How can political ecology and geography help to navigate environmental crises and change?

When it comes to environmental crisis, Australia increasingly exhibits key and unfortunate characteristics. We are losing more biodiversity and natural ecosystems than any other developed nation, and our governing institutions have consistently failed to deliver meaningful action on these issues (Bekessy and Wintle 2022). Australia’s compounding environmental crises in turn have direct implications for the stability and prosperity of our society, especially for future generations, Indigenous people, and rural communities more broadly – as revealed in recent bushfires, floods, and droughts. This panel engages with Australia’s environmental futures, in an engaged and cross-disciplinary way, including earnest attempts to attend to our settler-colonial past and present (Potter et al 2020). Dan Shultz and Libby Larsen will present empirical work on contemporary struggles over land use and water in the Murray Darling Basin and in the Northern Territory, respectively. Sarah Milne and Rebecca Monson will consider how political ecology perspectives can “travel back” to the Australian context, drawing form their past research experiences in the Asia-Pacific region. Finally, Professor Lesley Head will reflect on the problem of socio-environmental or geographical research in Australia, in a time of crisis.

Speaker bio:

Professor Lesley Head, The University of Melbourne

Libby Larsen, ANU Crawford School of Public Policy

Dan Schulz, ANU Crawford School of Public Policy

Professor Rebecca Monson, ANU College of Law

Associate Professor Sarah Milne, ANU Crawford School of Public Policy