Welcome to John Davis's Personal Page

My PhD research:

What would it take for effective Stewardship of the Western Australain Coasts?

In recent years “stewardship” has become more prominent in Natural Resources and environmental management in Australia, most recently in the Framework for Future NRM Programmes (NRM Ministerial Council 2006). The term “stewardship” in Australian environmental policy, however, appears to cover a wide range of ethical frameworks and consequent policies and practices in sustainability. On the one hand, the Framework casts stewardship programmes as an extension of economic instruments: purchasing ecological services. On the other hand, the national Coastcare programme sought “to engender in local communities, including local industries a sense of stewardship for coastal and marine areas” (DEST, 1995) and Australia’s Oceans Policy commits to stewardship of biological diversity, fisheries and “marine heritage values”. My research explores these and other stewardship concepts in relation to the coast and suggests a strong form of stewardship offers an ethical and practical framework for sustainability of the Australian coast.

Publications:

J.K. Davis, A. Ainslie, A.Finca (2008) Coming to grips with ‘abandoned arable’ land in efforts to enhance communal grazing systems in the Eastern Cape province, South Africa. African Journal of Range & Forage Science 25 (2): 55–61

J.K. Davis (2006) NGOs and Development in Bangladesh: Making poverty history or making poverty business? Paper presented at the Anti Poverty Week Conference- Global Poverty- Sustainable Solutions. 19 October 2006, Murdoch University. http://www.istp.murdoch.edu.au/ISTP/publications/antipoverty06/john_davis.pdf

J.K. Davis and L.J. Stocker (2006) ‘Adopt-a-Beach’: Educational praxis for sustainability in Wooltorton, S. and Marinova, D. (Eds). Sharing wisdom for our future. Environmental education in action: Proceedings of the 2006 Conference of the Australian Association for Environmental Education. Sydney: AAEE pp 239-249.

Gollagher, M., Davis, J., Pettitt, B. (2006) For richer and poorer: Sustaining the environments of South Asia. Commissioned paper presented to the AusAID-APFRN Conference South Asia: Integrating and Looking East? 25-26 September 2006, Canberra.

Davis, J., Devereux, P., Pettitt, B. and Marinova, D. (2006). Embracing the "swamp": A reflective pedagogical approach for interdisciplinary practitioners. In Experience of Learning. Proceedings of the 15th Annual Teaching Learning Forum, 1-2 February 2006. Perth: The University of Western Australia. http://lsn.curtin.edu.au/tlf/tlf2006/refereed/davis.html

Pettitt, B., and Davis, J. (2005) Getting our Priorities Right: Poverty reduction and sustainable development in Australian ODA programmes. Working Paper for the Australian Development Collaborative. Accessible from www.adc.org.au (Accessed 7 April 2006)

Interests

Community Development, Natural Resource Management and what sustainability means in these contexts. Research projects with the Department of Agriculture and Food, W.A. and the Eastern Cape Department of Agriculture, South Africa.

Having lived and worked for some time in Bangladesh and Indonesia, I am a passionate student of culture, interested in how history, evironment and worldview interact in the way people express themselves.

I consult in project evaluation, particularly for rural community development projects in Asia and Africa.

Hobbies:

Walking the Bibbulman Track, swimming, photography, gardening

Contact : j.k.davis@murdoch.edu.au