Populism, nationalism, and the elite: A weekend at Cumberland Lodge

MSc student Rob Macquarie reflects on the Department of Government’s annual visit to Cumberland Lodge from the 28-30 April 2017, with the theme ‘‘The Rise of Populism? Resurgent Nationalism in an Internationalised World’

Searching for trust in the voluntary carbon markets

Voluntary carbon markets are growing rapidly but where credits or the claims made by buyers lack integrity and quality, this could undermine global climate action and development. Rob Macquarie explains how companies and policymakers who want VCMs to succeed can make them a meaningful contribution to sustainable development and a just global transition

Company disclosures and metrics as tools for just transition monitoring: investor, rightsholder and policy perspectives

This report seeks to identify how monitoring and scrutiny can be an effective tool for enhancing just transition finance. Its aim is to identify gaps and use cases for the metrics and monitoring space. The report presents the different needs for just transition metrics of investors and rightsholders – i.e. stakeholder groups impacted by company activities under transition plans in ways that affect their human rights. It explores policy options that can meet both groups’ needs while also remaining feasible and viable – including for companies, which will need to provide much of this information. The research focuses on large, listed companies and their assets while acknowledging that there are different considerations for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and privately-owned entities. The report draws on engagement-led research focused on the users of company plans and data. The report concludes that while substantial progress has been made, current frameworks have not been clear enough about the form best practice should take for information to promote a just transition. Furthermore, some initiatives have been led by company and investor needs with insufficient incorporation of systemic risks and of the needs of rightsholders

Strengthening monitoring and metrics for just transitions in emerging economies

In emerging economies, for metrics to play an effective role in driving progress for both the net zero transition and social justice, monitoring needs to get closer to the ground. Here, Rob Macquarie and Judith Tyson explore what it takes to go beyond high-level talk about climate finance allocation and use national and domestic policy frameworks to track how climate transitions ‘walk the talk’ on just transition

Achieving a step change in monitoring companies’ just transitions and investment

As London Climate Action Week gets underway, rising uncertainty in economic and political outlooks is threatening effective and coordinated climate action, including by companies, investors, and rightsholders. Rob Macquarie and Judith Tyson outline insights from an interactive workshop that considered the channels and sources of information needed for successful just transition action

The Relationship between Climate Action and Poverty Reduction

There is growing awareness that actions by policymakers and international organizations to reduce poverty, and those to mitigate and adapt to climate change, are inextricably linked and interwoven. This paper examines relevant academic and policy literature and evidence on this relationship and explores the potential for a new form of development that simultaneously mitigates climate change, manages its impacts, and improves the wellbeing of people in poverty. First, as a key foundation, it outlines the backdrop in basic moral philosophy, noting that climate action and poverty reduction can be motivated both by a core principle based on the right to development and by the conventional consequentialism that is standard in economics. Second, it reviews assessments of the current and potential future impacts of weakly managed climate change on the wellbeing of those in poverty, paying attention to unequal effects, including by gender. Third, it examines arguments and literature on the economic impacts of climate action and policies and how those affect the wellbeing of people in poverty, highlighting the importance of market failures, technological change, systemic dynamics of transition, and distributional effects of mitigation and adaptation. Finally, the paper surveys the current state of knowledge and understanding of how climate action and poverty reduction can be integrated in policy design, indicating where further research can contribute to a transition that succeeds in both objectives

AusTraits: a curated plant trait database for the Australian flora

AusTraits is a transformative database, containing measurements on the traits of Australia's plant taxa, standardised from hundreds of disconnected primary sources. So far, data have been assembled from > 300 distinct sources, describing > 500 plant traits and > 34,000 taxa. To handle the harmonising of diverse data sources, we use a reproducible workflow to implement the various changes required for each source to reformat it suitable for incorporation in AusTraits. Such changes include restructuring datasets, renaming variables, changing variable units, changing taxon names. While this repository contains the harmonised data, the raw data and code used to build the resource are also available on the project's GitHub repository, https://github.com/traitecoevo/austraits.build/. Further information on the project is available at the project website austraits.org and in the associated publication (see below). CONTRIBUTORS The project is jointly led by Dr Daniel Falster (UNSW Sydney), Dr Rachael Gallagher (Western Sydney University), Dr Elizabeth Wenk (UNSW Sydney), and Dr Hervé Sauquet (Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust Sydney), with input from > 300 contributors from over > 100 institutions (see full list above). The project was initiated by Dr Rachael Gallagher and Prof Ian Wright while at Macquarie University. We are grateful to the following institutions for contributing data Australian National Botanic Garden, Brisbane Rainforest Action and Information Network, Kew Botanic Gardens, National Herbarium of NSW, Northern Territory Herbarium, Queensland Herbarium, Western Australian Herbarium, South Australian Herbarium, State Herbarium of South Australia, Tasmanian Herbarium, Department of Environment Land Water and Planning Victoria and the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria. AusTraits has been supported by investment from the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC), via their "Transformative data collections" (https://doi.org/10.47486/TD044) and "Data Partnerships" (https://doi.org/10.47486/DP720, https://doi.org/10.47486/DP720A) programs; and grants from the Australian Research Council (FT160100113, DE170100208, FT100100910) and Macquarie University, The ARDC is enabled by National Collaborative Research Investment Strategy (NCRIS). ACCESSING AND USE OF DATA The compiled AusTraits database is released under an open source licence (CC-BY), enabling re-use by the community. A requirement of use is that users cite the AusTraits resource paper, which includes all contributors as co-authors: Falster, Gallagher et al (2021) AusTraits, a curated plant trait database for the Australian flora. Scientific Data 8: 254, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-021-01006-6 In addition, we encourage users you to cite the original data sources, wherever possible. Note that under the license data may be redistributed, provided the attribution is maintained. The downloads below provide the data in two formats: austraits-X.X.X.zip: data in plain text format (.csv, .bib, .yml files). Suitable for anyone, including those using Python. austraits-X.X.X.rds: data as compressed R object. Suitable for users of R (see below). austraits-X.X.X-flattened.rds: contains a flattened version of the dataset for direct loading in R; all data tables are joined into a wider format austraits-X.X.X-flattened.parquet: contains a flattened version of the dataset in parquet format; all data tables are joined into a wider format  For R users, access and manipulation of data is assisted with the austraits R package. The package can both download data and provides examples and functions for running queries.STRUCTURE OF AUSTRAITS The compiled AusTraits database contains a series of relational tables and files. These elements include all the data, contextual information submitted with each contributed datasets, database schema, and trait definitions. The file dictionary.html provides the same information in textual format. Similar information is available at https://traitecoevo.github.io/traits.build-book/. CONTRIBUTING We envision AusTraits as an on-going collaborative community resource that: Increases our collective understanding the Australian flora; Facilitates accumulation and sharing of trait data; Builds a sense of community among contributors and users; and Aspires to fully transparent and reproducible research of the highest standard. As a community resource, we are very keen for people to contribute. Assembly of the database is managed on GitHub at https://github.com/traitecoevo/austraits.build/. Here are some of the ways you can contribute: Reporting Errors: If you notice a possible error in AusTraits, please post an issue on GitHub. Refining documentation: We welcome additions and edits that make using the existing data or adding new data easier for the community. Contributing new data: We gladly accept new data contributions to AusTraits. See full instructions on how to contribute at https://github.com/traitecoevo/austraits.build/. The AusTraits project received investment (https://doi.org/10.47486/TD044, https:// doi.org/10.47486/DP720, https://doi.org/10.47486/DP720A) from the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC). The ARDC is funded by the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS)