Natural disasters are expected to cost Australia $1.2 trillion over the next forty years. Everyone has a role to play in responding to natural hazards, but local citizens are provided with limited practical support to truly build their resilience. This project will redress the current lack of pragmatic strategies to build coastal community resilience by working with the non-government organisations, state and local government agencies and community members across 4 Australian states.

Contact: Carmen Elrick-Barr
Email: CElrick@usc.edu.au

Small remote Pacific Islands have been populated for more than 3000 years, during which time they experienced climate-driven environmental changes. Those challenges to survival have led to place-based coping strategies remembered through traditional knowledge. With today’s globalized worldviews, most adaptation strategies for climate-changed futures are founded on science-based understandings that undervalue traditional ways. This study seeks to demonstrate that the Pacific Islands’ traditional knowledge for coping with climate change has value, because of its place-based nature, and effective precedents in implementation.

Contact: Patrick Nunn
Email: PNunn@usc.edu.au

This ACIAR funded project establishes a forest health and biosecurity network to improve risk management for invasive pests within Southeast Asia. The participatory research with smallholder growers seeks to understand better forest biosecurity surveillance and reporting practices in the region. It also includes community-based, gender-focused research to build a Women in Forestry Biosecurity Network for a more inclusive forest health system.

Contact: Harriot Beazley
Email: HBeazley@usc.edu.au

In partnership with Khairun University in Indonesia, this project captures the imagination of local and provincial stakeholders on how colonial history can be presented and give meaning to the extant remains of heritage sites that are part of the North Maluku Spice Islands’ history. The most recent phase of the research project is focussed on young people’s perceptions and connections to Ternate’s colonial cultural heritage concerning advancing sustainable livelihoods and community-based tourism.

Contact: Harriot Beazley
Email: HBeazley@usc.edu.au

The Sundarbans area is the world’s largest mangrove forest shared between India and Bangladesh supporting 7.2 million people. This research takes an integrated approach to protecting the ecosystem from natural hazards such as wildfires, storms, erosion, net area loss, and pollution while reconciling forest conservation with livelihood improvement and poverty alleviation. This study will map hazard-vulnerable zones using geospatial techniques and earth observation data to investigate the dynamics of forest dependency by local communities. The study proposes a ranking system for the valuation of provisioning forest-related services such as timber and non-timber forest products (NTFPs). The aim is to develop a framework for preventive management strategies, based on locally available natural resources and activities of local inhabitants.

Contact: Sanjeev Srivastava
Email: SSrivast@usc.edu.au

Previously a couple of kilometres off the south coast of Pohnpei Island in Micronesia, Nahlapenlohd Island was so large it supported sizeable coconut forests and in 1850 a substantial battle with cannons and muskets. The oral histories tell that so much blood was spilled there that it was stripped of its vegetation and eventually disappeared. Considering what we know today, the more plausible cause is net sea-level rise has affected the western Pacific since the early nineteenth century. Accelerating significantly within the past few decades other Pacific Islands have been noted as having reduced in size or disappeared. The stories of these vanished islands and some that fortuitously evolved to outlive their neighbours offer significance for understanding resilience to climate change.

Contact: Patrick Nunn
Email: PNunn@usc.edu.au

Over the next few decades, climate change will likely result in ocean level rise and the involuntary displacement of millions of people. This project focuses on how humans respond to a threatened future. Evidence suggests that many of us perceive a challenge like sea-level rise through two distinct lenses - tangibly and intangibly. On the one hand, we perceive it as an environmental issue that is best tackled through pragmatic solutions. On the other hand, it is an intangible challenge to our current way of life with less visible responses or a ‘hope’ that things don’t occur. This is apparent with many Pacific Islands’ coastal community leaders believing equally in the power of prayer and the power of engineered material interventions. This research explores this ‘flexible attribution’ with a cross-discipline perspective of psychologists and geographers.

Contact: Patrick Nunn
Email: PNunn@usc.edu.au

Urban Heat Islands (UHI) are formed when urbanised areas experience higher temperatures than surrounding built areas, largely due to built environment materials' properties, capacity to infiltrate water, and the loss of natural vegetation. The BASC Lab (Bioclimatic and Sociotechnical Cities Lab) focuses on climate-responsive urban design and planning to improve urban microclimates and help mitigate the UHI effect. Climate-responsive strategies can lessen the impacts of climate change and reduce undesirable heat-related health outcomes. This is achieved by collaborating with several government and industry partners to identify efficient climate-responsive urban design and planning interventions that improve place-based climate performance. In addition, to ensure that future urban areas integrate climate-responsive strategies to mitigate heat-related risks adequately, the BASC Lab aims to provide government, policymakers, and urban design and planning practitioners with a pathway into the complexity of the challenges facing urban environments.

Contact: Dr Silvia Tavares
BASC Lab: https://www.usc.edu.au/about/structure/schools/school-of-law-and-society/basc-lab