whether countries are on track towards their 2050 carbon neutral targets. For instance, The European Union has released a $90 billion plan for improving home efficiency, and $20 billion investments in green transport and renewable energy (BZE, 2020). The economic recovery packages invested into green energy infrastructure in the next year will have more impact on decarbonising Australia than any political zero emissions commitment the Government can make.1 Australia needs to be a leader in the transition to clean energy. Investing in renewable economic recovery packages needs to happen now. Australia has the capacity to become Asia-Pacificâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest exporter of green energy. We have conditions for large-scale wind, solar and maritime energy on our doorstep. Renewable energy prices are dropping steadily making them more affordable and effective business models. For instance, the cost of generating power with solar photovoltaics (the solar panels used on a roof) has dropped by 82% over the last 10 years (IRENA, 2020). Investing in a green energy recovery would grant us a cheaper internal energy source that could simultaneously be sold to China to substitute diminishing coal exports.

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The Government should pass policies to mobilise the extensive private interest in developing green energy infrastructure. Coal and extractive sources of industry are increasingly seen as highrisk investments as governments move towards green energy. The infamous energy giant, Adani, is diversifying from using coal as a primary energy source and has won the contract for the world’s largest solar farm in India (Parnell, 2020). Private investments should be encouraged by the government, but these investments are currently stagnated by a range of policies which favour fossil-fuel giants, making it difficult for developing green technologies to become effective in the long-run.2 Investing in a green energy recovery will protect and provide Australian jobs. Beyond Zero Emissions (BZE) (2020) published a proposal arguing for 1.8 million potential jobs in the renewable energy sector over the next five years, many of which are ongoing. This employment is vital for the 800,000+ Australians who have lost their jobs during the pandemic. This plan has been backed by leaders in the green energy industry including Figueres and Mike Cannon-Brookes, CEO of the Software company, Atlassian. A green economy is a strong economy. Figueres said ‘Australia needs to build forward, not back’ as we build our economy in a carbon-constrained world. Australia cannot rely on coal forever. Australia’s largest trading partner, China, has already announced revised goals to be carbon neutral by 2060, meaning the nation will be steadily reducing their need for our natural resources. Robert Glasser, former special representative of the UN Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction, said reducing coal exports for Australia would mean more economic pain ‘but the pain will be enormously larger if the climate continues to warm, if those assets that we currently have are stranded in coal and fossil fuels’ (Nicholson, 2020). Green energy will be more economically stable and competitive in the long run. BZE’s Million Job Plan ensures a diverse economy that does not rely on 2 - For more info on policy to help mobilise private investment in green energy infrastructure: https://www.oecd.org/daf/inv/investment-policy/Private-investment-in-clean-energy-infrastructure.pdf

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limited energy sources. De-carbonising the economy creates a stronger economy, with more jobs, more liveable cities, more productive land use and greater economic independence, not to mention global environmental responsibility.

So, what’s stopping us from adopting a green economic plan? Figueres addressed this on a panel in June 2020 discussing BZE’s million jobs plan for Australia. The panellists agreed progress on Australia’s environmental policy is stagnated by our partisan politics. A range of areas are in need of new policy, such as investor and intellectual property protection for green technology. Policies have not yet become politically palpable for politicians on both sides. This stagnation means the only effective policies that do get passed tend to be risk-adverse responses to direct consequences of climate change, rather than precautionary measures. If we aren’t proactive in our stance to climate change, we will permanently be in a state of recovery from disasters. This year has demonstrated the need for such action. The fires were an ominous taste of the disasters Australians can expect, and there is even a growing body of evidence that suggests climate change will facilitate the spread of deadly illness such as COVID-19 and Ebola (see pages 70-73). Effective green energy policy has struggled to appear politically palpable. Thus, a number of barriers for scaling-up investment in clean energy infrastructure remain. These include inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, a lack of predictable policy, a weak regulatory environment in the energy sector, and inadequate support to assist immature green technologies in achieving efficacy on par with incumbent technologies (OECD, 2015).The result is a market and regulatory rigidities that favour fossil-fuel incumbency in the electricity sector. International energy giants like Adani continue to benefit from these policies, while simultaneously pouring money into lobby groups and the pockets of politicians for political favour. Australia’s government cannot sit back and observe the success of green economy plans in other nations. Our response mustn’t be a reaction to consequences of climate change, but progressive and precautionary. Australia is currently one of the world’s worst polluters per capita, as well as the world’s biggest coal exporter (Nicolson, 2020). If all greenhouse gas production ceased tomorrow, the climate would continue to warm for decades. Climate change will have a huge and disruptive impact on our lessdeveloped island neighbours, triggering massive food shortages and subsequently, an asylum seeker crisis in Australia. There is an urgency to act now, before these impacts have irreparable political consequences for Australia. We can still turn the tide for humanity, but our window to do so is narrow. Australia must direct investment towards infrastructure to provide jobs, economic stimulus and long-term profits. It is vital that we use this opportunity to invest in renewable energy infrastructure and fast-track towards a carbon neutral economy.

