Greetings and best wishes for all our students, staff, and readers for 2009. 
My family and I spent the Xmas and New Year break piloting a Prius 2,500km between Melbourne and Sydney, and I kept my eyes open. Several issues will occupy our region this year. Firstly the spread of Melbourne into surrounding bush and farmland, described in the State of the Victorian Environment Report 2008, was very noticeable. This is not dense six-star rated environmental housing, but almost always extensive single family dwellings. This is unsustainable, as the Report highlights. The growing attraction of Melbourne as a major city need not lead to an extension of its spatial area at the expense of ‘compact’ development within its existing boundaries. Secondly, prolonged drought continues to make this one of the regions of Australia most threatened by water shortage. The State is favouring major infrastructure projects for (largely) urban water supply as one response, alongside its longstanding measures to reduce consumption. One scheme, (a desalinisation plant) is potentially very energy intensive, with most of its electricity coming from our brown coal power stations unless alternatives are developed now. Opposition to the project can be seen in roadside banners between Melbourne and Wonthaggi. The Goulburn-Melbourne Sugarloaf pipeline, under rapid construction, is also unpopular with many rural residents since it taps into water that goes to the highly stressed Murray-Darling system. Recycling of urban water, available in other world cities and proposed by some of our staff, has quietly been rejected for Melbourne, while the rainwater storage tank systems found in rural areas are still scarce in the city. Farming communities continue to suffer from rainwater shortages and unreliability, despite rural conservation efforts, and there are changes ahead for government compansation schemes for drought affected farmers. Thirdly, Victoria and New South Wales’s stunning coastlines are already feeling the effects of climatic change (although there is still some scientific debate on this). One property owner on Sandy Inlet, north of Wilson’s Promontory, reported she was now losing 25cm a year to rising sea levels, on a relatively sheltered inlet without much wave action. Coastal property prices are becoming uncertain. Fourthly, the Victorian bushfires of February 09 will have a lasting impact on many families, prompting new planning regulations, a rethink on evacuation plans, advanced fire modelling and emergency response systems, and a long overdue focus on the local impacts of global climate change.
The craziness of the global economic downturn – a fifth driver of changes in 2009, of course- will leave a complex legacy for already stressed environments. It is too early to predict its outcomes, but I hope they will not involve losing corporate, individual, and public responsibility and concern for the fundamental environmental matters that our Program has been focussed on for a decade.
Despite this rather downbeat assessment, the region is blessed with extraordinary habitats and places. Sitting in a fantastic rammed earth house built largely from recycled materials (including soil!) in Candelo, NSW, and then journeying across some of the remoter regions of Gippsland, I was reminded of this. Creating better knowledge and understanding of all of the environmental concerns above - which is what universities like ours are all about -may not always lead to satisfactory outcomes (for science rarely informs policy in an uncomplicated way), but it must help. The trans-disciplinary knowledge promoted by our own Program informs empirical studies of environmental issues, enlarging the pool of knowledgeable students who bring their expertise into professional practice, domestic life, activism, research, and advocacy. For our new students, there is a lot to see, as well as a lot to learn.
Simon Batterbury
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