Inventing a sustainable future: Australia and the challenge of eco-innovation

Australia's possible futures depend on choices that are made now. One key to Australia's directions and success will be its capacity to shape an environment for innovation which meets its broader economic, social and environmental goals. We argue from both past successes and future potentials that opportunities are available for Australians to frame for themselves an economically attractive and globally constructive role by shaping their strategies to facilitate eco-innovation directed towards environmental sustainability.We contrast the role of past innovations in facilitating critical developments in the amelioration of the destruction of stratospheric ozone with current opportunities for Australia to contribute through innovation to resolving the problem of anthropogenic global warming and climate change. In particular, we focus on the powerful potential role of information technology in facilitating technological and social innovation towards sustainability through eco-innovation, and discuss key strategic principles in the context of the potential of technologies already under development. Such technologies offer exciting and important choices for Australians over the next few years.     

Time,cash and services: Reforms for a future sustainable long-term care

The elder care sector is at the core of a radical restructuring process as all the European countries strive to cope with demographic and social change. While current and prospective rapid population ageing is expected greatly to increase the demand for elder care services, financial constraints, social change and rising female employment all act as obstacles to the provision of an adequate supply of care labour.In their search for a financially sustainable response to these challenges the EU countries have brought in various reforms designed to mobilise resources and achieve more cost-efficient results. The paper presents an analysis of the main objectives of care reforms – making care affordable, favouring the creation of a care market, and making work pay – as well as their possible trade-offs. In fact, entailing as it does a larger role for the family, greater reliance on home care may clash with the goal of a higher female activity rate; good jobs and decent working conditions in the care sector may run counter to the principle of care affordability for the greatest possible numbers, while subsidising demand may conflict with public finance sustainability. These interactions, and the interdependence between the care market and the rest of the economy, are crucial factors that will need to be considered in order to ensure consistency between goals and policies.     

The financial system matters: future perspectives and scenarios for a sustainable future

D. Meadows considered in his report ‘limits of growth’ the financial system as a neutral accounting system and came to a pessimistic view. But the money-system itself creates several side effects and distorts our economic system right from the beginning. The money-system is not neutral. New scenario modelings considering the financial system can come to a positive perspective. Three from six systematically developed scenarios include paths to different kinds of sustainability. From a systemic view, the combination of conventional and complementary solutions can provide a substantial contribution towards a sustainable future.     

Hope and anticipation in education for a sustainable future

Global sustainability problems pose serious challenges for humanity. In handling these problems education for sustainable development (ESD) is seen as important. Different key competences that ESD should focus on have been introduced, such as the ability to deal with future dimensions. Still, studies indicate that future dimensions are not always included in ESD and that many young people are pessimistic concerning the global future. Therefore, one could argue that a focus on anticipatory emotions, especially hope, should be included in ESD. There is a worry, however, that hope will lead to unrealistic optimism and/or less engagement. The aim of this paper is to problematize the discussion about hope in relation to ESD and the global future by grounding it in theories from different disciplines and in empirical research about young people, hope, and climate change. The review shows that hope is a complex, multifaceted, and sometimes contested concept. Hope can be related to denial, but in other cases it can help people face and do something constructive with their worries about the global future. The close relation between hope and trust is emphasized and a need for critical emotional awareness in ESD is argued for.     

The psychodynamics of meaning and action for a sustainable future

Environmental policy and social research tends to neglect the inner, experiential dimensions of human life. Yet, the ways in which individuals seek to achieve psychological and emotional well-being in their lives is inevitably expressed in behaviour that impacts on ecological (and social) processes.The yearning for this ‘inner human sustainability’ is psychologically rooted and subjectively experienced. Beliefs and worldviews about how best to satisfy it are culturally (i.e. inter-subjectively and collectively) constructed and expressed through behaviour that, in turn, supports or undermines the external ecological and social world. Consumerism and its associated behaviours are inherently unsustainable socio-ecologically and psychologically. Through a psychodynamic theory of human experience, meaning and behaviour, the paper explains why any policy, if it is to be effective in the long-term, must be attentive to psychological, experiential and cultural dimensions of human beings and beliefs about how needs and wants will be satisfied. It also argues that long-term societal and cultural transformation is only possible when individuals take responsibility for their own development, transformation and engagement in the larger social and ecological complex on which they depend. Policy-making, research and education are themselves cultural activities that seek to respond appropriately to changes in the external world within the constraints of powerful cultural (collective) and psychological (individual) values and priorities. A systemic approach to sustainable development requires consideration of the mutual dependence between eco-social and psycho-cultural realities.     

A Factor Analytic Assessment of Financial Sustainability: The Case of New South Wales Local Government

Financial sustainability in local government remains a pressing problem which has seen a host of public policy interventions, including compulsory consolidation and performance monitoring through financial sustainability ratios. In September 2014, the New South Wales (NSW) Government announced a reform program centred on increasing scale in local government to make councils ‘fit for the future’. We apply factor analysis to the financial ratios informing the NSW Government's reform initiative to identify the underlying factors for observed financial performance data. We find evidence indicating that three independent underlying factors account for the adopted measures of financial sustainability. The public policy implication arising from this study suggests that the reforms imposed by the NSW Government on NSW municipalities may only meet with limited successa.     

