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Thesis (B.A.(Hons.)) -- Dept. of History, University of Adelaide, 1975.

No description available.

No description available.

The aim of this thesis is to provide an overview of the health of Pacific Islands young people in New Zealand, with a particular emphasis on the effects of their dietary and lifestyle behaviours upon long-term health. This research is based on the observation that noncommunicable, or life-style, diseases are the leading causes of morbidity and mortality for Pacific Islands people in New Zealand, that these diseases are invariably attributable to dietary and lifestyle habits, and that these habits become instilled during the adolescent period. Three main methods were undertaken to achieve this aim. The first constituted a review of literature concerning the health of Pacific Islands people in New Zealand, including a discussion of what health means to Pacific Islands people, along with the main health issues that this population encounters. The importance of food to Pacific Islands people is also considered in this review, along with the influence of diet on Pacific Islands people's disease patterns. Existing studies concerning the dietary habits of Pacific Islands youth are also detailed. The second stage of the research involved conducting research into the health of Pacific Islands young people in Christchurch, based in part on the methodology and findings of these previous studies. As the thesis will show, while Christchurch has the fourth largest Pacific Islands population in New Zealand, this population is considerably smaller than those in other main centres. This means that Pacific Islands people have less health resources and services available to them. This research revealed that Pacific Islands young people in Christchurch, and in New Zealand in general, consume a diet that is high in fat and low in other nutrients. Research into the health of Pacific Islands young people is deemed necessary to help to counter the high incidence of lifestyle related diseases in the adult population. Further, by identifying potential health outlooks for the future generation of Pacific Islands adults, research in Christchurch will be useful in ensuring that services and resources to meet Pacific Islands people's specific health needs.

In the last 50 years, Pacific Island Countries (PICs) have experienced unprecedented levels of urban development. During this time, the general failure of traditional industrialised planning models to be successfully adapted in PICs has resulted in the need to explore alternative models for urban settlement in the Pacific. In this way, the incorporation of tree based agricultural systems (agroforestry) into urban settlements has considerable potential to address many of the problems associated with rapid urbanisation such as food security, waste management, environmental degradation and unemployment. Research in the Pacific has already shown how urban agroforestry systems can improve food security, increase access to nutritional foods, recycle organic waste, create employment and protect fragile ecological systems. However, in Pacific towns and cities urban agroforestry systems are rarely developed beyond a homegarden setting. The growth of urban centres in the Republic of Kiribati is an example of the challenges confronting many rapidly urbanising PICs. With infertile soils, severely restricted land and water resources and an emerging economy, Kiribati is a developing nation where sustainable development faces some of its greatest challenges. Due to rapidly expanding urban populations, the Kiribati Government is currently investigating the development of future planned urban settlements. In such a scenario, potential exists to extend urban agroforestry systems beyond a homegarden setting and explore alternative models for sustainable urbanisation in the Pacific. This research uses a mixed methods case study approach to investigate the potential role of food producing urban agroforestry systems in future planned urban settlements in Kiribati. More specifically, qualitative procedures are used to explore issues surrounding the promotion and development of urban agroforestry systems in future planned urban settlements while quantitative procedures are used to analyse the nutritional contribution of these systems. Findings from this study show that although urban agroforestry is a highly sustainable land use it faces two main challenges in Kiribati: (i) people’s perception that urban agroforestry systems are a relatively low value land use and (ii) the general inability of the Kiribati Government to effectively regulate urban land uses. However, in the event that urban agroforestry systems were deliberately included at a settlement wide scale beyond a homegarden setting, this study highlights the initial importance of equally allocating productive lands to individual households. Furthermore, the results emphasise the value of simple on-site composting technologies as components of the broader urban agroforestry system. Finally, the marginal nature of the atoll environment is evident in findings on the nutritional contribution of urban agroforestry species in future planned urban settlements. In summary, while considerable constraints must be overcome to ensure the long term viability of planned urban agroforestry systems at a whole of settlement scale, it is argued that such an approach is one of the most cost effective, culturally acceptable and environmentally responsible methods for addressing a range of urban issues in the Pacific and is therefore an essential component to the design of future planned urban settlements in Kiribati.

Engineers Without Borders New Zealand (EWBNZ) has recently reached a stage in its organisational growth where a new strategy is needed to ensure its future engineering development initiatives are more consistent with its guiding philosophy of delivering sustainable long term development projects. A quantitative and qualitative analysis of the perceptions of the committee tasked with delivering projects revealed a preference for a strategy which enabled ‘placement’ type projects. To develop this strategy a qualitative analysis was conducted which focused on ascertaining what strategies and organisational structures are employed by comparable EWB organisations to deliver development projects. This process revealed EWB Australia to have a placement project process model which was deemed as the most acceptable to replicate. An implementation strategy and supporting set of recommendations were provided for this new placement project strategy. The most significant recommendation given to support this new strategy was to concentrate EWBNZ’s resources by prioritising projects in only two of the four countries EWBNZ currently operates. The countries deemed a strategic priority were Samoa and Tonga.

Food production, or the cultivation and processing of edible materials, is closely linked to both the physical environment and human social systems. This is especially true on the islands of Remote Oceania, where cultivation of plants introduced with colonization has always been a key component of survival. This project centers on the production systems of an island in the west central Pacific: Pohnpei, Micronesia. It addresses the fundamental question of how food production is related to changes in social and physical environments and also addresses the optimum ways to archaeologically study plant remains in tropical oceanic environments with poor preservation. In order to examine these questions, this project looks at human-environment interrelationships using historical ecology. A multi-pronged approach was used in this research. Archaeological survey was used to identify prehistoric and historic features on the landscape and to map the distribution of food production activities. Excavation of selected archaeological features, including breadfruit fermentation pits, yam enclosures, and cooking features, was conducted to examine formation patterns. Paleoethnobotanical analysis included collection and analysis of flotation samples for carbonized plant macroremain analysis and sediment samples for phytolith analysis. Finally, because a reference collection is key to all paleoethnobotanical research, plant specimens from multiple Pacific locations were collected and processed for phytolith reference. Botanical data show that phytolith analysis is very useful in the Pacific region, as many economically important taxa produce phytoliths. However, because of differential silica uptake, it should be used in conjunction with other methods. Archaeological phytolith analysis of the garden landscape shows disturbance caused by pigs, which were introduced historically, a change from the prehistoric phytolith record, which shows no major shifts. Combined analysis of plant macroremains and phytoliths from secure archaeological contexts shows the use of banana leaves in breadfruit cooking in the historic period, highlighting the importance of multi-method paleoethnobotanical study. These data point towards an anthropogenic environment and stable agricultural system that was present in late prehistoric Pohnpei. Major changes occurred in the historic period, although production of plant foods that were important for centuries continues to flourish today.

Volcanicity in six stages is described from tee Plio/Pleistocene volcanoes on the north coast of Viti Levu, Fiji; the larger one at Vutukoula shown eruption in five stages of rocks of the alkaline olivine basalt — trachyte association and the smaller one at Vatia, six miles away.