The ISS/Sustainability Seminar Series

Thursday mornings 11-12am

If you would like to present or nominate a speaker please contact Kerry Dell'Agostino

November 3rd - Sustainability Students present a series of Big Ideas in Fifteen Minutes - Sally Paulin

Sustainability students can undertake internships or self motivated research projects which apply sustainability principles to real life situations, usually in their third year of undergraduate study(STP332/632 etc).  Part of the assessment for this unit is a presentation to their peers and supervisors about what they have worked on during the internship/project and their reflections on the experience. This Thursday, 3 November, Semester 2 students will give their presentations from 11-1pm.

Subjects include Eco-Creditz, Environmental Management Plans, using GIS to predict increases regional rail ridership; planning an exhibition on unbuilt buildings in Fremantle and working on regional employment strategies for a mining company.

Students contemplating doing an internship are encouraged to come along and listen.  Each talk is ten minutes long with five minutes for questions.

All welcome.

October 27th - The Future of fracking in Western Australia - Alison Xamon
WA’s draft Energy plan contains an assumption that domestic gas supplies will increasingly be sourced from unconventional gas from 2020.  Exploiting unconventional gas requires use of controversial hydraulic fracturing technologies (fracking).  Around the world concerns have been raised over the effect of this technology on water supplies, agricultural land, human health and the environment.  Legislative and regulatory responses from around the world have included bans, moratoriums on both the fracking process itself and the deep injection wells used to dispose of the contaminated fracking fluid.  Some jurisdictions have also implemented mandatory transparency of the chemicals used in the process.

20th October - Global Development, Sustainability and Information Flows - Peter McMahon

The realisation of a global sustainability crisis is growing but almost nothing is being done about it. This is because our usual forms of analysis of development, based in politics and economics, just don’t work any more. We need a new way of thinking about development that includes politics, economics and technology along with a meaningful way of relating to the environment. Looking at information flows and understanding how they underlie global development is a way of doing this. This talk will outline the ideas behind my latest research and show how they can help us to rethink where we have been and where we are going as a civilisation.

Climate Talk – October 14, 2011

The Murdoch University Climate Change Teaching Network is proud to present Climate Talk. This is a half-day event for students, staff and the wider community. The event will showcase teaching about climate change, provide opportunities for researchers and teachers to connect and provides space for conversation about the dilemmas and burning issues related to climate change.

Thursday 13 October: Innovation and the Community Service Sector: Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Luke Van Zeller WACOSS

Community Service Organisations (CSOs) deliver innovative and essential services to Western Australia’s most vulnerable people.  However, these services are now being delivered more and more to the ‘mainstream’ population with increasing rents, energy and petrol prices, food prices as a result of recent natural disasters and an aging demographic; issues which will be further exacerbated by climate change.  Because CSOs have a unique understanding of the pressures communities face, they are able to quickly adapt their services to meet emerging needs, much more rapidly than government.  This talk will highlight some of the emerging issues faced by the community and CSOs and give some local examples of innovative solutions CSOs are delivering, including a new social innovation designed to promote energy efficiency.  

6th October -special time of 11am-1pm - Sustainability Policy Focus Group - Caroline Minton

Murdoch is currently in the process of designing deliberative stakeholder engagement workshops to be run this year to feed into the development of a whole-of-institution sustainability policy and strategy. The university is also looking for ideas for sustainability initiatives to be implemented with existing funding in the new year.

Margaret Gollagher, a former PhD student and member of staff at the School of Sustainability, is working as a consultant with Caroline Minton from Murdoch University, to start an ongoing dialogue with staff, students and other stakeholders about sustainability at the University. 

We are coming from the perspective that it is essential to engage with the Murdoch community in a deliberative, rather than ‘consultative’ way. In our experience, effective engagement through deliberation is necessary for sustainability initiatives in organizations such as Murdoch to be well designed and effective.

To start the process we will be holding a small number of interviews and small workshops with key stakeholders to talk about Murdoch’s approach to sustainability, including what’s working, what could be improved and what barriers to sustainability exist. We will be looking for suggestions about presenters and content that should be included in the wider engagement processes that will be held in the coming months. We will also looking for guidance about who should participate in the deliberations.

We’d love to talk to Murdoch’s sustainability staff and students about key issues that need to be part of the broader dialogue with the Murdoch community.

22nd September: Climate change and forest health: have some of our forest ecosystems in the south-west of Western Australia reached ecosystem ‘tipping points’? Giles Hardy

The south-west of Western Australia is considered by many scientists as a global ‘guinea pig’ with regards to climate change and its impacts on natural ecosystems.  Over the last 20 years WA has had a substantial decline in rainfall and a number of our woodland and forest ecosystems are showing substantial declines in health.  The question now arises-“ have ecosystem tipping points been reached in some of these woodlands and forests”?   This talk will look briefly at climate change, some of the forest and woodland declines we are observing and discuss the possible implications to ecosystem health and function as well as possible management options.

