The socio-spatial politics of royalties and their distribution: A case study of the Surat Basin, Queensland

2021 ◽  
pp. 0308518X2110266
Author(s):  
Neil Argent ◽  
Sean Markey ◽  
Greg Halseth ◽  
Laura Ryser ◽  
Fiona Haslam-McKenzie

This paper is concerned with the socio-spatial and ethical politics of redistribution, specifically the allocation of natural resources rents from political and economic cores to the economic and geographical peripheries whence the resource originated. Based on a case study of the coal seam gas sector in Queensland's Surat Basin, this paper focuses on the operation of the Queensland State Government's regional development fund for mining and energy extraction-affected regions. Employing an environmental justice framework, we critically explore the operation of these funds in ostensibly helping constituent communities in becoming resilient to the worst effects of the ‘staples trap’. Drawing on secondary demographic and housing data for the region, as well as primary information collected from key respondents from mid-2018 to early 2019, we show that funds were distributed across all of the local government areas, and allocated to projects and places primarily on a perceived economic needs basis. However, concerns were raised with the probity of the funds’ administration. In terms of recognition justice, the participation of smaller and more remote towns and local Indigenous communities was hampered by their structural marginalisation. Procedurally, the funds were criticised for the lack of local consultation taken in the development and approval of projects. While spatially concentrated expenditure may be the most cost-effective use of public monies, we argue that grant application processes should be open, transparent and inclusive, and the outcomes cognisant of the developmental needs of smaller communities, together with the need to foster regional solidarity and coherence.

Author(s):  
M.J.S. Floate ◽  
C.C. Boswell ◽  
B.E. Allan ◽  
D. Scott

The future approach to efficient fertiliser use on hill and high country pastures must increasingly recognise that most farms are a complex mosaic of widely different environments - with an associated range in production potential, carrying capacity and fertiliser requirement. Although the importance of broad regional soil patterns has been recognised in the past, little allowance has been made for significant local landscape and soil variations. The plant nutrient needs of component parts of the landscape mosaic can be assessed by soil testing and met by fertiliser materials whose quantity and composition match those nutrient requirements in most situations. Strategies should be developed to ensure that fertiliser regimes, pasture plants and management practices are selected and orchestrated to make the most effective use of each mosaic component on each individual farm. In effect this involves selective fertiliser use, geared to the limitations, characteristics and growth patterns of individual landscape units, which are managed to meet the seasonal feed requirements of stock in the most cost effective way. A case study of Tara Hills is presented, showing how selective use of fertiliser on individually fenced landscape units can be matched to the use of these units (paddocks or blocks) in a management system designed to fit the seasonal Stock feed requirements for a high country pastoral run. Finally the importance of plant requirements, soil properties, grazing management, fertiliser form and composition, and spreading methods are reviewed with respect to fertiliser efficiency in the hill and high country.


Author(s):  
Parisa Aasi ◽  
Lazar Rusu ◽  
Dorothy Leidner ◽  
Erik Perjons ◽  
Martha Corrales Estrada

In today's complex organizations, IT governance is an important managerial challenge. IT governance deals with decisions and responsibilities concerning IT. There are many factors influencing IT governance. One factor that has remained relatively unexplored by academic research is that of organizational culture. This research explores the influence of the organizational culture of collaborative networks on IT governance performance. A case study was conducted in a large complex company with several networks. The findings indicated that the networks fit better with different organizational culture types based on their priorities for IT governance outcomes to maximize performance. A clan organizational culture is desired when aiming for effective use of IT for asset utilization and cost-effective use of IT. An adhocracy culture fits better when prioritizing the effective use of IT for business growth. Finally, a combination of market and hierarchy organizational culture is desired and fits better when seeking effective use of IT for business flexibility and cost cutting.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger A. Sheldon ◽  
Alessandra Basso ◽  
Dean Brady

This tutorial review focuses on recent advances in technologies for enzyme immobilisation, enabling their cost-effective use in the bio-based economy and continuous processing in general.


2021 ◽  
pp. 153465012199089
Author(s):  
Mailae Halstead ◽  
Sara Reed ◽  
Robert Krause ◽  
Monnica T. Williams

Current research suggests that ketamine-assisted psychotherapy has benefit for the treatment of mental disorders. We report on the results of ketamine-assisted intensive outpatient psychotherapeutic treatment of a client with treatment-resistant, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of experiences of racism and childhood sexual abuse. The client’s presenting symptoms included hypervigilance, social avoidance, feelings of hopelessness, and intense recollections. These symptoms impacted all areas of daily functioning. Psychoeducation was provided on how untreated intergenerational trauma, compounded by additional traumatic experiences, potentiated the client’s experience of PTSD and subsequent maladaptive coping mechanisms. Ketamine was administered four times over a 13-day span as an off-label, adjunct to psychotherapy. Therapeutic interventions and orientations utilized were mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) and functional analytic psychotherapy (FAP). New skills were obtained in helping the client respond effectively to negative self-talk, catastrophic thinking, and feelings of helplessness. Treatment led to a significant reduction in symptoms after completion of the program, with gains maintained 4 months post-treatment. This case study demonstrates the effective use of ketamine as an adjunct to psychotherapy in treatment-resistant PTSD.


