2004 FENNER CONFERENCE ON THE ENVIRONMENT

Note: The ten randomly selected working groups (up to 15 people in each) were required to report back on the following questions:

Question 1a
Is more interdisciplinarity needed?

Question 1b
If so, in what way/s has this conference illuminated your thinking on how the disciplines can improve their contribution to population-environment policy making and debate?

Question 2
What follow-up actions should the Organising Committee and others take in order to improve the content and processes of the population-environment debate?

The groups reported back on question 1 in the 'Re-group' session chaired by Ian Lowe and this was followed by a period of general questions and discussion from the floor. The groups reported back on Question 2 after the integration panellists spoke in the 'Integration Panel and Open Forum' session chaired by Doug Cocks. This was followed by the general Open Forum discussion. For ease of accessibility and comparability, the major points presented by each working group for both questions are presented together here.

Group 1

Question 1

• Yes. There is a real lack of engagement between the disciplines evident.
• Sustainability could be the bridge, the framework, the unifying theme.
• The big question is how to connect the various disciplines ('warring tribes'). There may be institutions that can do this.

Question 2

The group called our response 'the generational momentum' and felt there were four main areas to take the issue forward - presented in the order of 'do-ability'.

• Lack of information
  • distil the 'black holes' and dispel the myths;
  • form research questions;
  • what is the debate?
• Compile and Consolidate what we know
  • leadership (Academy?);
  • vehicle and products;
  • build community;
  • don't want another book!
• Repackage the debate
  • what should local government do – this is the level at which the main impacts are?
  • how does 'national' cascade down to local?
  • too unsubtle;
  • make it complex and multilayered;
  • unpick and understand policy views;
  • Paul Monk methods (argument mapping)?
• Forming the institution – sustainability the bridge
  • sustainability elevated to PM&C, Premier & Cabinet;
  • population sits under sustainability;
  • embed in present institutions;
  • mainstream sustainability and population values.

Group 2

Question 1

• Yes we need an interdisciplinarity approach that moves on to transdisciplinarity, but there needs to be discussion within disciplines as well.
• Missing is a focus on history and anecdotal evidence. Need to example the civilisations that have really not go this (question) right in the past, eg, Easter Island.
• There is a need for a clear and appropriate question to be asked – overall and within a discipline – to be developed by a transdisciplinarity group.
• There seems to have been little work done by any single discipline on the nexus.
• We want to end up transdisciplinary.

Question 2

• Recommend the Academy create a multidisciplinary board from the Academies to set up a multidisciplinary grant review process. For example 5 per cent of grant funds could go to multidisciplinary proposals.
• Need to create a group to develop or promote scenarios and communicate these to the media (community).
• A multidisciplinary group should set the questions that need addressing – no one discipline should set the questions.
• Do a media release about 'Easter Island' and use this to promote the seriousness of the issue to the public.

Group 3

Question 1

• Yes, there needs to be more interdisciplinarity, but also more intra-disciplinary discussion needed, eg, from geographers.
• Economic discipline needs to interact more beyond current ecological economics movement (Australia a leader in finding market mechanisms to conserve environment).
• Need a pilot study/ modelling to demonstrate how interdisciplinarity might work.
• Each discipline needs to understand what they can contribute regarding methodology.
• More effort is required in finding technological solutions and interdisciplinarity can contribute to that.
• Use demographers to point us in the direction of a stable population, but others have to contribute to determine what is a sustainable level.

[Comment for Conference: The over-riding goal for population-environment should be ecological sustainability. The problem is that economists don't share this goal. Then there is the problem of measuring sustainability (this was illustrated by the three-legged stool model of Glenn Withers and the concentric-circle model of Ian Lowe. The word 'sustainability' has often been appropriated by those who have no concept of ecological sustainability.]

Question 2

• Encourage economics faculties to teach more ecological economics.
• Employ people to be 'interdisciplinary academics' as in some US colleges.
• We need to restructure undergraduate courses to be more interdisciplinary.
• Encourage further development of a population policy that is truly interdisciplinary.
• Need more cross-disciplinary projects – foster those that exist already in CRCs etc., and 'Millennium Ecosystem Assessment'.
• Educate more about the model/metaphor/parable of Easter Island that illustrates so well the interconnectedness of population/environment.
• Make an interdisciplinary effort for reducing per capita consumption (footprint) as well as determining an optimal population for Australia.
• Demand management of water can bring down usage.
• Need national energy audits on housing and appliances.
• Ensure that interdisciplinary projects are communicated through the media.
• Encourage further dialogue through internet/online forums.
• Recognise that interdisciplinary work is not for everyone.
• Need key indicators for population sustainability (interdisciplinary). Indicators that have been done are too complex.
• Need to coordinate water supply with population planning/zoning (need for more information but not conveyed to local councils who make the decisions).
• Establish working group to advise on how interdisciplinarity might work better, eg, Withers' idea for interdisciplinary PhDs with appropriate loading.
• Can the Academy play a leading role?

Group 4

Question 1

• We need more interdisciplinarity but there needs to be some discussion about the term. It is important to be clear about what this means, eg, 'multi', 'trans', 'cross' etc.
• The lack of interdisciplinary 'integrators' is an issue (ie, people who are trained to communicate across disciplines). Environmental engineers have a possible role here.
• Also an issue - the reasons why discipline boundaries are maintained as outlined in Julie Klein's paper (ie, >8000 disciplines).
• The constraints on the media for reporting issues in a holistic way [is another issue].
• The transdiciplinary 'integrators'  (or communicators or educators), are crucial to the process.

