Where Is the Coherent Response to Climate Change and Peak Oil? An Examination of Policy and Practice Affecting Agriculture in Regional Australia
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Published
Dec 5, 2011
Ruth Beilin
Serenity Hill
Tamara Sysak
Abstract
Climate change and peak oil will have profound impacts on food production across the world. This article uses selected documents from the agriculture policy arena to explore international, national and local scale responses and recommendations. Using two regional Australian case-studies, we describe local farming practice. We find that while seeking to be adaptive overall, farm decisions are, necessarily complex, often limited and result in both short- and long-term perverse outcomes. This includes changes previously considered as innovative or adaptive responses to climate change or energy constraint. By contrast, these responses now may appear reactive and maladaptive. We argue that the maladaptive responses are most likely to continue because of a lack of policy coherence and integration across scales. Farm experimentation and improvization requires supportive coherent policies. Good on-ground decision-making requires clear signals that support change beyond current variations within a ‘business as usual’ trajectory.
How to Cite
Beilin, R. ., Hill , S. . and Sysak, T. . (2011) “Where Is the Coherent Response to Climate Change and Peak Oil? An Examination of Policy and Practice Affecting Agriculture in Regional Australia ”, The International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food. Paris, France, 18(3), pp. 199–216. doi: 10.48416/ijsaf.v18i3.245.
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of conventional and organic farming in Australia, Agricultural Systems, 89(2–3), pp. 324–48.
Commonwealth Government. Published online
06.pdf>, accessed 28 June 2011.
ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) (2006) Agricultural Commodities: Small Area Data, Australia, 2005-06.
Canberra: Commonwealth Government. Published online
18 September 2010.
Allison, H.E. and Hobbs, R.J. (2004) Resilience, adaptive capacity, and the ‘lock-in trap of the Western
Australian agricultural region, Ecology and Society, 9(1), 3, published online
Bäckstrand, K. (2010) Climate change and energy security in the European Union: from rhetoric to practice?,
in: C. Lever-Tracy (ed.) Handbook of Climate Change and Society, London: Routledge, pp. 353–368.
Barnett, J. and O’Neil, S. (2010) Maladaptation, Global Environmental Change, 20, pp. 211–213.
British Petroleum (2010) Statistical Review of World Energy 2010. Published online
Brooks, N., Grist, N. and Brown, K. (2009) Development future in the context of climate change: challenging
the present and learning from the past, Development Policy Review, 27(6), pp. 741–765.
Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO (2010) Climate Snapshot: State of the Climate. Published online
Canning, P., Charles, A., Huang, S., Polenske, K.R. and Waters, A. (2010) Energy Use in the U.S. Food System,
Economic Research Report ERR-94. Washington, DC: USDA.
Climate Commission Secretariat (2011) The Critical Decade: Climate Science Risks and Responses. Canberra,
ACT: Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency. Published online
Cordell, D., Drangert, J. and White, S. (2009) The story of phosphorus: global food security and food for
thought, Global Environmental Change, 19, pp. 292–305.
Cullen, B., Thorburn, P., Meier, E., Howden, M. and Barlow, E. (2010) New Rural Industries for Future Climates,
Publication No. 10/010. Canberra: Rural Industries and Development Corporation.
Daniell, K., Manez Costa, M., Ferrand, N., Kingsborough, A., Coad, P. and Ribarova, I. (2011) Aiding
multi-level decision-making processes for climate change mitigation and adaptation, Regional Environmental
Change, 11, pp. 243–258.
EIA (Energy Information Administration) (2010) Annual Energy Outlook 2010. Published online
Folke, C. (2006) Resilience: the emergence of a perspective for social-ecological systems analyses, Global
Environmental Change, 16, pp. 253–267.
Frontier Economics (2010) Structural Adjustment Pressures in the Irrigated Agriculture Sector in the Murray–
Darling Basin. Canberra: Murray–Darling Basin Authority.
Gunderson, L.H., Holling, C.S. and Peterson, G.D. (2002) Surprises and sustainability: cycles of renewal
in the Everglades, in: L. Gunderson and C.S. Holling (eds) Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in
Human and Natural Systems, Washington, DC: Island Press, pp. 315–332.
Harris, G. (2007). Seeking Sustainability in an Age of Complexity. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Heller, M.C. and Keoleian, G.A. (2000) Life Cycle-based Sustainability Indicators for Assessment of the U.S.
