beccolvin

Friday 7^th October  2016

 Community involvement is essential for addressing the issues of global change, whether it is encouraging individuals to reduce their water and energy use, or building support for policies necessary to tackle the big environmental issues. This seminar will use examples from water-related research to explore a series of questions: How engaged are Australians in water-related issues? What are the social and contextual factors that influence environmental engagement? And can we intervene to build greater environmental engagement?

Angela Dean is a Research Fellow in School of Communication and Arts, UQ and Senior Research Fellow, BehaviourWorks, Monash University.  Her current research, supported by the Cooperative Research Centre for Water Sensitive Cities, focuses on Engaging Communities in Water Sensitive Cities.  Her research interests include exploring pathways to environmental citizenship, and how the experience of nature can influence environmental citizenship 

Angela Dean – How to build environmental citizenship – insights from quantitative research in Australian communities

Friday 6th May 2016

Effective conservation relies on willing participants to implement conservation actions.  Thus, there’s emerging research on how to identify ‘conservation opportunities’ in order to create or exploit windows of opportunity to achieve conservation goals.  Conceptualizations of conservation opportunities place emphasis on social, political and economic aspects of conservation.  Here I discuss how we have tackled understanding the social and economic dimensions of conservation opportunities in the Daly catchment, NT.  I describe research undertaken over a period of 5 years culminating in spatial planning for conservation in the catchment that draws together stakeholder preferences relating to life in the catchment and willingness to participate in different conservation actions.

Dr Vanessa Adams is a conservation biologist and is currently a research fellow at the University of Queensland.  Her research applies economic concepts and social consultation to make environmental policy more effective. She is also an adjunct staff member with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University and the Research Institute for the Environment and Livelihoods at Charles Darwin University.  Vanessa was raised in New Mexico (USA) but currently calls Australia home.  She has worked in a variety roles ranging from actuarial analyst for global consulting firm Mercer HR to research scientist at universities.  She spent a year as a Fulbright scholar conducting research at University of Queensland (2004-2005) and returned to University of Queensland in 2015 for her current research position.

Vanessa Adams – How does the social and economic context influence conservation decisions? The case of the Daly Catchment