New Thinking for a Resilient Regional Australia
What is sustainability? Sustainability as a paradigm. Sustainable development as an innovation process and a transformational social challenge. The principles and practices of sustainable development. Drivers and barriers to sustainability. Cases studies good and bad.
A prosperous and thriving future for regional Australians will depend on how imaginatively we exploit opportunity and manage the risks that come with change. It will depend on the choices communities make.
Queensland should rethink its big projects for a big country approach. Regional jobs that depend on project investment without generating local income are not sustainable. Small business and community must be restored to centre stage in development strategy.
What should be the priorities for research seeking to reduce the health disparities between city and country? If there was a clear message to come out of Resilient Regions Week this year, it was the complex regional health and well-being issues of Australia will not be solved simply by throwing more money at them.
Forced decentralisation of government agencies out of Canberra is unlikely to be a viable strategy for regional development. Stronger long term partnerships between the Commonwealth and the regions is a better alternative.
The setting of accelerated mandatory renewable energy targets is killing off the possibility of a gas fuelled lower emissions transition and locking in longer lives for coal fired power stations.
How to double an already significant urban population of 3.4 million and not turn a region renowned for its mix of amenity and lifestyle qualities into a massive commuter grid-lock is the challenge faced by the South-East Queensland Regional Plan.
The Paris Accord 2015 was the ”end of the beginning” in humanity’s quest to mount an effective response to man-made climate change
Cooperation between family owned farmers is the in-between alternative between the corporate farming model and individual struggle.