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Could Climate Change and Environmental Destruction Accelerate us into a World Defined by Disease and Pandemics?

? by Caitlin Ward

As this horrific summer drew to a close, it seemed that 2020 would be the year that brought drastic climate action. This was exemplified by protests that voiced a growing call from many Australians for our government to take urgent climate action following the bush fires. Yet, the reality of COVID-19 becoming a serious pandemic rapidly overshadowed the climate emergency. The rapid shift in our cultural discourse highlighted how we have separated the issues of human health and climate change, despite existing scientific discourse that has already begun to demonstrate the impact of climate change on human health. Emerging scientific evidence shows us that climate change can directly affect human health in two key ways. Firstly, climate change increases the frequency of natural disasters, heatwaves, and droughts, all of which affect human health and disease-related morbidity. However, what may be considerably more pressing is our growing vulnerability to infectious diseases in the face of climate change, including vector-borne diseases, zoonotic diseases, and even the common

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1 - Disease transmitted to human via living organism that can transmit infectious pathogens

the animals are weary...

...(and so are we)

flu. The global community has labelled COVID-19 as a once-in-a-century event. However, scientific discourse is already beginning to refute this suggesting that climate change, coupled with increasing environmental destruction, may rapidly accelerate us into a world of disease and pandemics. The growing evidence-based links between climate change and human health generate an important question: what would happen to our global discourse regarding climate change if we began to communicate the idea of a dual climate and health emergency, especially given our lived experience of COVID-19? While there is no connection between climate change and the spread of

COVID-19, many climate experts fear a repeat of the pandemic unless urgent action is taken to limit greenhouse gas emissions and repair ecosystem damage. Emerging infectious diseases and changing disease distributions are informed by complex ecological, epidemiological, and sociological interactions. We are beginning to understand the multitude of ways these interactions are influenced by climate change, as will be discussed in this essay. This highlights how an interdisciplinary understanding of ecologic, social, climate, and medical sciences will be vital to understanding our growing vulnerability to infectious diseases and changing disease distribution. The World Health Organisation estimates that

zoonosis is responsible for up to 75% of emerging diseases (new diseases being detected in the human population). This includes COVID-19, Ebola, Hendra, SARS, Nipah, and swine flu (Vaughan 2020). Zoonosis occurs when a disease from a vertebrate animal- mammals, birds, and reptiles- infects a human. Changing land use, increasing levels of agriculture, famine, and climate change are key drivers of human exposure to zoonotic disease. We know that transmission of such viruses most commonly occurs through vector-borne transmission, followed by airborne transmission and direct contact. These viruses are rarely transmitted through the foodborne or contamination pathways that are more characteristic of bacterial

