Robert Dyball - Profile on Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Robert Dyball
Outside In" - Experiential Education for Sustainability
Human Ecology and Open Transdisiplinary Inquiry
Earthscan Publications Ltd eBooks, 2010
Critical Systems Thinking, Systemic Intervention, and Beyond
Handbook of Systems Sciences, 2020
Human ecology: an evolving discipline
Understanding Human Ecology, 2014
Some species play a key cultural role in our lives - could that be used to protect nature and benefit local people?
People and nature, 2020
The development of strong local food networks could play a key role in the creation of socially j... more The development of strong local food networks could play a key role in the creation of socially just, environmentally sustainable and resilient food systems in the future. In order for the potential of these networks to be assessed, we need adequate local data on the four key food system components: food production, processing and transportation, consumer access and utilisation, and waste, re-use and post-use management. However, in many locales there is insufficient information gathered and analysed in relation to regional production and consumption of food. This inhibits the implementation of best land use planning and, potentially, compromises future food security. This paper presents a case study of the food system in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), and demonstrates how knowledge gaps restrict the capacity to adequately plan for the Territory’s food future. In doing so, the paper TURNER, PEARSON AND DYBALL—PLANNING FOR REGIONAL FOOD SECURITY Locale: The Australasian-Paci...
Living well in the Anthropocene
Lessons from the Past, Learning from the Future
Consumers and global food systems
United Nations Development Program Administrator Helen Clark meets with a team students and facul... more United Nations Development Program Administrator Helen Clark meets with a team students and faculty from Victoria University that designed a net-zero energy solar model house.
Food security is becoming one of the most significant political, economic and environmental chall... more Food security is becoming one of the most significant political, economic and environmental challenges faced by governments around the world. Despite Australia’s wealth and abundant agricultural resources, this issue affects Australian cities. In order to develop effective strategies to decrease the vulnerability of Australian cities to food supply disturbances, the nature of food flows between cities and the agro-ecosystems upon which they depend must first be understood. Australia’s urban populations tend to be affluent and have specific expectations regarding the types of food they believe should be available to them all year round. The corporations that supply these consumers draw on food sourced from remote agro-ecosystems with little regard for local or seasonal produce. The vulnerability of a city’s food supply therefore no longer depends on local constraints affecting its immediate hinterlands, but on ecological and socio-political factors affecting the remote regions from w...
The Routledge Handbook of Sustainable Cities and Landscapes in the Pacific Rim, 2022
11 2020 -a 400% increase in a period where the global population rose 250% from three billion to ... more 11 2020 -a 400% increase in a period where the global population rose 250% from three billion to over 7.6 billion ( The World Bank, 2020). Despite these impressive increases in total volumes and average yields per hectare that fossil fuel-enhanced industrial agriculture has brought, it has come at significant and concerning costs. The environmental impacts of agriculture are well documented ( for a summary, see . For example, 40% of ice-free land has been converted to crops and pastures, which is a much higher percentage if considered as biologically productive land, and has a significant impact on biodiversity; 70% of freshwater diversion is for irrigation; artificially manufactured nitrogen fertilizers are extremely energy-intensive and accessible terrestrial reserves of phosphorus are dwindling, and its excessive application can lead to eutrophication of waterways; agriculture is both a significant contributor to climate change and at the same time is highly vulnerable to its effects . Socially, primary producers and other workers in the food processing systems are typically disadvantaged. For example, across much of Asia, smallholder farmers and fishers are among the poorest and most disadvantaged groups in their countries . Even in more affluent nations, producers are increasingly price takers who have to compete in an often global bidding market for supply contracts, leading to declining income per kilogram of product and often high levels of debt exposure as they are driven to farm more intensively for an equivalent return . Issues of indebtedness, risk exposure, declining landscape productivity, and other sources of stress and anxiety manifest in higher than national average figures for rural suicide and other mental health issues . Many other jobs in the food system, including pickers, processers, and meat workers, are low paid, insecure, seasonal, and typically without welfare safety nets . Given the environmental and social harms caused by dominant food systems, it is highly problematic that about one-third of the food produced is wasted. In developing nations, this wastage typically occurs on farm or in transit to markets. In a developed nation context, the wastage typically occurs at point of retail or post-retail. If these wastages could be averted, the environmental pressures of food production could be reduced, or the world's undernourished could be fed, or both . Profligate consumption of inherently environmentally burdensome food choices, notably industrially produced meats and dairy, can also be considered wasteful, and invariably cruel for the animals involved. It can certainly be acknowledged that in wealthy countries, far too much meat is consumed and the individual and environmental health benefits of a lower meat-content diet are acknowledged WHO, 2020a). The industrial productivist approach to food production will have to change . The underlying linear throughput model is unsustainable and if nutrients cannot be recovered and recycled within an energy budget, it will eventually exhaust available reserves and production based on its further application will cease. In this regard, phosphorus is of particular concern, as terrestrial reserves are limited, difficult to estimate, and overwhelmingly concentrated in one place . Similarly, the currently dominant food system is vulnerable to over-dependence on cheap and abundant fossil fuels to produce and apply the inputs it depends on, and to globally distribute, process, and retail food commodities. Ethically, it needs to address the poor, harsh, and unjust conditions many producers and food systems workers endure. Many would include the welfare of livestock as subjects of ethical concern as well. An urban consumer unconcerned by such ethics should at least concern themselves that producers are sufficiently well rewarded to be incentivized to continue to produce healthy food in sustainable a fashion, since that consumer depends upon those producers for their sustenance.