Inconsistent Depreciation Practice and Public Policymaking: Local Government Reform in New South Wales

Public policy based on numerical indicators – a form of ‘public management by numbers’ – has become commonplace across the world. Whereas a good deal is known about the deleterious effects of this type of policymaking – including ratcheting, output distortion and ‘gaming’ – unfortunately little attention has focused on the adverse local government policy consequences of inconsistent depreciation accruals by local authorities. This paper seeks to address this gap in the empirical literature on local government performance. After examining the use of accounting data by local government policymakers, the paper reviews available empirical evidence of inconsistent depreciation practice both in Australia and abroad. We then consider the recent New South Wales (NSW) Independent Local Government Review Panel's use of accounting ratios as supporting evidence for boundary change in local government as a case study of the adverse impact of inconsistent depreciation practice. The NSW experience clearly demonstrates the distortionary effects of empirical evidence resulting from significant variation in depreciation accruals by individual local councils. The paper concludes with an assessment of the options available to local government policymakers wishing to obtain more accurate accounting accrual data for policy formulation purposes.     

A post-carbon aviation future: Airports and the transition to a cleaner aviation sector

There is an increasing global interest in sustainable aviation technologies as a result of concerns associated with the carbon-intensive nature of the industry and the imminence of reaching peak oil. Available options such as biofuels, liquid hydrogen and electric propulsion will not only impact on the design and functionality of commercial airplanes, but also will affect the entire industry from supply through to operation and maintenance. However, on account of the global spread and international nature of aviation, in addition to the lock-in effect associated with existing fossil-fuel driven technology, the present aviation paradigm is not well equipped for a massive or rapid technological transition. This paper first provides an overview of selected available propulsion options, as well as their possible impact on the aviation infrastructure. It then sets out to identify the existing regime players in the aviation transition arena as a means to provide an overview of potential path trajectories, with a view to assessing how airport owners and other salient regime players can either facilitate or hinder the transition to alternative and less carbon-intensive technologies.     

Hired Guns: Local Government Mergers in New South Wales and the KPMG Modelling Report

Across the developed world, including Australia, public policymaking now rests heavily on commissioned reports generated by for‐profit consultants, contrasting starkly with the earlier customary reliance on the civil service to provide informed policy advice to political decision makers. Dependence on commercial consultants is problematic, especially given the moral hazards involved in ‘hired guns’ providing support for policy ‘solutions’ desired by their political paymasters. This paper provides a vivid illustration of some of the dangers flowing from the use of consultants by examining the methodology employed by KPMG in its empirical analysis of the pecuniary consequences of proposed municipal mergers as part of the New South Wales’ (NSW) Government's Fit for the Future local government reform program. We show that the KPMG (2016) modelling methodology is awash with errors which render its conclusions on the financial viability of the NSW merger proposals fatally flawed.     

New development: A new COFOG for South Korea

The South Korean government's Classification of the Functions of Government (COFOG) is grounded in the System of National Accounts (SNA), rather than Government Finance Statistics (GFS). This article explains why a GFS-based classification might be beneficial to South Korea for the purposes of fiscal management and the comparison of government expenditures with other countries.     

Adoption of Environmental Reporting and Management Practices: An Analysis of New South Wales Public Sector Entities

This paper analyses the level of environmental disclosure and the corresponding adoption of environmental management practices by New South Wales public sector entities in 1996. From the analysis of 35 entities, it was found that the development of environmental management practices and the level of environmental disclosure were significantly associated. The results suggest that entities were responding to increased political visibility through higher levels of environmental disclosure, however they were also responding through the development of environmental management practices.     

Government intervention and institutional trading strategy: Evidence from a transition country

This study investigates the effectiveness of government intervention in rescuing bearish markets in a transition economy. Focusing on a pre- and a post-intervention period, the findings reveal that government intervention successfully rescued bearish markets in China and led to a fundamental change in institutional trading strategy after the intervention. We observe that following an intervention, institutions are more sensitive to long-term stock market regulations, whereas individual investors are more concerned about the rules related to their short-term interests. Evidence suggests that a credible signal from the government can be helpful in creating a positive outcome in the market (Bhanot & Kadapakkam, 2006). The findings are important to the current debate regarding the role of government intervention in markets in other transitional economies, as well as in developed countries.     

When do transformative initiatives really transform? A typology of different paths for transition to a sustainable society

This special issue of Futures is filled with good examples of initiatives that each in their own way take part in shaping our common future. Authors from different parts of the world document that the initiatives make a difference within their own realm. The question raised here is how and to what extent such transformative efforts can contribute to transforming the world at macro level, bringing us closer to a sustainable society. Based on the flora of literature about sustainable development, five different answers are presented in the form of five alternative pathways. The goal should not be to reach consensus on which strategy is best, but rather to have as many people as possible marching together in the same direction under different banners. Individuals who see no pathway leading to their goal tend to resign. The combined efforts of people with common goals but different strategies may produce the necessary dynamics to meet the needs of future generations.     

Towards sustainable households: a methodology for developing sustainable technological and social innovations

A high factor environmental efficiency improvement, towards a Factor 20 by 2050 AD — needed due to the assumed doubling of the world population combined with a fivefold increase of wealth per capita and a halving of the total global environmental burden — cannot be achieved through good housekeeping and technological innovation alone; any technological solutions will have to be combined with social innovations, in lifestyles and cultures. This paper describes the conclusions of the SusHouse (Strategies towards the Sustainable Household) Project that has been exploring possible socially and technologically innovative strategies for sustainable households. The Project has covered three household ‘functions’: Clothing Care, Shelter (Heating, Cooling and Lighting) and Food (Shopping, Cooking and Eating). These have been studied in five European countries (Germany, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands and the UK). The methodology of the Project has involved stakeholder workshops, the construction of Design-Orienting Scenarios, environmental, economic and consumer assessment of the Scenarios and strategy formulation. The paper describes: (1) the methodology for devising design-orienting scenarios, with examples from the three functions; (2) the results of environmental, economic and consumer acceptability assessments of these scenarios; and (3) comments on how the methodology can be developed and applied.