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transmission (Loh et al. 2015). Research is revealing how climate change and environmental degradation and leading to increased contact between humans and pathogen-carrying animals. Furthermore, it is being shown how this may contribute to the high rates of zoonosis amongst emerging infectious diseases. Currently, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services estimates that there are upwards of 1.7 million potential harmful viruses in mammal and bird populations. Fortunately, not all of these will spill over into human populations, but some certainly will make the transition (Vaughan 2020). A multitude of variables influence the ability of a virus to mutate, transfer to a human, and then successfully invade the immune system. Human-to-human transmission without the need for a non-human reservoir is the most concerning step of any zoonosis event. However, in 99% of instances, the first human case of infection will not be transferred to another human, and it is this step that is vital for a virus to take hold of a population. What is becoming increasingly clear however, is that climate change and environmental degradation are increasing human exposure to animal reservoirs of pathogens which in turn, have the potential to cause devastating epidemics or pandemics. Climate change is not the sole reason for the increase in zoonotic diseases; nor is the ability of a zoonotic disease to mutate and infect humans directly related to climate change (Curseu et al. 2010). Rather, climate change is a driver of vulnerability and opportunity for zoonosis to successfully infect humans. It is also predicted to change the seasonality and geography of infectious diseases. It may even impact how frequently we get sick (Agustsson, Hatton and Ginn 2020). However, it is important to recognise that quantitative studies related to these issues are currently limited. This is predominantly due to the complex, indirect, and feedback-based interactions between climate change, and the biogeographic relationships between animals and humans. Studying the issue is further complicated by the sheer number of variables that influence the spread and mutation of disease in a population. The biogeographical distribution of

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humans, animals and insects is changing with our climate. This, coupled with the disruption of biodiversity and our natural environments, changes the frequency and location of humananimal interactions. Environmental degradation and habitat loss, in conjunction with climate change, will affect animal and insect distribution, and accelerate the extinction of many species in wild environments. The most noticeable impacts of this will act through the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;dilution effectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. This proposes that high diversity in animal populations leads to reduced spread of disease through low density of species, and thus a reduced number of potential hosts. The dilution effect also lowers the possibility that a viral infection in a non-human population will be transferred to the human population (Agustsson, Hatton and Ginn 2020). Furthermore, loss of biodiversity and habitat encourages the reproduction of dominant, adaptable species that can thrive in urban environments, such as bats, birds and rats, and then come into contact with humans, thereby facilitating transmission. Human displacement due to climate change and related natural disasters is driving migration into, and urbanisation of, previously non-urban environments. In turn, this drives population growth, urban sprawl, and gentrification. The effect this has on the distribution of diseases and disease risk are most pronounced in the Global South. An issue of justice develops whereby there is an unequal distribution of risk as a consequence of the relationship between living conditions, population density, access to health care, socio-environmental transitions, and structural drivers. These factors act in tandem to increase the vulnerability of those in the Global South to infectious diseases. Communities in the Global South, especially those in rural and periurban areas, live closer to natural environments and more frequently rely on interactions with these environments for their livelihood. It has also been shown that increasing population growth and urbanisation are correlated with greater infectious disease burden and vulnerability to epidemics in the Global South (Ahmed et al. 2019). In addition, population growth is encouraging the expansion and intensification of agriculture. This, in combination with climate change, is driving an increase in human-

animal interactions that have the potential to result in infection. Increasing exposure to, and opportunity for, infectious disease transmission will likely enhance the growing trend in zoonotic events. The impact of climate change on human vulnerability to infectious disease cannot be pinpointed as increasing, decreasing or having no impact. This is because global patterns in disease, human vulnerability, and exposure risk will continue to fluctuate as the climate changes. Some areas will become more hospitable for pathogen-carrying animals and insects. Others will become too hot and dry, forcing animals to encroach on urban spaces. Another important consideration is the scope of environmental degradation outside of climate change; land-use and its influence on micro-climatic conditions has the potential to impact the emergence of infectious diseases, especially on a localized scale (Patz and Olson 2006). We are only just beginning to understand how sensitive human health is to climate change. However, what has been made clear by the global response to COVID-19 is how underprepared we are for pandemics. This is important to consider as climate change and environmental destruction accelerate the emergence of infectious diseases. The impact of COVID-19 could become an important tool in re-framing the climate emergency; through this new lens, we may consider and discuss how the climate crisis will affect us and our health. We can emphasise how changing disease patterns and our growing vulnerability to disease may be mitigated through urgent climate action. Our understanding of climate change, environmental destruction and ecosystem exploitation needs to be interwoven with our understanding of human health and emerging infectious diseases.

