I’ve recently been working on a series of projects linking, in various ways, community-based adaptation to climate change, or CBA. These approaches highlight two very important assumptions: 1) communities are capable of understanding, and acting on, climate change impacts. This doesn’t mean that this can occur without support or facilitation or capacity building or knowledge enhancement. 2) communities therefore are not passive in the face of the impacts of climate change. This in turn means the development of projects, policies or approaches …

The Nilgiri Tahr is only found in the Nilgiri Hills and Western Ghats in the southern Indian states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. The population is under severe pressure from a range of activities impacting on the grasslands – for example, by hydro-development, Eucalyptus plantations, tea plantations. The Tahr’s conservation will ultimately be a story of how unique ecosystems are able to stand development pressures, and how State governments are able to work together to protect these fragile ecosystems, and …

Mt Buffalo National Park, in Northeast Victoria, Australia, is a landscape of boulders, granite tors and small streams meandering through the plateau. Water cascades as it makes its way through the boulders with some streams eventually being blocked and forming pools, and some making their way off the plateau to eventually reach the valley below.  

Sometimes the grabbed two hours are as good, if not better, than those walks that have been planned for days or weeks.  It’s not always easy to know what makes them special, but sometimes the confluence of things are glaringly obvious – as happened to me recently. I had a couple of hours spare and I felt the need to get out and walk.  I was back in northeast Victoria, and took the opportunity to go to one of my favourite …

Recently, for whatever reason, my mind has been turning to the nature of travel in the early 21st century. It was perhaps pricked by the ease I did some research on a Himalayan destination I‘m going to soon, perhaps it was pricked by the tweets on my twitter feed full of information about places, ‘5 best of’ lists and the like which swirl round and find their way to blogs, posts, articles and wherever else. This ease of information no …

The district centre of Gopeshwar in the Indian Himalaya.  The image picks up a number of things – the town itself, which is attracting more people; the forest cover, a result of many years of social action and conservation efforts from local people and various civil society groups; agricultural fields, which, in these areas, are increasingly being tended by women as men leave in search of daily wage labour outside the district and the next generation leave in search of …

People have thought in sectors for so long – the agricultural sector, the mining sector, the water sector, the forestry sector for example – that we have become very good at compartmentalising things.  This perhaps isn’t such a surprise given the dominant values of scientific/economic analyses which underpins much research, policy-making and decision-making (and have done so for a very long time). Think about how things would change if, instead of seeing things through the lenses of sectors, we saw …

Mt Bogong is Victoria’s highest peak at 1986 metres (6516 ft). With its cap of snow in winter and its summer grey-green colouring of eucalypts and snow plains, it stands as a silent sentinel looking over the high plains, the valleys and the villages which make up this section of the Australian Alps. I love this place – on so many levels. It’s a valley (and its mountains) where I did early bush walks, where I spent many holidays and …

  Fishers in the Sundarban have a precarious existence – poverty, declining catch and the threat of attack by both tigers and crocodiles. The people of the Sundarban have complex explanatory frameworks for their engagement with the forests f this world heritage area – explanatory frameworks that pick up forest Gods, cooperative co-existence with tigers, and forest protection.  These beliefs impact not only on use of the forests, but also on community relations (as different livelihood activities mean different relationships …

What is it about India?’ I’ve been asked a few times recently.  I’m not too sure why, but it’s certainly a question on people’s lips. It got me thinking about the visits, the work, the relationship with the country and through that the relationship with Delhi – my usual entry point to the vastness of India. What was it that actually brought me here?  Where did this begin?  What kinds of connections to place develop, emerge, get reinforced through this? So …