Complex Adaptive Systems: Constructing Mental Models
Social Learning: A new approach to environmental management
Food security, food systems, and environmental change
One of the centralsustainability challenges of ourtime is how to achieve food security for a popu... more One of the centralsustainability challenges of ourtime is how to achieve food security for a population anticipated to exceed nine billion by 2050 while minimizing further environmental degradation.1 Further, food consumption patterns are changing rapidly as average wealth increases(especially forthe emerging ‘middle class’ in much of the world), leading to many people consuming more food overall, and particularly more meat.2 This needsto be seen in the context of naturalresource depletion, stagnating rural economies,significant social and sociocultural changessuch asthe ‘Westernization’ of diets, and a changing climate.
The Reflective Practitioner: Practising what we preach
Earthscan Publications Ltd, 2005
The personal learning of the organizing group is explored through reflexivity and negotiation, ... more The personal learning of the organizing group is explored through reflexivity and negotiation, enabled by tools that could help other small collaborating groups with three essential elements of social learning:integration: to identify and build on their individual ...
Food and nutrition security across three scales
The Routledge Handbook of Sustainable Cities and Landscapes in the Pacific Rim, 2022
Systems and sustainability
Understanding Human Ecology, 2014
Outside In" - Experiential Education for Sustainability
Human Ecology and Open Transdisiplinary Inquiry
Earthscan Publications Ltd eBooks, 2010
Critical Systems Thinking, Systemic Intervention, and Beyond
Handbook of Systems Sciences, 2020
Human ecology: an evolving discipline
Understanding Human Ecology, 2014
Some species play a key cultural role in our lives - could that be used to protect nature and benefit local people?
People and nature, 2020
The development of strong local food networks could play a key role in the creation of socially j... more The development of strong local food networks could play a key role in the creation of socially just, environmentally sustainable and resilient food systems in the future. In order for the potential of these networks to be assessed, we need adequate local data on the four key food system components: food production, processing and transportation, consumer access and utilisation, and waste, re-use and post-use management. However, in many locales there is insufficient information gathered and analysed in relation to regional production and consumption of food. This inhibits the implementation of best land use planning and, potentially, compromises future food security. This paper presents a case study of the food system in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), and demonstrates how knowledge gaps restrict the capacity to adequately plan for the Territory’s food future. In doing so, the paper TURNER, PEARSON AND DYBALL—PLANNING FOR REGIONAL FOOD SECURITY Locale: The Australasian-Paci...
Living well in the Anthropocene
Lessons from the Past, Learning from the Future
Consumers and global food systems
United Nations Development Program Administrator Helen Clark meets with a team students and facul... more United Nations Development Program Administrator Helen Clark meets with a team students and faculty from Victoria University that designed a net-zero energy solar model house.
Food security is becoming one of the most significant political, economic and environmental chall... more Food security is becoming one of the most significant political, economic and environmental challenges faced by governments around the world. Despite Australia’s wealth and abundant agricultural resources, this issue affects Australian cities. In order to develop effective strategies to decrease the vulnerability of Australian cities to food supply disturbances, the nature of food flows between cities and the agro-ecosystems upon which they depend must first be understood. Australia’s urban populations tend to be affluent and have specific expectations regarding the types of food they believe should be available to them all year round. The corporations that supply these consumers draw on food sourced from remote agro-ecosystems with little regard for local or seasonal produce. The vulnerability of a city’s food supply therefore no longer depends on local constraints affecting its immediate hinterlands, but on ecological and socio-political factors affecting the remote regions from w...
