The objective of this thesis is to explore the procedural and substantive changes that are required to create communities that are sustainable in ecological and social terms, both on a global and local level. Current environmental problems such as global warming, ozone depletion, acid rain and deforestation indicate that human activity is changing the biosphere at an unprecedented rate. While the western world celebrates the apparent triumph of the capitalist industrial free market system, the by-products of industrialization, including the deteriorating health of the biosphere and the increasing demands of developing nations, appear to pose serious threats to the long term sustainability of biological communities including human communities. A community is defined geographically by its physical structure, socially by its shared values, and politically by its capacity for self-determination. Creating a sustainable community requires that fundamental change occurs physically, to minimize a community's impact on ecological systems; socially, to establish a consensus on ecological and social values for the community; and, politically, to improve the capability of communities to implement appropriate locally-based solutions to environmental and social problems. The fact that western society has allowed life-threatening global environmental and social problems to emerge indicates that there may be a serious flaw in the way the dominant society perceives reality and humanity's place in the world. Consequently, this thesis begins with an analysis of the flaws in the dominant world view and the potential for an emerging ecological world view to form the basis for defining a sustainable community and establishing principles for ecological and social sustainability to guide community development. A sustainable community is defined as a community that is responsible, caring, empowered, healthy, and most importantly, in balance with nature. While there are numerous approaches to creating sustainable communities, the choices that a community should make are clearer if the community has a set of values or principles to define the goals they are trying to achieve. The principles for ecological sustainability presented in this thesis are based on current ecological theories and reflect the need for communities to preserve biological diversity, maintain the productive capacity of ecosystems, integrate human activity with nutrient cycles, minimize resource and energy consumption, and establish a dynamic equilibrium between human and natural systems. The principles for social sustainability are based on current literature and emphasize the need for communities to change societal values, meet basic needs, achieve equity, promote self-determination, and create a sustainable economy. This thesis proposes that creating a sustainable community involves both designing procedural mechanisms to support social transformation, and implementing substantive changes to ensure the long-term sustainability of the community. A process for change must include mechanisms to build community consensus on the need and direction of change, and to co-ordinate actions both within the community and with other levels of government. Specific examples of necessary substantive changes are provided based on the application of the principles for ecological and social sustainability to many aspects of community activity including land use planning, economic development, waste management, resource use, and transportation. A short examination of various models of sustainable community initiatives are provided to illustrate a variety of experiments in new institutions, processes and policy proposals currently being undertaken in North America that can be drawn upon by communities trying to implement local solutions to environmental and social problems. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

Formally stated, the subsequent analysis aims at identifying systematically some issues in Classical Human Ecology and discussing them in the light of methodological criteria derived from the above mentioned sources. It is hoped that this discussion will contribute to a more systematic evaluation of criticisms or issues in Classical Human Ecology; prove to be of some use in providing constraints in contributions to Modern Ecology.

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Thesis (M.A.)--Denver Conservative Baptist Seminary, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 142-145).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Australian National University, 2003.

Thesis (M.A.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2002. / Bibliography: leaves [242]-251.

Thesis (M.A.)--Denver Conservative Baptist Seminary, 1994. / This is an electronic reproduction of TREN, #090-0031. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 142-145).

Forest conservation based on payments anchored to opportunity costs (OCs) is receiving increasing attention, including for international financial transfers for reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD+). REDD+ emerged as a payment for environmental service (PES) approach in which conditional payments are made for demonstrable greenhouse gas emission reductions against a business-as-usual baseline. Quantitative assessments of the OCs incurred by forest users of these reductions are lacking. Existing studies are coarse, obscure the heterogeneity of OCs and do not consider how OCs may change over time. An integrated assessment of OCs and carbon benefits under a proposed community forest management (CFM) intervention linked to REDD+ is undertaken in Ethiopia. The OCs of land for the intervention are estimated through household survey and market valuation. Scenarios explore how OCs are likely to change over the intervention given qualitative conservation goals and available land-use change information. The feasibility of OCs payment as a tool for REDD+ is assessed by combining cost with emission reductions estimates generated from direct tree measurements. Households’ environmental attitudes, perceptions and intention to cooperate with the intervention, estimated by a voluntary contribution to improve forest management, are then investigated. Mean OCs of forest conservation are US$334/ha, but highly heterogeneous. Plausible futures of agricultural improvement, forest product commercialisation, and degradation of land uses suggest total OCs could approach US$441 million over a 20-year project. Applying carbon stock estimates of 231tC/ha±52 in moist and 132tC/ha±73 in dry forest, REDD+ revenues may not meet annual cumulative OCs, although more nuanced conservation planning could reduce OCs. Despite OCs all households intend to cooperate in the intervention, with mean contribution of US$11±4/year/household. The expected incomes of households under the Bale REDD+ Project intervention however, were high and expectation management is necessary. Recommendations are made for REDD+ intervention design in Ethiopia.

Segregation is a constant in all US cities yet is peripheral to key work on spatial political economy, such as David Harvey (2007) and Neil Smith (1982, 1996). This thesis builds on their theorisations of the circuits of capital in relation to rent and uneven development by drawing on theorisations of white privilege (primarily Pulido, 2000) and the critical race theory of Stuart Hall (1980). Hall’s work on hegemony and articulation enables a better understanding of how the dialectics of land’s use value and rent connect to ideologies of race and neoliberalism, to city politics, and to the shifting geography of Los Angeles. The ongoing and primarily African-American struggle to occupy residential space reveals the ways in which racism and contestation have been central to the formation of Los Angeles, to the increasing privatisation of space, and to the changing flows of capital through its built environment. These issues are explored through the principal three chapters, each dedicated to an historical moment when a civil rights victory succeeded in achieving concrete shifts in the politics of race and space: the long term campaign that overturned racially restrictive covenants in 1948; the mass civil rights struggle to integrate the city’s suburbs in 1963-64; and the preservation of thousands of private residential hotel units in a gentrifying downtown in 2006. Despite their success in forcing new articulations of rationalising ideologies, politics, and capitalism’s search for a ‘spatial fix’, these struggles demonstrate that the unchanging elements in the emerging hegemony have been the prominence of force over the manufacture of consent, and the maintenance of a privileged white spatiality. I argue that a large part of neoliberalism’s power ultimately lies in its ability to rationalise and legitimate this spatiality with a colourblind discourse, masking racial inequalities and the continuing racism at the heart of US society.