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Hâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;mong Children by Incinerator by Amanda Reid Two Hâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;mong girls stand on a hill overlooking a trash incinerator in Dong Van, Ha Giang, on the Vietnamese side of the Chinese border. Although these girls live in one of the most remote places in Vietnam, COVIDâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s effect on the tourist industry is becoming more noticeable in their neighboring communities that rely on tourism for their livelihood.

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Shifting the Overton Window. Interview with Guy Abrahams by Noa Abrahams Illustration by Steve Lo Casto / www.studiolocasto

My earliest memory of engaging with environmental issues is from grade one – I wrote a story about a princess who sees rubbish on the beach and picks it all up. In the years that followed, I learnt about erosion, ice caps and warming waters. Becoming increasingly disillusioned with the lack of climate action, or even recognition of the problem, I’ve found myself feeling weighed down by the magnitude of threats climate change has on our natural world, livelihoods, and humanity. This is why I find the guidance and optimism of my uncle, Guy Abrahams, so inspiring. We not only need to see cultures and policies change, he argues, but we are also in a position to make this possible.

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Guy Abrahams is a climate activist, art consultant, and cofounder of CLIMARTE; an organisation evoking climate discussion through visual arts. Following studies in arts and law, Guy directed the Christine Abrahams Gallery for 20 years before completing a Master of Environment at the University of Melbourne and refocusing his work towards climate action. He speaks with an uplifting sense of hope for the future, envisaging a renewable world as inevitable – ‘it’s no longer about if ... but how quickly.’ Q: How did you find activism? Have your values changed over time, or have you changed what you’re doing to fit your values?

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When I was working at the gallery, we had a function for the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF). Their speaker was also a lecturer at Melbourne University, and he told me about the Master of Environment, for which he lectured. He suggested that I consider it one day and that’s what I decided to do. We closed the gallery and the next year (2008) I went back to university. Even at that point, I was aware of the impact of climate change but I thought it was just one of several environmental issues we needed to deal with. During the first couple months of the course, it quickly dawned on me that climate change was the issue. I felt that I had learnt something from which there was no going back. Some things, once you know, you can’t unknow. That was scary, but also motivating because I felt that it was something that needed work, and I was looking for something to work on. Then Al Gore came to Australia as part of his Climate Reality Project. The training focused on explaining and raising awareness of climate change, and ways of countering climate deniers. People still thought then that by reason or logic alone you could change people’s minds, which I no longer think is the case. I then spent two to three years delivering thirty to forty Climate Reality presentations to all sorts of groups. It was about spreading the word, getting more and more people to be aware that this was an issue. During the training, we were asked; “What can you bring to this? Where are your connections, what special advantage or knowledge do you have?” That’s when I had this light bulb moment; thinking about what the arts contributed and not being able to think of anything substantial. That’s when this idea of engaging people through the arts popped into my head.

Q: Do you think that the process is just slower than we might hope, or not the only thing that we need? I think it’s now past the point where most people don’t know it’s an issue. It’s now just a matter of having enough people who convince governments and businesses that this is what needs to be done, and I think we’re pretty close to a tipping point on that, if not already tipped. It’s no longer about if we’re going to do it, it’s about how quickly we’re going to do it. Looking at the Australian Government, which, in the past, has been really promoting coal fired power – that’s all really died down. They’re not really promoting new coal fired power stations anymore. They’ve moved to gas, which is probably just as bad as coal, but there’s slippage happening. They’ve been pushed back and back and back into a corner. The biggest companies are also all adopting climate strategies. We might say they’re not good enough, or they’re not sincere enough, but for whatever reason, it’s something that’s on everyone’s radar and they feel obliged to do something. We’re definitely at a different place than we were ten years ago. Now, the people who oppose the action or try to block the action either have an ideological problem with the whole notion of doing something on a communal basis, or else have vested interests in fossil fuel companies and other associated companies. They can still make money out of those things for a while yet and have invested enormous amounts in those businesses and enterprises. Any money that they make is just extra on top. And some politicians hold with one or both of those views. So it’s pretty clear now who the ‘blockers’ are. It’s not ignorance anymore.

