John Bailey

People with mental illness experience increased chronic disease burden, contributed to by a greater prevalence of modifiable chronic disease risk behaviours. Policies recommend mental health services provide preventive care for such risk behaviours. Provision of such care has not previously been synthesised. This review assessed the provision of preventive care for modifiable chronic disease risk behaviours by mental health services. Four databases were searched from 2006 to 2017. Eligible studies were observational quantitative study designs conducted in mental health services, where preventive care was provided to clients for tobacco smoking, harmful alcohol consumption, inadequate nutrition, or inadequate physical activity. Two reviewers independently screened studies, conducted data extraction and critical appraisal. Results were pooled as proportions of clients receiving or clinicians providing preventive care using random effects meta-analyses, by risk behaviour and preventive care element (ask/assess, advise, assist, arrange). Subgroup analyses were conducted by mental health service type (inpatient, outpatient, other/multiple). Narrative synthesis was used where meta-analysis was not possible. Thirty-eight studies were included with 26 amenable to meta-analyses. Analyses revealed that rates of assessment were highest for smoking (78%, 95% confidence interval [CI]:59%–96%) and lowest for nutrition (17%, 95% CI:1%–35%); with variable rates of care provision for all behaviours, care elements, and across service types, with substantial heterogeneity across analyses. Findings indicated suboptimal and variable provision of preventive care for modifiable chronic disease risk behaviours in mental health services, but should be considered with caution due to the very low quality of cumulative evidence.

Wildfires are expected to increase worldwide both in frequency and intensity owing to global warming, but are likely to vary geographically. This is of particular concern in the five mediterranean regions of the world that are all biodiversity hotspots with extraordinary plant and animal diversity that may be impacted by deliberately imposed fire. Wildland managers attempt to reduce the impact and mitigate the outcomes of wildfires on human assets and biodiversity by the use of prescribed burning. The response that we must ‘fight fire with fire’ is understandable, perceived as reducing the flammability of wildlands in fire-prone regions and lessening the impact of wildfires. The long-term impact on biodiversity is, however, less clear. The practice of prescribed burning has been in place and monitored in south-western Australia for 50 years, longer and more intensively than in most other mediterranean ecosystems. The present target is for 200 000 ha burned each year in this biodiversity hotspot. Published studies on the impact of this burning on infrastructure protection and on biodiversity are here used to understand the protective capacity of the practice and to foreshadow its possible long-term ecological impact across all mediterranean ecosystems.

State of the environment (SoE) reporting has been in place in the majority of Australian jurisdictions since the early 1990s. Over the past decade, the process has stalled in Western Australia (WA) and, at present, shows no sign of reappearing. This is all the more serious since the degraded condition of the state’s environment calls out for regular review, analysis and action. We place this in a wider framework by (a) considering the significance of SoE reporting as a matter of collective responsibility, (b) mapping out a program of necessary legislative reform for WA and (c) outlining the challenges confronting SoE reporting as an act of public communication. Our thesis throughout is that SoE reporting combines ethical, democratic and environmental dimensions, and that the significance of WA’s withdrawal from the process can only be understood in this context.

Strategic environmental assessment (SEA) and policy environmental assessment (PEA), the term used to describe the application of SEA at the policy level, are widely accepted as means of including environmental concerns in decision-making. This paper develops and tests a checklist for assessing policies with a biodiversity focus, drawing on principles from PEA and biodiversity conservation. The development and testing of such a checklist has been rarely reported in the literature. The checklist was applied to five natural resource management policies in Western Australia and the 19 policy workers involved in the study were then asked to reflect on the checklist's usefulness. A key finding was that the checklist allowed policy workers to report against PEA and biodiversity conservation principles. Another was that when the assessed policies were closely aligned with rational decision-making, the checklist proved to be reproducible (a desirable attribute), and easy to use. Lastly the context within which the policies were developed strongly influenced how policy workers responded to the checklist.