Thursday 15 September: The Green Swing Eugenie Stockmann

At the ISTP Big Ideas in Fifteen Minutes Seminar on 15 September Eugenie Stockmann will speak about The Green Swing. The Green Swing is a non-commercial urban sustainable development project in Perth. On a small block of land in the Town of Victoria Park two couples will showcase a sustainable alternative to current medium density town house type developments. The project is ground breaking and unique. The development is a combination of town houses and apartments. The design has resulted in extremely high-energy ratings (8 to 10-stars) and a large amount of high quality open space. The project will showcase a diverse range of building materials, including straw bale, reverse brick veneer and conventional double brick. While they are about to start construction the journey has not been easy. Eugenie will tell us about their experiences and highlight some areas where fundamental changes are required for Government to actively encourage the move towards a more sustainable community.  Eugenie moved to Australia from The Netherlands in 2000. In Australia she has worked with environmental organisations, which increased her interest in and concern about the environment and sustainability. She is currently studying towards a Master in Sustainable Urban and Regional Planning at Murdoch University.

Thursday 8 September: Evoking Love in Higher Education Peter le Breton

In most organisations, including universities, love is not an idea in good currency.  Yet we know that love is a fundamental human need and motivator.  If we look at the many ways in which love is expressed within organisations, it seems silly to deny its importance, repress it, and not talk about it or consciously integrate it into our work and relationships.  Clearly, many scholars and scientists get much enjoyment and pleasure from their work, just as many students do from their studies.  And many people love coming to work - to teach, research, study, administer, etc. in part because of the people they work with.  Reducing fear and other barriers to the taboo on the “L word” is a challenge for universities.  In this talk I consider:

• Why looking at higher education through a “lens of love” is critical to effective thinking about problem formation and problem resolution, including global sustainability issues, such as climate change.
• How we can make our research, teaching and learning more loving and more telling, and why this is a key to personal and social transformation - to making a difference that makes a difference to ourselves and to others.

Peter le Breton is soon to complete his Ph.D. in Transformative Studies at California Institute of Integral Studies. Peter has worked with love (and sometimes fear) in large and small private sector organisations, governments and universities.  He currently teaches Organisational Behaviour at UWA and Introduction to University Learning at Murdoch via Open Universities Australia.

You can download a pdf of Peter's paper here

Thursday 25 August: Re-inventing the wheel to create a sustainable society Steven M Smith

Stephen Smith, UWA Winthrop Professor of Plant Genomics, is a member of Shaping Tomorrow’s World.

Einstein said that we cannot fix problems using the same thinking that we used to create them. The problems we face today (climate, hunger, displacement, coveting, social exclusion, polarisation) have arisen through our insatiable appetite for wealth, growth, consumption and instant gratification. We cannot fix such problems by more consumption and growth. Hybrid cars, solar panels, palm oil, eco-tourism, nuclear fission and nanotechnology are more of the same thinking; the means to feed humanity’s unsustainable gluttony.

“Re-inventing the wheel” does not contradict Einstein’s philosophy, but symbolises the value of returning to older thinking to help address today’s problems. Think of contribution, respect, thriftiness, and gratitude rather than expectation. This is the only foundation for a sustainable society, as the next few decades will show.

11 August 2011: Reimagining Politics: Reimagining Leadership. On Politics as Conversation Michael Prince

Organisations, communities, social systems are first and foremost networks of conversation and relationship. Nothing gets done except through conversations and relationships. If you want to assess the health of a system, listen to the conversations. If you want to shift a system, change the conversations. The primary competence for leadership is conversational competence, knowing how to have the right conversation at the right time.

• How healthy and effective at getting things done are the conversations and relationships across our local, state, federal political system?
• How could we lift the ‘conversational competence’ of individual and collective leadership amongst those we elect, our public servants, the media, special interest groups (including business, lobbyists, advocacy groups etc), citizens, etc.?
• What would a truly “life giving” political system and culture look and feel like (for those in and those they serve)? What do we want? Where do we find it now? How can we foster more of it?
• How can we nurture and sustain leadership across the WA political arena?

Michael Prince brings 30 years experience working with leaders in Australia, Asia and the Pacific as a manager, consultant, learning facilitator and coach, in different sectors (small to large, business, government, not-for-profit) with a particular passion for working in developing countries.

Over the last 2 years he’s become increasingly concerned the nature and quality of political leadership in Australia and is actively exploring how to nurture and shift this.

Michael’s a founder of The Winding Staircase (TWS), which provides leadership coaching, coach training and action learning leadership development services. TWS’s strategic intention is to “enable the leadership of individuals, organisations and communities who are committed to building sustainable relationships with self, others and the earth.”