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Q: How do we manage spaces and make sure that diverse voices are both present and listened to? I think it’s vitally important – as important in the climate space as it is in every other space. By embracing intersectionality, I think the climate movement can really become a model of how all movements and all aspects of society should operate. That is, with input from all groups – especially those impacted by the problems and policies that are being debated. There’s a vast resource of knowledge that these various groups hold, which can

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As costs of renewables come down, even fossil fuel companies are diversifying into renewables because they can’t compete with purely renewable companies. It’s more expensive to build a new coal power station than it is to build a solar power station. So, the economics has definitely shifted. Ten years ago, we were saying, “The economics of it will be better in ten or twenty years,” trying to convince people to act with climate change in mind because it will be better, because it was the right thing to do. Now, it’s not only the right thing to do, it’s also the economically sensible thing to do. It’s economically stupid not to consider the impact of climate change on business, whatever business you have. That message is spreading pretty fast. Australia and America are outliers in this field. In Britain, for example, there’s a very conservative government in power that is absolutely promoting action on climate change. Even China, which has enormous coal plants, is moving into renewables, because it sees the economic advantage. Economic systems like free market capitalism don’t account for the damage that unlimited growth produces. We can’t dig stuff out of a finite planet forever, but that has not yet been recognised by the ‘system.’ Whether the system will change to recognise that or whether it will be forced upon it is hard to say. Personally, although I think systemic change is important, I don’t know if it’s feasible or even useful to try and change the whole system right now. If we don’t at least do a pretty good job of reining in the key causes of climate challenge right now, our economic system will collapse into chaos. It’s much better to have an orderly transition, and that’s where I think most of our efforts should be.

I’m not saying it’s not good to try and work out what better systems could look like. The pandemic has shown us, as nothing else has been able to, that there is a vital role for governments to play in creating policy and funding programmes that sustain our common interests. The amount of money being spent by governments in response to the pandemic would have been unthinkable a year ago, but it is just this level of intervention that both the pandemic and climate change require.

“So it’s pretty clear now who the ‘blockers’ are, it’s not ignorance anymore.”

Q: Those people still hold a lot of the power - do you think we can still achieve the goals (renewable fuel transition) in our current economic and political systems?

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help face the challenges we meet. If climate change is the greatest challenge the world has faced, if we’re not going to have a whole of community input and response to this global problem, when will we? Q: There seems to be a prominent generational approach – young people seem to be exposed to a lot of the negative and not so much of the hopeful side of the issue. A lot of the hopeful side is often portrayed only in economic terms and maybe that’s not what young people are as interested in. Lobbying for governments to change or adopt certain policies is often about figures, quantities. There’s not a lot of discussion about community, belonging, integrity, honesty, justice and so on. What’s so refreshing about the youth climate movement is the passionate discussion, not about numbers, but the sort of world they want to be in, the sort of world they want to grow up in. Older generations can be more cynical. They might say, ‘Well of course we want to live in a cohesive society where we all love each other, but you can’t do that until we’ve got all this stuff,’ sort of like the argument, “well, we can’t save the environment unless we’ve got a strong enough economy to put money into saving the environment.” [This] is backwards reasoning, because as we all know, there’s no strong economy or much of anything else on a planet that can’t provide our basic life support systems. Q: That’s where the arts fit in. Yeah, so the idea is that the arts expresses some of those feelings, emotions, other parts of our experience, which are just as

“Changing your frame of reference, changing the possibilities that are available to you. A theory of change.”

