Sustainability and climate change adaptation : unlocking the potential of ethnic diversity

Funding: 2014: $35,148
2015: $23,260

Project Member(s): Goodall, H.

Funding or Partner Organisation: Australian Research Council (ARC Discovery Projects)

Start year: 2014

Summary: DP140101165 - ARC - Sustainability and climate change adaptation : unlocking the potential of ethnic diversity: One quarter of Australians are overseas-born. We will explore the environmental knowledge and practices of diverse migrant groups in urban and rural Australia. This will provide new knowledge for sustainability and climate change adaptation by identifying unheralded cultural resources and clarifying the bases of environmental conflicts. Australian environmental thinking - influenced by comparisons between Indigenous and Anglo-Australian perspectives - has yet to fully engage with the contribution of diverse migrant knowledges and practices. Yet as we face the challenges of a climate changing world, it is important to draw on the most varied adaptive capacities and cultural resources possible. We will apply geographic and historical methods to explore the environmental engagements of diverse migrant groups in urban, peri-urban and rural Australia. This work will contribute Australian scholarship to international sustainability debates, and will inform climate change mitigation and adaptation policy approaches at all government levels within Australia.

Keywords: Ethnicity, environmental knowledge, sustainability

FOR Codes: Social and Cultural Geography, Ethnicity, Multiculturalism and Migrant Development and Welfare, Australian History (excl. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander History), Australian history , Human geography, Multicultural services, Migrant and refugee settlement services

Acknowledgement of Country

UTS acknowledges the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the Boorooberongal people of the Dharug Nation, the Bidiagal people and the Gamaygal people, upon whose ancestral lands our university stands. We would also like to pay respect to the Elders both past and present, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for these lands.