INTERNET FORUM

Integrated Sustainability Assessment: Identifying the range of options for Australia
November 2004 to June 2005

Forum presenters

Michael Booth BA, MSC, MA, PHD
Member of the Institute for Sustainability and Technology Policy at Murdoch University, Perth.

Michael Booth is a member of the Institute for Sustainability and Technology Policy at Murdoch University, Perth. He was recruited to Murdoch for a prospective Human Development Programme, created a foundation unit World in Transition, and became Chair of Politics, Philosophy and Sociology (PPS) before it merged with Social Ecology to become Australia's one undergraduate programme in Sustainable Development.

A devoted interdisciplinarian, Michael has degrees in Mathematics, and in Psychology, Philosophy and Physiology (PPP, Oxford) as well as working on the epistemological bases for 'social' science in a study of social and conceptual elaboration Elaboration and Social Science (1989). His work on methodology includes a study of creativity testing, funded by the Social Sciences Research Council in the UK.

He has edited two books on politics, policies and change with strong local aspects: WA – its land, its future (with Colin Lendon, CSIRO), and Ambivalence and Hope: social theory and policy-making in a globalizing, postmodern Australia (with T. Hogan, Social Theory, La Trobe). The report Interdisciplinary Research Methodologies in Natural Resource Management (2000) for LWRRDC's Social and Institutional Research Programme (UMU14 of SIRP) examines how effective teams can identify and weld their skills together through creative communication and training. Michael is presently working on a book on instrumental relationality and its relation to rationality, analysing case studies from five industries/services from mining to policing.

Kathleen Bowmer BSc (Hons) PhD (Nott)
Professor of Water Policy at Charles Sturt University

Kath is employed part time by Charles Sturt University where she is Professor of Water Policy, a position jointly funded by CSIRO Land and Water. She also runs her own consultancy group, Kathleen Bowmer & Associates. She was Business Director with CSIRO Land and Water until January 2004. Previous appointments include Deputy Vice- Chancellor, Charles Sturt University; Head of Campus at Wagga Wagga; Deputy Chief CSIRO Division of Water Resources; Australian Research Council Earth Sciences Large Grants Panel (chair); and Murrumbidgee River Management Committee (chair). She is currently a Director of State Water, a new State-Owned Corporation, and a member of the Science and Information Board of the NSW Department of Infrastructure Planning and Natural Resources. Previous recent Board memberships include the CRC for Freshwater Ecology, the CRC for Sustainable Rice Production, the Murray Darling Freshwater Research Centre, and Land & Water Australia National Rivers Consortium. She is a fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. She recently co-authored and edited a sponsored book 'Water Innovation: a New Era in Australia' (CL Creations Sydney), highlighting Australia's achievements and opportunities, and targeting the business sector; and co-authored a major report 'Scientific Advice on Natural Resource Management' for the NRM Ministerial Council. Kath's interests and publications include: water sharing, water quality, aquatic ecology, pesticide chemistry and impacts, irrigation, research student supervision, and research leadership. She received the Pol Eureka Prize for Environmental Science in 1995. Kath owns five acres of Patterson's Curse and Capeweed near Wagga Wagga New South Wales.

Contact details: Kathleen.Bowmer@bigpond.com Tel 0269314699 mobile 0411041790

Thomas Brinsmead B Eng Elec Hons (I), PhD Elec Eng
Senior Research Fellow at the University of Newcastle, School of Liberal Arts

Thomas Brinsmead is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Newcastle, conducting research into Australian best practice in Integrated Sustainability Assessment for the National Academies Forum under the direct supervision of Professors Peter Scaife and Cliff Hooker. Previous work has been undertaken for the CRC for Coal in Sustainable Development as part of its 'Assessing Sustainability Dimensions and Impacts' project, the aim of which is to refocus sustainability around the preservation of the resilience and adaptability of economic and ecological systems.

Thomas holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical) and a PhD in Systems Dynamics and Automatic Control. Previously he was at the Research School of Information Sciences and Engineering at the Australian National University working on adaptive control methods. Current research is based on a systems dynamics perspective to approaching sustainability policy.

Valerie Brown AO,BSc DipAdultEd MEd PhD
Visiting Fellow, School of Resources, Environment and Society, and Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies (jointly), Australian National University.

Emeritus Professor Valerie A. Brown is currently Visiting Fellow, School of Resources, Environment and Society, and Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies (jointly), Australian National University. She is Director of the Local Sustainability Project, which undertakes research into whole-of-community solutions to local and global sustainability issues.

Valerie is Vice-President, Australian National Sustainability Initiative, http://www.sustainability.org.au, sits on ACT advisory committees on Sustainability and on Health, and on the editorial boards of the journals Local Environment, Environmental Health and Ecosystem Health. As Foundation Chair in Environmental Health at the University of Western Sydney 1996-2001, Valerie established research and post-graduate teaching programs on local sustainability in Australia, Malaysia, and China.