fundamentally important and persuasive as facts and numbers. Of course, we need rational, practical, and scientific knowledge – it is essential to understanding the physical reality of climate change, its impacts and solutions – but we also need the sort of knowledge that is provided by the personal, unique, aesthetic responses to these issues. It is this form of knowledge which, in Bill McKibben’s words, is more likely to “register in our gut.” There’s this concept of the Overton Window – shifting the frame of reference within what’s possible. Sometimes, the radical pushing at one end at least opens the discussion, and possibility, in the community’s mind, so that later you can actually have those discussions and they don’t seem so radical. The idea of going completely renewable ten years ago was, even to ‘reasonable’ people, pretty radical. But now, most people think it’s probably going to happen. Their frame of reference has changed. Imagine looking out a window and seeing a whole landscape out there. You stand back from the window and see a certain portion of it. All the options you have about what goes on outside are within your view. But suddenly that window is made bigger, or you shift your perspective in relation to it, walk around a bit and see things you couldn’t see before. The possibilities change. Changing your frame of reference can change the possibilities that are available to you. The arts not only show but indeed make us feel the problems that we are facing. They allow us to have a taste of our possible futures, both bad and good. They can help us imagine what sort of society we really want, not merely what others say we should want, or what we should be prepared to accept. Of course, by itself, imagining a sustainable, efficient, flourishing, society will not make it happen. But that vision is vital to guide and motivate our actions and the arts can be a powerful tool in illustrating, communicating, and narrating that vision.

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Consumerism.

By Ibrahim Kamit

CLIMATE ACTIVISM and COVID-19 by Meera Sivasubramanian & Finley Tobin

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In October last year, University of Melbourne students joined a blockade of the International Mining and Resources Conference (IMARC) at Melbourneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Convention and Exhibition Centre. The conference was sponsored by the University, and hosted some of the biggest contributors to the climate crisis, including BHP and Rio Tinto. National headlines were made on the second day when two climbers hung a banner, and protestors gathered below to protect them from being arrested. Dozens of police officers then surged through the crowd, deploying several canisters of capsicum spray, while shoving and punching protestors. A few months later, in January 2020, Melburnians gathered again to call for climate action during our most devastating bushfire season on record. If the apocalyptic footage of East Gippsland and New South Wales was not enough, then the thick blanket of smoke covering the capital cities was a clear message: the climate crisis that scientists have warned us about for decades is upon us. The physicality of the IMARC blockade is inconceivable now, and the crowds from January also seem like a distant memory: COVID-19 has brought Melbourneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s protests for climate action to a screeching halt. However, the effects of climate

change around the world have only intensified since the beginning of the pandemic. At the time of writing, four of the five biggest wildfires in California’s history are burning (California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, 2020). Meanwhile, the Atlantic hurricane season is so extreme that the United States National Hurricane Center has run out of storm names, forcing them to call the latest two storms “Alpha” and “Beta” (Wood, 2020). In the face of the year’s events, you would expect the Australian government to take unequivocal action to mitigate the effects of climate change. Yet, the government recently confirmed that the economic recovery from COVID-19 will be spearheaded by over $50 million of funding for gas projects (Murphy, 2020). It is both mind-boggling and depressing that young people across Australia must protest for our leaders to take action while the devastating effects of climate change are unfolding before our eyes. Yet, here we are.

The question now is, how do we protest en masse in the age of social distancing? Well, university students are leading the way. On 18 August, the University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU) partnered with 350.org, Fossil Free RMIT and the La Trobe Student Union Environment Department for the virtual #CutAllTies climate action rally. The rally was part of a broader campaign aimed at pressuring companies such as Rio Tinto and PricewaterhouseCoopers to end their memberships with the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA), which has an insidious legacy of using its wealth and political influence to stifle climate action and preserve the interests of the top one percent. In 2007, the MCA spent over $17 million on a campaign against thenprime minister Kevin Rudd’s plan for a resource super profit tax, which was ultimately credited for Rudd’s ousting as prime minister (Davis, 2011). Furthermore, the MCA’s 2018 Annual Report boasted that their lobbying resulted in the federal government’s plan to extend the life of coal-fired power stations (Minerals Council of Australia, 2018). In a further display of their commitment to fossil fuels, the MCA published their Climate Action Plan in June 2020, which contained no targets for phasing out coal mining or coal-fired power stations. Instead, the plan aims to use technologies such as electric vehicles to reduce emissions created in the process of extracting fossil fuels (Minerals Council of Australia, 2020). This is like burning down a forest with matches made from sustainable wood—and even then, the plan does not specify any measurable targets or end dates for the implementation of these technologies. At the August rally, students at the University called on professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to end their membership with the MCA. Given PwC’s mission is to “solve important problems,” their