The Routledge Handbook of Sustainable Cities and Landscapes in the Pacific Rim, 2022
11 2020 -a 400% increase in a period where the global population rose 250% from three billion to ... more 11 2020 -a 400% increase in a period where the global population rose 250% from three billion to over 7.6 billion ( The World Bank, 2020). Despite these impressive increases in total volumes and average yields per hectare that fossil fuel-enhanced industrial agriculture has brought, it has come at significant and concerning costs. The environmental impacts of agriculture are well documented ( for a summary, see . For example, 40% of ice-free land has been converted to crops and pastures, which is a much higher percentage if considered as biologically productive land, and has a significant impact on biodiversity; 70% of freshwater diversion is for irrigation; artificially manufactured nitrogen fertilizers are extremely energy-intensive and accessible terrestrial reserves of phosphorus are dwindling, and its excessive application can lead to eutrophication of waterways; agriculture is both a significant contributor to climate change and at the same time is highly vulnerable to its effects . Socially, primary producers and other workers in the food processing systems are typically disadvantaged. For example, across much of Asia, smallholder farmers and fishers are among the poorest and most disadvantaged groups in their countries . Even in more affluent nations, producers are increasingly price takers who have to compete in an often global bidding market for supply contracts, leading to declining income per kilogram of product and often high levels of debt exposure as they are driven to farm more intensively for an equivalent return . Issues of indebtedness, risk exposure, declining landscape productivity, and other sources of stress and anxiety manifest in higher than national average figures for rural suicide and other mental health issues . Many other jobs in the food system, including pickers, processers, and meat workers, are low paid, insecure, seasonal, and typically without welfare safety nets . Given the environmental and social harms caused by dominant food systems, it is highly problematic that about one-third of the food produced is wasted. In developing nations, this wastage typically occurs on farm or in transit to markets. In a developed nation context, the wastage typically occurs at point of retail or post-retail. If these wastages could be averted, the environmental pressures of food production could be reduced, or the world's undernourished could be fed, or both . Profligate consumption of inherently environmentally burdensome food choices, notably industrially produced meats and dairy, can also be considered wasteful, and invariably cruel for the animals involved. It can certainly be acknowledged that in wealthy countries, far too much meat is consumed and the individual and environmental health benefits of a lower meat-content diet are acknowledged WHO, 2020a). The industrial productivist approach to food production will have to change . The underlying linear throughput model is unsustainable and if nutrients cannot be recovered and recycled within an energy budget, it will eventually exhaust available reserves and production based on its further application will cease. In this regard, phosphorus is of particular concern, as terrestrial reserves are limited, difficult to estimate, and overwhelmingly concentrated in one place . Similarly, the currently dominant food system is vulnerable to over-dependence on cheap and abundant fossil fuels to produce and apply the inputs it depends on, and to globally distribute, process, and retail food commodities. Ethically, it needs to address the poor, harsh, and unjust conditions many producers and food systems workers endure. Many would include the welfare of livestock as subjects of ethical concern as well. An urban consumer unconcerned by such ethics should at least concern themselves that producers are sufficiently well rewarded to be incentivized to continue to produce healthy food in sustainable a fashion, since that consumer depends upon those producers for their sustenance.
Complex Adaptive Systems: Constructing Mental Models
Social Learning: A new approach to environmental management
Food security, food systems, and environmental change
One of the centralsustainability challenges of ourtime is how to achieve food security for a popu... more One of the centralsustainability challenges of ourtime is how to achieve food security for a population anticipated to exceed nine billion by 2050 while minimizing further environmental degradation.1 Further, food consumption patterns are changing rapidly as average wealth increases(especially forthe emerging ‘middle class’ in much of the world), leading to many people consuming more food overall, and particularly more meat.2 This needsto be seen in the context of naturalresource depletion, stagnating rural economies,significant social and sociocultural changessuch asthe ‘Westernization’ of diets, and a changing climate.
The Reflective Practitioner: Practising what we preach
Earthscan Publications Ltd, 2005
The personal learning of the organizing group is explored through reflexivity and negotiation, ... more The personal learning of the organizing group is explored through reflexivity and negotiation, enabled by tools that could help other small collaborating groups with three essential elements of social learning:integration: to identify and build on their individual ...
Food and nutrition security across three scales
The Routledge Handbook of Sustainable Cities and Landscapes in the Pacific Rim, 2022
Systems and sustainability
Understanding Human Ecology, 2014