Question 2

• The common pathway is sustainability.
• Take sustainability into education; start at primary school level.
• The four academies should establish a cross-academies panel to produce a report on the population-environment issue, eg, US model of Academy Panels.
• The four academies should explore mechanisms to increase the number of people skilled in transdisciplinary understanding.

Group 5

Question 1

• There needs to be more interdisciplinarity. The two issues are not interacting.
• Extremes are:
  • population increase destroys the environment;
  • population is needed to improve economy.
• The issue is clearly not making it into the media; it is not making it into the political mainstream; we have ducked the whole issue of a population policy because it seems too hard.

Question 2

• There is some progress, eg, ecological economics, integration of information to ecological footprint – but these are not making it into our decision-making processes.
• Willingness to remove barriers but incentives not there.
• We now live in a planetary society (global/national/regional) too many people on planet already perhaps.
• The proper elements of the debate are not getting into the media.
• Would a 'number' focus the debate and research?
• The research has not been done – how would life be different in a population that was sustainable?
• Recommend that the Academy advocate for, or create, a taskforce to establish a population policy for Australia. This is absolutely urgent and central – and there must be a sustainable outcome.
• Liked Colin Butler's suggestion to commit to a percentage reduction in our ecological footprint per capita (ie, this avoids some of the difficulties of selecting specific figures).

Group 6

Question 1

• Agree that more interdisciplinarity is needed, but all disciplines need to be involved, not just some.
• Science (and other discipline) language needs to be translated to common language.
• 'Issues' should be used as organisers for multidisciplinary action
• Absence of 'agreed' (consensus) data and practical responses thus far.
• Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD) unites population and environment. Need to morph to sustainability to get on the political radar.

Question 2

• Academy could support and foster the formation of an expert group to allocate funds to issues highlighted as benefiting from an inter/trans/multi/discipline approach.
• Funds from 5 per cent of pool added to ARC grants for multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary proposals.
• Letters to the following, suggesting they put in place programs to foster interdisciplinarity:
  • VCs of universities;
  • Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF);
  • CSIRO;
  • Australian Research Council (ARC).

Group 7

Question 1

• More interdisciplinary, trandisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches are needed.
• Geographers are making a contribution.
• The conference has highlighted that the  discipline 'silos' are quite entrenched.
• This conference has highlighted the need to:
  • overcome university 'turf wars' between disciplines;
  • money off 'the top' [or 'on top'] for inter-multi and transdisciplinary teaching and research;
  • target philanthropic sources.
  • Our university system is forcing people into quite narrow discipline approaches and narrowing their potential to take integrated approaches.

Question 2

• Bring the academies together to create transdisciplinary work:
  • create transdisciplinary funding opportunities, conferences;
  • encourage younger scholars;
  • engage with school teachers' associations, eg, science, history, English, geography, SOSE;
  • mapping population and resource issues (build on the work of the Bureau of Rural Sciences, eg, Country Matters);
  • reverse the retreat from 1970s interdisciplinary approaches of universities.

Group 8

Question 1

• There should be more interdisciplinarity. That has really come out of this conference.
• But there are impediments to achieve this – from government to institutional levels, eg, the way CRCs are funded (criteria).
• Use international bodies, such as WHO and IPCC by having Australians appointed, and they bring the integrated approach back to Australia.

Question 2

• We saw the Academy as an excellent 'facilitator' for this issue.
• Identify interdisciplinary success stories (interdisciplinary as added value).
• University/institutional structures need to be freed up from their rigidity (some suggestions include):
  • academic reward systems;
  • doctoral training options;
  • cross-disciplinary research funding.
• Encourage participation in various contemporary international interdisciplinary initiatives. For example, IPCC; Millennium Ecosystem Assessment:
  • such bodies are necessarily forging an interdisciplinary approach to inherently complex, big, issues.
• Recognise the 'currency' of interdisciplinary research:
  • complexity;
  • provisionality;
  • more uncertainty;
  • confront single-number science.

Group 9

Question 1

• More interdisciplinarity is needed.
• Local government can be a good model for integrated approaches.
• Feeling that the community may be more engaged with the sustainability than the population-environment debate.
• There are institutional impediments – need to break down the barriers between universities, departments and professions.

Question 2

• Are population and environment the poles of the issue? Is sustainability more the issue?
• Need to spent time to redefine the question to have contemporary relevance then look to interdisciplinary action to address the issue.
• Identify where existing structures that separate disciplines can be broken down.
• Sustainability needs to be elaborated on what it means for the various experts.
• Resources need to be applied to interpret sustainability for the various stakeholders, ie, local government, building industry, etc.
• More collaborative research is required across disciplines to put 'meat on the bones' of the sustainability issue – especially for providing tools for stakeholders to start moving towards reducing our footprint.

Group 10

Question 1

• More interdisciplinarity is needed, but through better quality of communication as has been illustrated in this forum.
• We recommend the Venn diagram model – where areas of commonality are found.
• Need for a common framework, 'integrators, and an informal language.

Question 2

• We recommend more regular interdisciplinary meetings  (don't have to be specific, just invite people from other disciplines to any fora) but with each discipline having incumbent on them a responsibility to bring to the table a history of ideas as well as events from their respective disciplines.
• Ensure that they all listen!
• People need to be aware of the strengths and weaknesses in their own specialisation (discipline) and be aware of those of others.