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2020’s climate action movements have demonstrated that we cannot afford to remain politically apathetic, even when mass gatherings are impossible

membership of a fossil-fuel lobby which contributes to the wicked problem of climate change has drawn criticism from the #CutAllTies campaign. In their announcement for the rally, 350.org said, “students need to know who they’re working for,” alluding to the fact that recent university graduates comprise much of PwC’s workforce (350.org 2020). Held via Zoom—a platform students and corporations are all too familiar with—the rally ran from 10am until 5pm. There was also an 8am session where attendees signed an online petition directed at the CEO of PwC, Tom Seymour. Other activities included drinking a coffee while flooding PwC’s social media pages with the #CutAllTies hashtag and joining a virtual concert with a band performance. In times where social gatherings remain a camera roll memory, #CutAllTies did not disappoint in making attendees feel optimistic and empowered to push for climate action. While people tend to be skeptical when the words “social media” and “effective action” are used in a sentence, the #CutAllTies rally successfully educated attendees on the MCA’s tactics and how students can use social media to hold PwC and the MCA accountable. The most liked comments on the company’s Facebook and Twitter posts are from #CutAllTies rally attendees questioning PwC’s commitment to environmental sustainability. Since the virtual rally, PwC has yet to end its membership with the Minerals Council of Australia. However, students can continue the campaign by using social media to raise awareness about PwC’s membership of the MCA. In an age where social media plays a powerful role in public image and status, virtual climate rallies challenge the carefully cultivated online reputation of corporations like PwC, who rely on social media to preserve their image and attract potential clients.

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2020’s climate action movements have demonstrated that we cannot afford to remain politically apathetic, even when mass gatherings are impossible. Virtual climate rallies defy the usual image of thousands of people congregating in the streets to demand action. However, that does not mean they are less effective—in fact, they remove the geographic and physical barriers of in-person protests, allowing more people to attend from all around the world. Fossil fuel councils, lobbyists and organisations continue to exploit their power and privilege at the expense of millions, and we need to do everything we can to challenge these institutions. More broadly, the pandemic has shone a spotlight on the deep-rooted racial and economic inequalities that are endemic to our systems. Until it’s safe to gather en masse again, socially distanced protests and virtual rallies are some of the first steps towards addressing these injustices. The “Blockade IMARC” protest is set to proceed in an online format this year (which will hopefully reduce the amount of capsicum spray involved), and will start on 22 November.

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by Louisa Sheridan

CULTURAL BURNING FOR CARBON ABATEMENT: A VIABLE OPTION?

The Australian bushfires of summer 2019-2020 were unprecedented in scale, intensity and devastation. These fires saw over 12.6 million hectares burnt, 434 million tonnes of CO2 emitted, between 1-3 billion animals killed and 33 human deaths (ABC, 2020). The magnitude and unexpected nature of this disaster indicated that the Australian environment was existing in a state of imbalance. Pre-colonisation, the Australian landscape had been maintained by Indigenous people for millennia, who held the landscape in a delicate balance between productivity and fire prevention. To restore this environmental equilibrium, a stronger dialogue must be established between Indigenous communities and policy-makers to enhance the use of cultural burning. This has the potential to reduce national carbon emissions and dampen the severity and scale of future bushfires.