Professor Brown was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in 1999 for national and international leadership in advocacy for sustainable development. Her publications include over 100 research papers and 14 books, for example (alone and with others) Landcare Languages 1995; Risks and Opportunities: managing environmental conflict and change 1995, Managing for Local Sustainability 1997; Western Sydney Regional State-of-the-Environment Report 2000; Grass Roots and Common Ground: community-based action on environment and health 2001; Towards Whole-of Community Engagement 2004; Sustainability and Health 2005.

Peter Crawford BSc (Hons), PhD, FTSE, FRACI
Adjunct Professor, School of Policy, University of Newcastle.

Professor Crawford's career has spanned the public and private sectors as well as research roles in Australia and abroad. Over time he has come to focus on strategic leadership, effective management and directed change in organisations and government. This includes leading in development of public policy, government strategy and public sector reform for State and Commonwealth governments as well as the OECD. He has spoken widely nationally and internationally and advised a number of governments on public sector reform.

Peter Crawford served as Commissioner for Healthy Rivers in NSW from 1995 to 2003 leading many public debates on new and better ways of managing rivers and catchments, nationwide, and helping to set the stage for major institutional reforms in catchment and resource management in NSW. Prior to that time he was Chief Executive of the NSW Pollution Control Commission (now the EPA), 1982-3, Managing Director of Sydney Water, 1983-7, Managing Director of AWA Ltd, 1987-89, and Chief Executive of several South Australian Departments, including Premier and Cabinet, 1989-93.

Professor Crawford has edited a number of books on environmental management for the OECD. During his time leading the Healthy Rivers Commission many papers and reports were issued, which remain readily available. Professor Crawford has recently published two books dealing with direction setting and institutional reform in government entitled The Serious Business of Governing and Captive of the System. He was a Visiting Professor in the Graduate School of Management, Macquarie University, 1994-2003, and is currently Adjunct Professor, School of Policy, University of Newcastle.

Stephen Dovers
Senior Fellow in the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies, The Australian National University.

Dr Stephen Dovers is a Senior Fellow in the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies, The Australian National University, where he undertakes research, education and communication in policy and institutional dimension of sustainability, adaptive resource management, policy making and uncertainty, integrative research strategies, and environmental history. Recent works include the co-authored and co-edited books Institutional change for sustainable development (Edward Elgar Publishing 2004), Managing Australia's environment (Federation Press 2003), New dimensions in ecological economics (Edward Elgar Publishing 2003), Strategic environmental assessment in Australasia (Federation Press 2002), South Africa's environmental history (Ohio University Press 2002), and the forthcoming monograph Environment and sustainability: a policy handbook (Federation Press).

Barney Foran
Senior analyst with the CSIRO Resource Futures Group

Barney Foran is a senior analyst with the CSIRO Resource Futures Group which seeks to apply hard nosed analysis to key issues for Australia's long term futures from 25 to 100 years away.

He has degrees in agricultural science and ecology and has spent a major part of his career working with pastoral industries in Central Australia, Southern Africa and the mountainlands of New Zealand. He arrived in Canberra in 1993 to develop a scientific program dealing with the nexus between population policy, economic development, resource use and environmental quality.

Current research and analytical interests include the following:

* Australia's population futures to 2100 and their interactions with the physical economy
* The concurrent resolution of long term challenges in Australia's environmental sectors
* Implementing 'triple bottom line' accounting with real data at national and sectoral levels
* Options for transitions to a renewable energy economy with specific emphasis on biomass as a source of fuel and industrial feedstocks
* Changing the energy and material content of Australian affluence and lifestyle as part of new designs for a more sustainable Australian economy
* Strategic decisions for national prosperity and environmental quality and "getting beyond the three year electoral cycle"
* Environmental effects of globalised trade flows on key environmental outcomes for Australia

Barney led the team responsible for the development of the CSIRO Future Dilemmas study released in November 2002. The study distilled six key issues with which the Australian people, the economy and decision makers will have to grapple as we approach the year 2020. While the dilemmas are challenging and difficult to resolve, Australia still has two decades of moderate optimism and a reasonable resource base to underpin strategic decisions made in a long term context. There is a general consensus that 'leaving it all to market forces' will not effectively serve the interests of our children's children.

Elizabeth Kington
Social Policy Analyst within the Australian Research Centre for Water In Society (ARCWIS), CSIRO

Elizabeth joined the CSIRO in 2002 as a Social Policy Analyst within the Australian Research Centre for Water In Society (ARCWIS), an internationally recognised centre for excellence and leadership in the conduct and application of innovative social research for water resources management and other related issues of importance to society.