2021 ◽  
pp. 074171362110053
Author(s):  
Tracey Ollis

This case study research examines informal adult learning in the Lock the Gate Alliance, a campaign against mining for coal seam gas in Central Gippsland, Australia. In the field of the campaign, circumstantial activists learn to think critically about the environment, they learn informally and incidentally, through socialization with experienced activists from and through nonformal workshops provided by the Environmental Nongovernment Organization Friends of the Earth. This article uses Bourdieu’s “theory of practice,” to explore the mobilization of activists within the Lock the Gate Alliance field and the practices which generate knowledge and facilitate adult learning. These practices have enabled a diverse movement to educate the public and citizenry about the serious threat fracking poses to the environment, to their land and water supply. The movements successful practices have won a landmark moratorium on fracking for coal seam gas in the State of Victoria.


Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 1886
Author(s):  
Arezoo Zahediasl ◽  
Amin E. Bakhshipour ◽  
Ulrich Dittmer ◽  
Ali Haghighi

In recent years, the concept of a centralized drainage system that connect an entire city to one single treatment plant is increasingly being questioned in terms of the costs, reliability, and environmental impacts. This study introduces an optimization approach based on decentralization in order to develop a cost-effective and sustainable sewage collection system. For this purpose, a new algorithm based on the growing spanning tree algorithm is developed for decentralized layout generation and treatment plant allocation. The trade-off between construction and operation costs, resilience, and the degree of centralization is a multiobjective problem that consists of two subproblems: the layout of the networks and the hydraulic design. The innovative characteristics of the proposed framework are that layout and hydraulic designs are solved simultaneously, three objectives are optimized together, and the entire problem solving process is self-adaptive. The model is then applied to a real case study. The results show that finding an optimum degree of centralization could reduce not only the network’s costs by 17.3%, but could also increase its structural resilience significantly compared to fully centralized networks.


2011 ◽  
Vol 64 (5) ◽  
pp. 1081-1088 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manfred Kleidorfer ◽  
Wolfgang Rauch

The Austrian standard for designing combined sewer overflow (CSO) detention basins introduces the efficiency of the combined sewer overflows as an indicator for CSO pollution. Additionally criteria for the ambient water quality are defined, which comprehend six kinds of impacts. In this paper, the Austrian legal requirements are described and discussed by means of hydrological modelling. This is exemplified with the case study Innsbruck (Austria) including a description for model building and model calibration. Furthermore an example is shown in order to demonstrate how – in this case – the overall system performance could be improved by implementing a cost-effective rearrangement of the storage tanks already available at the inflow of the wastewater treatment plant. However, this guideline also allows more innovative methods for reducing CSO emissions as measures for better usage of storage volume or de-centralised treatment of stormwater runoff because it is based on a sewer system simulation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 1438
Author(s):  
Sebastián Risco ◽  
Germán Moltó

Serverless computing has introduced scalable event-driven processing in Cloud infrastructures. However, it is not trivial for multimedia processing to benefit from the elastic capabilities featured by serverless applications. To this aim, this paper introduces the evolution of a framework to support the execution of customized runtime environments in AWS Lambda in order to accommodate workloads that do not satisfy its strict computational requirements: increased execution times and the ability to use GPU-based resources. This has been achieved through the integration of AWS Batch, a managed service to deploy virtual elastic clusters for the execution of containerized jobs. In addition, a Functions Definition Language (FDL) is introduced for the description of data-driven workflows of functions. These workflows can simultaneously leverage both AWS Lambda for the highly-scalable execution of short jobs and AWS Batch, for the execution of compute-intensive jobs that can profit from GPU-based computing. To assess the developed open-source framework, we executed a case study for efficient serverless video processing. The workflow automatically generates subtitles based on the audio and applies GPU-based object recognition to the video frames, thus simultaneously harnessing different computing services. This allows for the creation of cost-effective highly-parallel scale-to-zero serverless workflows in AWS.


2011 ◽  
Vol 41 (5) ◽  
pp. 986-993 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol A. Rolando ◽  
Michael S. Watt ◽  
Jerzy A. Zabkiewicz

Plantation forests certified by the Forest Stewardship Council have restrictions on herbicide use. Since certified plantations are dependant on herbicides for cost-effective vegetation management, compliance requires a shift from current chemical practices. Using New Zealand plantation forests as a case study, discounted cash flow analyses were used to estimate the cost of certification-compliant vegetation control regimes compared with current non-compliant methods. We examined methods that (i) reduce the quantity of herbicides by using spot control and (ii) avoid the use of herbicides by using weed mats, manual, and mechanical control. Cost analyses were undertaken for low-, medium-, and high-productivity sites. The internal rate of return of the non-compliant regime was between 5% and 5.8% across the productivity range. Spot control was cheaper than current non-compliant practice. However, spot control is limited by site suitability and the availability of labour. Non-chemical control methods were expensive relative to other regimes. Reductions in the internal rate of return varied across low- and high-productivity sites between 0.8% and 0.5% for manual control, 1.3% and 0.8% for mechanical control, and 1.7% and 1.0% for weed mats. Meeting the goals of certification while retaining cost-effective vegetation control presents a challenge to the plantation forestry sector.


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