The piffle in Parkville

Quadrant contributor and forester Roger Underwood shares his thoughts on the latest green conclave convened by Gaia’s champions at Melbourne University:   

Dear Friends,
I have received advice of an upcoming seminar at the University of Melbourne’s School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences. Here is the abstract:

The interdisciplinary character of landscape as a complex socio-ecological system, characterised by emergence, uncertainty and non-linearity allows us to imagine landscape as an enabling platform for the integration of non-material and material practices, culture and nature focused change. Reflecting on the everyday practices that create the ‘knowing’ and ‘doing’ of water, land and forest management, Beilin argues that complexity theory assists in rethinking our management of these places. Landscape governance and the engagement of civic society emerges as critical to reconfiguring the relationships between environmental policy and practices.

My first thought was that if ever proof was needed that forestry research in academia in Australia is stuffed, this is it. Someone has been paying good dollars to employ this woman to develop these obscurities and then to write this laughable gobbledegook…    
 
… what on earth is she on about? I think her concluding sentence means  “there will be better outcomes for forest landscapes if the community is involved in management and policy”, but I could be wrong, and I don’t intend to spend another second trying to decypher it. And even if this is her message, is it novel, and does it deserve a seminar?
     
I wonder what sort of a throng will attend?

Yours in despair,
Roger

Coming to grips with the “knowing and doing of water, land and forest management” in a time of “emergence, uncertainty and non-linearity” isn’t the only intellectual treat on offer at the Parkville campus, which viewed from a passing car on Royal Parade appears to be sober and serious institution.

The full slather of environmental topics can be read (and marvelled at) via the link below.

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