Elizabeth has evolved from a background in biological sciences to pursue environmental social and policy analysis research. Her doctoral thesis, completed in 2001 at The University of Western Australia, examined the complex social and political challenges surrounding environmental management of dryland salinity in Western Australia using a policy analysis framework.

Her first assignment at the CSIRO was a review of social and economic integration best practice research within CSIRO, and internationally. This review drew out the strengths (and weaknesses) of a selection of the many integrated research work within CSIRO and reported on the experiences of researcher's conducting integrated research projects. Her research portfolio within ARCWIS now includes leading research into: governance arrangements for urban rivers using social network theory; development of decision-based planning tools for climate changes; futures studies into Natural Resource Management governance and application; and, the development of new ways to measure the benefits obtained from water in Australia.

Anna Littleboy
Group Leader for the Sustainable Mining Group of the Division of Exploration and Mining, CSIRO

Anna recently joined CSIRO from the UK and is currently Group Leader for the Sustainable Mining Group of the Division of Exploration and Mining. With a background in earth sciences, she has 17 years experience in environmental research for hazardous waste management. Anna is internationally recognised for her work into characterising long term environmental risks associated with the underground disposal of radioactive wastes. Drawing on early experiences as a biophysical researcher, Anna has more recently been researching the interactions between science, society and policy in making decisions about the long term management of radioactive wastes in Europe. Her Doctoral thesis with University College London examined the challenges to scientists arising from the high level concepts of sustainability and looked at new forms of presentation and communication as a means of enabling constructive deliberation on complex issues.

Anna currently leads CSIRO's Sustainable Mining Research Group which undertakes industry based research on the issues that affect industry's social license to operate - operational risk management and response, environmental management and efficiency, social interests and influence. The Group recently commercialised a technology for the utilisation of mine waste coal and gas for the generation of power. Anna is also involved in a major CSIRO project the Energy Futures Forum, which aims to explore alternative scenarios for the provision of Australia's future energy requirements, in which role she is designing the processes for scenario development and looking at the implications for societal uptake of new energy technologies.

Anna is a member of the Education Advisory Committee for the CRC for Greenhouse Technologies. She has been invited to work with the National Academies Forum to develop new directions in integrated research practice for Australia. She is a Chartered Geologist, a Fellow of the Institute of Mining, Minerals and Metallurgy and Member of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Managers in the UK. She sits on Expert Review Panels for the European Commission's Citizens and Governance work programme. Until her departure from the UK she was the Geoscience Convener for the British Association for the Advancement of Science and Chair of the External Relations Board of the Geological Society of London. Anna has acted as Programme Manager for a number of international projects within the European Union, most recently the European Community's RISCOM programme on Enhancing Transparency and Communicating Risks.

Nicholas Low
Associate Professor of Environmental Planning in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, at the University of Melbourne, Australia

Nicholas Low is Associate Professor of Environmental Planning in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He is the author or editor of eight books. His book (with Brendan Gleeson) Justice, Society and Nature (Routledge, London, 1998), won the Harold and Margaret Sprout Prize of the International Studies Association in 1998 for the best book published on ecological politics. Nick is a Fellow of the Planning Institute of Australia, a member of the editorial team of the international journal Urban Policy and Research, and on the editorial board of three other international journals of planning and environment. Nick is working with Brendan Gleeson (below), Carey Curtis (Curtin University, WA) and Emma Rush (University of Melbourne) on ARC funded research on transport institutions and policy in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. His book The Green City: Sustainable homes, sustainable suburbs (co-authored with Gleeson, Green and Radovic) will be published in 2005 by UNSW Press.

Ian Lowe
Emeritus professor of science, technology and society at Griffith University

Ian Lowe is emeritus professor of science, technology and society at Griffith University, where he was previously Head of the School of Science, and holds adjunct appointments in science, engineering and environmental studies at three other universities. He works predominantly on policy issues affecting science and technology, especially in the fields of energy and environment.

He directed the Commission for the Future in 1988 and chaired the advisory council that produced the first national report on the state of the environment in 1996. He chairs Brisbane City Council's Urban Environment Advisory Committee and is a member of the national environmental health council. He has consulted for all levels of government and various private sector organisations. At the international level he has been a referee for the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change and attended the Geneva and Kyoto conferences on the climate change treaty; he also worked on the framework for the UN reports on Global Environmental Outlook, was a member of the working group that developed the principles of 'sustainability science' and reviewed the recent report of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program.

He was named Australian Humanist of the Year in 1988 and delivered the 1991 Boyer Lectures for the ABC. In 2000 he received the Queensland Premier's Millennium Award for Excellence in Science and the Prime Minster's Environmental Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement. He was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2001 and received the Centenary Medal in 2003. He has written a weekly column for New Scientist since 1992 and received the 2002 Eureka Prize for Promotion of Science.