Biodiversity has become a central concern in environmental management. As such, it is crucial that it is included and fully considered in environmental impact assessment (EIA). This paper explores the definitions and perceptions of biodiversity, and the associated management implications, held by those involved in preparing and assessing EIA documents in Western Australia. This State has world-recognised biodiversity values and comprehensive impact assessment processes. These practitioners defined biodiversity in a range of ways from a very basic through to a sophisticated, extended definition. A range of approaches to its assessment was also evident. The most sophisticated practitioners placed biodiversity in its spatial and temporal context as well as being cognizant of community aspirations and the principle of net conservation benefit. The ability to properly consider biodiversity in EIA is dependent on good information, not only on flora and fauna but also on the concepts and processes associated with biodiversity. Clear policy directions, from the assessing authority, regarding the level and detail of assessment required, are also critical.

A large body of literature addresses the role of science in environmental impact assessment (EIA) but less attention has been given to the views of practitioners themselves. In this research a survey of 31 EIA practitioners in Western Australia was undertaken to determine their perceptions of the quality and importance of science in EIA. The survey results are compared with previous theoretical, empirical, and survey studies of the role of science in EIA. Interview questions addressed the role of science in impact prediction, monitoring activities, mitigation and management, and EIA decision-making. It was clear from the interviews that many practitioners are satisfied with the quality of science currently used in EIA, but do not believe that it is given sufficient importance in the process. The quality and importance of science in the predecision stages of EIA was rated higher than in the postdecision stages. While science was perceived to provide the basis for baseline data collection, impact prediction, and mitigation design, it was seen to be less important during decision-making and ongoing project management. Science was seen to be just one input to decision-makers along with other factors such as sociopolitical and economic considerations. While time and budget constraints were seen to limit the scientific integrity of EIA activities, pressure from the public and regulatory authorities increased it. Improving the scientific component of EIA will require consideration of all these factors, not just the technical issues.

Since the 1960s, biodiversity conservation has grown in importance, resulting in the development of a host of relevant policies. Biodiversity conservation policy-making has concentrated on the development and implementation of policy, with limited efforts focused on the evaluation phase, the end result being a gap in the policy cycle at a critical stage. In response to this existing gap, an evaluative framework has been developed based on the principles of policy environmental assessment. The framework was designed to address the complexities found in the conservation of biodiversity. Following framework development, the appropriateness and user-friendliness of the framework was tested via application to a number of natural resource management policies in Western Australia. The application process, which included analysis of the selected policies via use of the framework and face-to-face follow-up interviews with key policy-makers, was completed by a group of purposively selected policy workers from government organizations, non-government organizations and academic institutions.

Governments and development specialists in Asia are publicly committed to the sustainable development concept. However, there is little evidence that Asian nations are making real progress towards sustainable development, despite signing global and regional agreements on the environment, establishing new environmental agencies, preparing national sustainable development plans, and requiring environmental impact assessments for development projects. This article identifies a missing link in the nested hierarchy of sustainable development plans in Asia, which may be one of the reasons why intentions at the national level are not being translated into sustainable development at the local level (where the social–economic–environmental interactions are most commonly realized). This missing link is integrated economic-cum-environmental (E-c-E) planning at the sub-national level. The article investigates five case studies of integrated E-c-E planning at the sub-national level, through a process of collaborative action research and the case study method. Findings from the case studies are combined with qualitative data from an analysis of success factors and constraints from the literature on sustainable development planning at other levels (from global to project) and other regions, using an iterative process of pattern matching. The results of this analysis are used to derive a checklist and decision trees to guide development specialists in deciding whether to proceed with an integrated E-c-E planning study at the sub-national level in Asia. The article also shows how to improve the design of integrated E-c-E studies to increase the probability of successful outcomes. The probable resource implications of these changes are discussed. The article concludes that an improved approach to integrated E-c-E planning at the sub-national level may play a pivotal role in the hierarchy of planning and thus assist in leading Asian nations towards sustainable development, and provides some ideas for further application and investigation.

This paper reports on the processes and outcomes of an collaborative action research project conducted with a group of early childhood teachers in a Perth school. The project was a collaboration between a teacher-researcher and a university based researcher. The project was initiated because the school made a decision to support the implementation and development of policy and provisions for gifted students. The decision to focus the project on preschool to year 3 classes was made in the light of a strong body of research and agreement that early intervention is likely to offer the most significant benefits to gifted students. Through the course of this project teachers were asked to reflect on their existing practice, rethink their programing and practices in relation to catering for gifted children, and then to refocus their efforts for the future.