Thursday 4 August 2011: "Forget the economics and the science...its all about emotion." Prof. Glenn Albrecht

The science is absolutely clear ... we are responsible for global warming and climate change and the longer term consequences of failure to mitigate are too ghastly to think about. The economics are also in the realm of the bleeding obvious ... the cost of mitigation is nowhere near the cost of the damage that will be caused by destructive climate change that will smash agriculture worldwide and wreak more storm and tempest damage to our vital technology and infrastructure. So, what about the emotions? How can emotions explain the types of responses we see today?

Slidesavailable here. (right click to save file) Save this mp3 Audio file of the conversation.

Thursday 19 May 2011: “The Great Idea of Working for Oxfam” Charmaine Consul Gonçalves, Public Health Advisor for Oxfam Australia

Thursday 12 May 2011: A Bonn mot from Peter Devereux

Peter Devereux will speak about his experiences in Bonn working for UN Volunteers. Peter resigned from his position as lecturer in the School of Sustainability for a one year contract with UNV in January 2011.  He works as a Partnerships Development Specialist, Civil Society Partnerships Section Partnerships and Communications Division of the UN.

Thursday 14th March 2011
Why Australia should not go down the nuclear path… WA’s renewable energy future: Senator Scott Ludlam

Scott Ludlam is an Australian Greens Senator for Western Australia dedicated to sustainability and social justice. Elected in November 2007, he is one of five Australian Greens Senators in the current Parliament.

As Greens spokesperson on nuclear issues, Scott has led opposition in Canberra against attempts to impose a radioactive waste dump on an unwilling community near Tennant Creek in the NT. He also helped establish a cross-party group on Nuclear Disarmament and is a member of the Australian Parliamentarians for Democracy in Burma. A prolific and effective participant in the Committee process, Scott initiated the nations' first in-depth inquiry into public transport as well as an inquiry into structural asymmetries in the justice system and how it is failing many Australians. He has probed radiation leaks and water contamination at the Ranger uranium mine in the Northern Territory, as well as ongoing radiation safety concerns at Australia's only nuclear facility at Lucas Heights.

Thursday 7th March 2011 Poiesis, Ethics, Praxis (Why the environment doesn't exist and evolution is not going where we want). Will Varey

Will Varey is a PhD Candidate researching sustainable psychosystem dynamics. In this talk he discusses the Big Idea of Big Ideas. He'll talk about the latest research in neurophenomenological epigenetics, social autopoiesis and the ethics of praxogenesis. More importantly he describes what this all means for humanity and for you personally in navigating the next 10 minutes of your otherwise usual day.

Thursday 31st March 2011
Why Australia is headed for disaster if it fails to cap its population: Mark O'Connor

Mark O'Connor is the co-author of Overloading Australia: How governments and media dither and deny on population, and will be keynote speaker at the AGM of Sustainable Population Australia in Perth on 3 April.  He is a poet and environmentalist, whose most recent book is on the Pilbara. See http://markoconnor-australianpoet.blogspot.com/

24th March 2011 No Seminar in this non-teaching week

Thursday 17th March 2011
(What) Can we speak of "vocation" in relation to university education? John Davis

John raises some questions rather than floating his own Big Idea. - In today’s dynamic, globalised market “world” does it make sense to have a personal sense of vocation? In a competitive marketplace is that just an indulgence of the privileged? Should education focus on marketability of graduates or is there a place for ideals in education?

John is a lecturer in the School of Social Sciences and Humanities whose own sense of vocation is linked to reducing poverty, decreasing hunger and "empowerment" of people on the margins on a single planet.

Thursday 10th March 2011
Getting to renewable energy in Sumba, Indonesia: Anne Hallgren, Sustainability Internship student

Two friends, an engineer and an electrician, attempted to set up a small scale solar power station on Sumba Island. The friends have many great ideas, however many of them do not happen as they are busy. Thinking this project was too good to just let it slip away, Anne became their Sustainability Officer and write a report on how to make it all happen. Together with a research trip to Sumba she researched similar projects around the globe (online) to learn this project might happen in a sustainable way.

Anne's presentation will describe the history and background of the project, touch briefly on the technological aspects and share her assessment (the challenges, lessons and hopes) of involvement in a very personal project like this one.

Thursday 24th Feb 2011
'Keeping Portland Weird' Dr Brad Pettitt
Portland Oregon has a famous bumper sticker that says “Keep Portland Weird”
Portland weirdness in part comes from its strong sustainability approach that runs counter to the unsustainable consumerism and planning of much of the USA. Brad Pettitt showed why Portland is considered to be one of the most sustainable cities in the USA and its relevance for Perth and in particular Fremantle that is starting to follow Portland’s lead.

Previous seminars can be found here