Why is Australia so fire prone? Approximately 35 million years ago, during the Eocene epoch, Australia became increasingly arid, and today it ranks as the second most arid continent on earth (Pain et. al., 2012).Three main factors contribute to the aridity of Australia. Firstly, the south of the continent is located in the mid-latitude high-pressure zone, under the descending belt of the Hadley Circulation. This results in relatively low rainfall and dry air (CSIRO, 2015). Secondly, the orographic effect of the Great Dividing Range deprives inland areas of rainfall. Finally, the West Australian Current contributes to the aridity of south-western Australia. Compounding this, the continent is directly influenced by the El Nino Southern Oscillation, the Indian Ocean Dipole and the Southern Annular Mode, the influence of which strongly impacts annual and decadal precipitation trends in Australia (CSIRO, 2015). Evidently, Australia is an arid place with a complex and tenuous relationship with rainfall. As a consequence, this dry continent plays host to fire-adapted vegetation, as well as many sclerophyllous plants that minimise water loss. Eucalypts, the iconic â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Australianâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; tree, demonstrate both sclerophylly (thickened foliage that minimises water loss) and fire resistance. Many Eucalypts have features that allow the tree to survive and regenerate after fire, such as thick bark, epicormic buds that resprout after fire, and oily, flammable leaves. Evidently, Australia is not only fire prone, but is actually adapted to fire.

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Indigenous history and fire management Clearly, for a population to thrive on this arid, fire-prone continent, a deep understanding of the land must have existed. Indigenous people have inhabited this continent for at least 60,000 years however, this number may extend to more than 120,000 years (Roberts et. al., 1994). Colonialism in 1788 presented a devastating disruption to the Indigenous way of life, and as a consequence, Indigenous Australians lost the freedom to exercise their longstanding methods of fire management. Historically, Indigenous Australians intentionally burned the land to encourage regrowth and attract game for hunting purposes. In addition, cultural burning was used to clear paths through the bush and to maintain the health of the land. Without constant upkeep by Indigenous people, dry vegetation can accumulate and fuel much larger bushfires, with devastating consequences for flora, fauna, and carbon emissions. The practice of Indigenous burning requires a huge amount of knowledge; an awareness of humidity, wind speed, wind direction, air temperature and the life cycle of plants. Rather than destroy, these fires invigorate the land and its biodiversity, and can prevent catastrophic fires- like those of summer 2019-2020.

Can Indigenous fire management be used to abate climate change? There is potential for the abatement of greenhouse gases (GHGs) through the careful management of bushfire in Australia. Currently, 3% of Australia’s annual GHG emissions derive from savannah fires (Heckbert et al., 2012). Through a reduction of overall GHG emissions, a carbon credit can be obtained ‘where one less tonne of carbon dioxide emitted equals one carbon credit’ (The Nature Conservancy Australia, n.d). These carbon credits can be purchased either by the government, or by other organisations that need to reduce emissions but cannot. Through this program, land managers have created a $20 million/year industry of savannah burning (Russell-Smith & Sangha, 2018). Early season burning aids in carbon abatement as the fire is low, cool and patchy, and reduces the fuel that would have driven much larger fires. This results in less GHGs emitted, compared to large, intense summer fires. In the Northern Territory, the Nature Conservancy- a non-profit non-government organisation- works with Indigenous groups to combine traditional knowledge with fire science. This allows for the safe and effective use of fire to manage large tracts of land. The program has helped to abate 5 million tonnes of carbon, the equivalent of removing 2 million cars from the road (The Nature Conservancy Australia, n.d). Fish River in the Northern Territory provides an example of the carbon initiative’s success. Prior to its commencement, 75%, or 182,500 hectares, of the region burned every year. The program has reduced this to just 40% (Figgis et. al., 2015). Not only is the carbon abatement program a powerful environmental project, it also acts as a financial tool for First Nations communities. The program provides employment opportunities for remote Indigenous communities and offers increased financial independence from government support. Importantly, cultural burning is a service- rather than a product- which proves beneficial for physically and economically isolated rural communities. Moving into the future, Indigenous fire management does hold the potential to significantly reduce Australia’s annual emissions, but far more will need to be done to avert the worst impacts of climate change.

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SOS by Bethany Cherry. 088

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University of Melborune Student Union Environment Department