Participatory modeling is increasingly recognised as an effective way to assist collective decision-making processes in the domain of natural resource management. This paper introduces a framework for evaluating projects that have adopted a participatory modeling approach. This framework –...

In 1972, the Club of Rome’s infamous report “The Limits to Growth” (Meadows et al., 1972) presented some challenging scenarios for global sustainability, based on a system dynamics computer model to simulate the interactions of five global economic subsystems, namely: population, food...

This paper reports on using television and internet communication as a means of engaging the least interested sections of society with respect to environmental problems and sustainability issues. The theory behind developing such communication is described and the importance of social...

Australia’s export oriented large natural resources sectors of agriculture and mining, the ways in which large scale services such as nutrition, water, housing, transport and mobility, and energy are organized, as well as the consumption patterns of Australia’s wealthy urban households,...

This paper explores the challenges facing orthodox economic approaches to assessing climate control as if it were appraisal of an investment project. Serious flaws are noted in the work of economists with especial attention to the UK Government report by Stern and colleagues. The opinions...

Moderate or poor reliabilities, worrisome correlation patterns and ambiguous dimensionality raise questions about the awareness of consequences scale being a valid measure of egoistic, social-altruistic and biospheric value orientations. These results may, however, indicate something else. An...

Models that are used for future based scenarios should be calibrated with historical water supply and use data. Historical water records in Australia are discontinuous, incomplete and often incongruently disaggregated. We present a systematic method to produce a coherent reconstruction of the...

The ecosystem services provided by coastal and near-shore marine systems contribute significantly to human welfare. However, studies that document values of these services are widely scattered in the peer-reviewed literature. We collected 39 contingent valuation papers with 120 observations to...

The role of evaluation in environmental management in Australia tends to be limited to restricted measures of program effectiveness rather than contributing towards supporting environmental managers in addressing complex environmental problems. This paper shows how a social learning approach can...

Ecosystems are being characterised as goods and services to allow their valuation in monetary terms. This follows an orthodox economic approach to environmental values, but is also being undertaken by ecologists and conservation biologist. There appears a lack of clarity and debate as to the...