Iain MacGill
Research Coordinator for the Centre for Energy and Environmental Markets, UNSW

Dr Iain MacGill is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications at the University of New South Wales, and Research Coordinator (Engineering) for the University's recently established Centre for Energy and Environmental Markets (CEEM). His teaching and research interests include electricity industry restructuring, sustainable energy technologies, energy policy and environmental regulation.

To learn more about CEEM's research program, visit its website, www.ceem.unsw.edu.au.

Simon Marsden
Lecturer, Commercial law at the University of South Australia in Adelaide

Simon Marsden began teaching commercial law at the University of South Australia in Adelaide and Hong Kong in early July 2003, having worked for most of the previous 4 years in the United Kingdom and Ireland. His former position was as an Advisory Solicitor (Thames Region) and Legal Advisor (Head Office) at the Environment Agency of England and Wales (2001-2003), where he gave advice primarily on the European Habitats and Access to Information Directives and on contaminated land and the Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive. Prior to then he worked as a Lecturer in Environmental Law at the University of Exeter in England (2000-2001) and as a Lecturer in Law at the National University of Ireland, Galway (2000). Simon holds a BA in Politics (York), an LLM in Environmental Law (Aberdeen), and a PhD in Law (Tasmania). He has research interests in environmental law and SEA and has co-edited and co-authored a book on SEA in Australasia. He is a member of the Commission on Environmental Law of the IUCN.

Nancy Millis AC. MBE, Ph.D., DSc. (h.c.) LLD (h.c.) FTSE
Chancellor, La Trobe University in Melbourne

Nancy Millis was a staff member of the University of Melbourne from 1952 to 1987; she was appointed Professor of Microbiology in 1982 and was awarded Emeritus Professor Status at that University in 1987. She is currently Chancellor of La Trobe University. She is a member of the Board of Management of the CRC for Freshwater Ecology and chairs the Board of the CRC for Water Quality and Treatment.

She has had a long interest in the quality of water provided to the community, industry and in wastewater treatment. She recently chaired the Victorian government's Water Strategy Advisory Committee for the Melbourne area.

Peter Newman
Professor of City Policy and Director of the Institute for Sustainability and Technology Policy, at Murdoch University

Peter Newman is the Professor of City Policy and Director of the Institute for Sustainability and Technology Policy, at Murdoch University. From 2001 to 2003 Peter directed the development of the Western Australian State Sustainability Strategy which was the first state in the world to do this. He is Chair of the Western Australian Sustainability Roundtable advising the Premier on how to implement the Sustainability Strategy. Peter's book with Jeff Kenworthy 'Sustainability and Cities: Overcoming Automobile Dependence' was launched in the White House in 1999; his 2001 co-authored book is called 'Back on Track: Rethinking Australian and New Zealand Transport' and in 2004 he co-wrote 'Cities as Sustainable Ecosystems' for the United Nations Environment Program. In 2004 Peter was made a Sustainability Commissioner in NSW.

Jenny Pope
PhD student, Institute for Sustainability and Technology Policy (ISTP) at Murdoch University in Western Australia.

Jenny Pope is a PhD student at the Institute for Sustainability and Technology Policy (ISTP) at Murdoch University in Western Australia. She is conducting applied research in the emerging field of sustainability assessment under the supervision of Professor Peter Newman and Dr Michael Booth, focussing primarily on the Western Australian context. As part of her research, she is currently assisting the Sustainability Policy Unit of the WA Department of the Premier and Cabinet with the development and implementation of sustainability assessment processes through the implementation of the Western Australian State Sustainability Strategy.

Jenny holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Chemical) and a Graduate Diploma in Science (Biotechnology). She has 15 years industrial experience, primarily in the oil and gas and water sectors, and mainly in the field of industrial environmental management. Jenny worked for the Water Authority of Western Australia and BP before establishing a consultancy business focussing on the development, implementation and auditing of environmental management systems.

Through her experience in the environmental management field, Jenny became interested in the broader concept of sustainability, and particularly the development of the Western Australian State Sustainability Strategy. This led her to undertake postgraduate study in the field at ISTP at Murdoch University and subsequently to commence her PhD research in July 2002.

Helen Ross
Professor of Rural Community Development in the School of Natural and Rural Systems Management, The University of Queensland, Gatton.

Helen Ross is Professor of Rural Community Development in the School of Natural and Rural Systems Management, The University of Queensland, Gatton. She is an interdisciplinary social scientist specialising in integrating the social with other sciences in sustainable development and environmental management. Her fields include community participation in natural resource management, collaborative planning and management processes involving communities and agencies, capacity building, and social impact assessment. She has worked extensively with Aboriginal communities, and in Thailand. Recent collaborative research includes a study to facilitate co-operative management of the Great Barrier Reef between Indigenous traditional owners