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SUMMARY:Dimming of the Garden State: An ecological unravelling - Professor
  Ralph Mac Nally
DTSTART:20101012T150000Z
DTEND:20101012T160000Z
UID:TALK24383@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Chris Jiggins
DESCRIPTION:Environmental consequences of human actions long have been exc
 luded from formal accounting in economic modelling (‘externalities’). 
 Deleterious environmental effects only recently have been contemplated in 
 economic frameworks\, most notably\, in carbon pollution and the ETS. Vict
 oria\, once proudly Australia's ‘Garden State’\, has a wide range of e
 nvironmental problems that have not been\, and seem unlikely to be\, facto
 red into the economic structure\, and yet indicate that the Garden State i
 s unravelling ecologically. Three case studies\, by no means a full list\,
  are considered here: (1) the massive decline in condition of the River Re
 d Gum estate of the northern floodplains\; (2) the crash of woodland birds
  of central and northern Victorian forests and woodlands\; and (3) widespr
 ead decline in diversity and numbers of amphibians in the same region. All
  are linkable to broad-scale ecological mismanagement exacerbated by clima
 te change. Four hard-won lessons emerge from these and a vast number of ot
 her systems in Australia and elsewhere. First\, ecological sustainability 
 is the only form of sustainability we should care about. Second\, ecologic
 al systems are fundamentally ‘sloshy’\, and our attempts to engineer f
 or constancy are badly misdirected. Third\, there will be ecological surpr
 ises in the future\, but we currently have little capacity for envisaging 
 and planning for them. Last\, ecological processes have a wide range of sc
 ales. Many of the most influential processes operate over very large areas
  (millions of hectares) and very long periods (decades to centuries). Poli
 cy and management needs to have a sufficiently forward-looking and large-s
 cale perspective to deal with these overarching processes.
LOCATION:Part II Lecture Theatre\, Department of Zoology
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