Read all posts for ‘Development’

Australia is a dry country, yet it boasts 59,736 kilometres of coastline (for a state/territory breakdown of coastal lengths, see the Australian Government’s Geoscience Education web page). While the supply of salt water is seemingly endless, the supply of fresh water is critically insufficient. The situation demands innovative solutions. Acknowledging […]

Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money. – Cree Indian Proverb (Or, in the case of Australia, ‘when the last plot of arable agricultural land has been mined…’) Food security is […]

Strawberry nouveaux riches We’ve invented a new word and a social category for them. We call them “capsunari” – which roughly translates as “strawberry-picker,” a term which doesn’t, however, convey the tone of scorn and disdain we usually put into it.  About three million Romanians (13 percent of the country’s […]

On the 19th of October 2011 I attended a symposium hosted by the University of Queensland (Centre for Communication and Social Change), titled “Listening to the quietest voices.” Any debate about the Greater ‘We’ (or greater common good) requires the creation of a space for genuine dialogue to occur, including with […]

Climate change has the potential to undermine people’s right to life, security, health and culture, perhaps nowhere more immediate than in the Pacific, where entire communities are bearing the brunt of rising sea levels and changing weather patterns.  ActionAid is an international NGO that is currently carrying out research to […]