Australia has had a variable and mostly arid climate as long as humans have been on the continent. Historically observed trends toward increased warming, with rainfall increases in many tropical areas and rainfall decreases in many temperate areas, are projected to continue. Impacts will be geographically variable but mostly negative for biodiversity, agriculture, and infrastructure. Extreme events such as bushfires and floods will increase in frequency and intensity, concentrated in summer. With an economy heavily dependent on coal for domestic electricity generation and as an export commodity, Australians are high per capita contributors to anthropogenic climate change. A quarter‐century of steps to mitigation led in 2012 to a carbon price that has the long‐term potential to shift the economy toward more renewable energy sources. However as in other parts of the world this change has come too late, and is proceeding too slowly, to avoid significant climate change. A heritage of indigenous adaptation, strong volunteer cultures, and contemporary cultural diversity provide Australia with considerable adaptive capacity for gradual changes, but the nation is underprepared for sudden or step changes. We identify four pressing research and policy needs focused on such changes: (1) systematic attention to processes and impacts of negative transformative change, or worst‐case scenarios, (2) improve forecasts of year‐to‐year rainfall and climate variability, focusing on processes and climate drivers that may change in response to higher greenhouse gases, (3) identification and engagement of diverse cross‐cultural resources, and (4) articulation of alternative governance mechanisms that can interact dynamically with strong government. WIREs Clim Change 2014, 5:175–197. doi: 10.1002/wcc.255 This article is categorized under: Trans‐Disciplinary Perspectives > National Reviews

This study, the first to investigate reproductive health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men, found low levels of help-seeking behaviours for reproductive health disorders, with implications for missing a predictor of chronic disease and late diagnosis of prostate disease.

Faced with the paradox of a large global increase in conservation reserves and a simultaneous global decrease in actual effective protection for biodiversity, conservation scientists and policymakers are questioning established conservation theory and practice. I argue that the fundamental premises, the foundational myths, for Western-style conservation also need to be questioned. The statistics on Indigenous land claims, and conservation reserves, in Australia and more specifically the state of New South Wales (NSW), reveal a landscape of policy failure in both arenas. Focusing on Australia, I use spatial analysis and policy histories to demonstrate converging trajectories of land use priorities for conservation needs and Indigenous peoples' needs. This intersection, while generating much potential for conflict, also creates new political landscapes. A combination of spatial and cultural analyses can create a clear picture of new "operational landscapes", and an understanding of the (sometimes) complementary values of different cultural groups negotiating about these landscapes. From the basis that environmental problems are fundamentally social problems, this paper contributes to explorations of new paradigms supporting new social-ecological relationships, and new relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. IntroductionSince the declaration of national parks at Yosemite in 1864 and Yellowstone in 1872, the concept of national parks as the centerpiece of nature conservation policy has spread across the globe. This concept is embedded in Western paradigms, both scientifically and culturally. The last decade has seen increasing challenge, and change, to this concept, including interactions with indigenous peoples, who may operate from quite different paradigms about the relationships between people and nature.Examination of nature/culture issues has been a major preoccupation of geographers and others over the last 10 years (for example, Cronon, 1995; Braun & Castree, 1998;Head, 2000;Eden, 2001;Demeritt, 2002). Geographers are also exploring issues in indigenous and postcolonial geographies (Peters & Wolf-Keddie 1995; Howitt, Connell & Hirsch, 1996; Baker, Davies & Young, 2001;Nash, 2002). Some of this work has considered conservation management (Proctor & Pincetl, 1996;Katz, 1998;Zimmerer, 2000), and some has considered interactions between indigenous people AbstractFaced with the paradox of a large global increase in conservation reserves and a simultaneous global decrease in actual effective protection for biodiversity, conservation scientists and policymakers are questioning established conservation theory and practice. I argue that the fundamental premises, the foundational myths, for Western-style conservation also need to be questioned. The statistics on Indigenous land claims, and conservation reserves, in Australia and more specifically the state of New South Wales (NSW), reveal a landscape of policy failure in both arenas. Focusing on Australia, I use spatial analysis and poli...

forthcoming

Nicknames distribute power within a social group: they can be imposed, or they can be used by agreement between namer and named. This is not the difference between political and apolitical uses of nicknames: agreement is a political act, the result of social negotiation, in which the nickname is a token. Agreement is a matter of pragmatics and politeness, so a theory of nicknames and nicknaming depends on the pragmatics of nicknames and the politeness structures implicated in them, rather than conventional logico-semantic accounts of names. Negotiation of social power within the constraints of speech acts and maxims of politeness leads to iterations of “naming contracts” between named and namer, such that nicknames are politically focusing social objects.