Unlikely Alliances in the Battle for Land and Water Security: Unconventional Gas and the Politics of Risk in NSW, Australia

This chapter, drawing on empirical work in New South Wales, discusses the unlikely alliances forming between environmentalists and farmers against the State which seeks to prioritise extractive development over other alternate futures. In response to a rise in land use conflicts, the State government has recently sought to silence criticism by tightening the laws which for decades have allowed citizens to seek merit and judicial review of government decision-making around development and planning issues. This move, made in conjunction with amendments to the State Environmental Planning Policy (Mining, Petroleum Production and Extractive Industries) 2007, has been met with anger and dismay by farmers, environmentalists and concerned citizens alike. Many places that have traditionally been agricultural strongholds now face an uncertain future as strategic planning moves to increase its focus on enabling energy production. Adopting a qualitative case study approach, this chapter highlights the implications of such decision-making by focusing on one rural region where a vastly different discourse and vision of the future is emerging

Arctic Alaska's role in future United States energy independence

For decades, Arctic Alaska has provided US mainland states with plentiful oil supplies. As reserves in the Prudhoe Bay fields decrease, however, the USA has been forced to consider new options to guarantee the nation's energy security. While debates continue to rage about its reliance on foreign oil, increased prices, consumption levels, and climate change, the USA is now contemplating whether predicted new discoveries might actually allow it to become an exporter rather than importer of oil and gas in the near future. This paper considers the role Arctic Alaska might play in helping secure future US energy security and independence. It also considers what other options exist for securing the State of Alaska's own future post-Prudhoe Bay

Remoteness and Marginality-Gold mining on the Northern Pacific Rim

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Regional development and government reforms in the Chinese gold mining industry

For decades Western companies desired access to China's lucrative markets and its expansive resource base, imagining the large profits to be made and the increased international reputations that could be established. More recently, through a series of economic liberalisation moves, China itself has sought to open its doors and to engage more fully with the globalising economy. One industry where this has been most apparent is the fledgling gold mining industry which over the past decade has grown from strength to strength.4 page(s

John Dunmore, From Venus to Antarctica: The Life of Durmont D'Urville

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Native Alaskan engagement with social constructions of rurality

There is no doubt that defining and measuring ‘rurality’ is problematic. In states such as Alaska on the western Pacific coast of the United States, more than two-thirds of the State is classified as ‘remote rural’. In 2000, despite only 10 per cent of the general Alaskan population living in these regions, for more than 41 per cent of Alaskan Natives, these places represent their traditional homelands. These areas generically referred to as the ‘Alaskan bush’ are considered remote, isolated and distant by not only the rest of mainland United States, but also, by most urban Alaskans. Labelling these places thus, continues to reinforce and sustain the much recognised ‘rural–urban divide’ and in turn, influences top-down policy decisions which in Alaska tend to stereotype and pigeonhole regional development, rather than recognise reinterpretations of it. This paper therefore, considers how rurality is defined and measured in and by the State of Alaska and more broadly by the United States government. It questions whether these definitions are adequate descriptions of the realities on the ground and whether such labelling hinders growth, and economic and cultural survival. It also suggests that current interpretations of rurality need to be reconceptualised