Food System, Report No. 2000-4. Ann Arbor, MI: Center for Sustainable Systems. Published online
Hirsch, R.L. , Bezdek, R. and Wendling, R. (2005) Peaking Of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, and
Risk Management. Washinton, DC: US Department of Energy/National Energy Technology Lab. Published
online
10 October 2010.
Holling, C.S. and Meffe, G.K. (1996) Command and control and the pathology of natural resource management,
Conservation Biology, 10(2), pp. 328–337.
Howarth, R.W., Santoro, R. and Ingraffea, A. (2011) Methane and the greenhouse-gas footprint of natural
gas from shale formation, Climatic Change Letters, 105, p. 5.
IEA (International Energy Agency) (2008) World Energy Outlook 2008: Executive Summary. Paris: IEA. Published
online
10 October 2010.
IEA (International Energy Agency) (2010) World Energy Outlook 2010: Executive Summary. Paris: IEA. Published
online
November 2010.
IEA (International Energy Agency) (2011) Prospect of Limiting the Global Increase in Temperature to 2ºC Is
Getting Bleaker, Media Release. Published online
30 May 2011.
Lake, M. (1987) The Limits of Hope: Soldier Settlement in Victoria 1915–38. Melbourne: Oxford University
Press.
Lenton, T.M., Held, H., Kriegler, E., Hall, J.W., Lucht, W., Rahmstorf, S. and Schellnhuber, H.J. (2008)
Tipping elements in the earth’s climate system, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the
United States of America, 105(6), pp. 1786–1793.
McMichael, P. (2009) Contradictions in the global development project: geo-politics, global ecology and
the ‘development climate’, Third World Quarterly, 30(1), pp. 251–266.
Meinshausen, M., Meinshausen, N., Hare, W., Raper, S.C.B., Frieler, K., Knutti, R., Frame, D.J. and Allen,
M.R. (2009) Greenhouse gas emission targets for limiting global warming to 2ºC, Nature, 458, pp.
1158–1162.
Murray–Darling Basin Authority (2010) Guide to the Proposed Basin Plan: Overview. Canberra: Murray–
Darling Basin Authority.
Nellemann, C., MacDevette, M., Manders, T., Eickhout, B., Svihus, B., Gerdien Prins, A., Kaltenborn,
B.P. (eds) (2009) The Environmental Food Crisis: The Environment’s Role in Averting Future Food Crises, A
UNEP Rapid Response Assessment. Arendal: United Nations Environment Programme. Published online
2010.
OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) and FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization)
(2010) Agricultural Outlook 2010–2019: Highlights. Published online
OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) and FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization)
(2011) Agricultural Outlook 2011–2020: Highlights. Published online
Paavola, J. (2007) Institutions and environmental governance: a reconceptualization, Ecological Economics,
63(1), pp. 93–103.
Pahl-Wostl, C. (2009) A conceptual framework for analysing adaptive capacity and multi-level learning
processes in resource governance regimes, Global Environmental Change, 19, pp. 354–365.
Ramanathan, V. and Feng, Y. (2008) On avoiding dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate
system, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 105(38), pp. 14245–
14250.
Schultz, S. (2010) Military study warns of a potentially drastic oil crisis, Der Spiegel. Published online
2010.
Sorrell, S., Speirs, J., Bentley, R., Brandt, A. and Miller, R. (2010) Global oil depletion: a review of the
evidence, Energy Policy, 38, pp. 5290–5295.
State of Victoria (2008) Future Farming: Productive, Competitive and Sustainable. Melbourne: Department
of Primary Industries.
UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security (2010) The Oil Crunch: A wake-up Call for the UK
Economy. London: Ove Arup and Partners. Published online
2010.
US Joint Forces Command (2010) The Joint Operating Environment. Published online
Urwin, K. and Jordan, A. (2008) Does public policy support or undermine climate change adaptation?
Exploring policy interplay across different scales of governance, Global Environmental Change, 18, pp.
180–191.
Walker, B.H. and Salt, D. (2006) Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World.
Washington: Island Press.
Wood, R., Lenzen, M., Dey, C. and Lundie, S. (2006) A comparative study of some environmental impacts
of conventional and organic farming in Australia, Agricultural Systems, 89(2–3), pp. 324–48.
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