Projects and impact

Monash offers Cinque Terre National Park sustainability award -- February 2007

Over the last two years Monash University, Australia and the Cinque Terre National Park, Liguria, Italy have developed a unique partnership built on teaching and research about sustainability within the Park.

The partnership recognises the special environmental and cultural significance of the Cinque Terre and the need to develop strategies to preserve these qualities for future generations.

Monash recently announced the Monash University - Cinque Terre National Park Sustainability Award. Valued at 2,000 euros, this award is available to any person resident or working in the Cinque Terre. Award funds must be spent on any sustainability-related activity that will benefit the Cinque Terre.

The inaugural award was presented to Ms Alessandra Sassarini by Professor Nigel Tapper of the Monash Sustainability Institute at a special ceremony in the Cinque Terre in early February 2007.

Her project, "Five Lands in Five Senses" seeks to establish more direct links between the population of the Cinque Terre and the agricultural and cultural environment in which they live.

Professor Tapper said that Monash is pleased to support this project since it addresses environmental and social/cultural sustainability, and is directed at the younger members of the Cinque Terre community.

Other Monash activities in the Cinque Terre

• B. Env. Sci.(Hons) student Natalie Stella is currently working on a wine climate project under the supervision of Professor Nigel Tapper and Dr Tony Patti. Involving the setting up of 23 microclimate stations, the project seeks to establish relationships between local environmental conditions and grape vine bud burst across part of the Cinque Terre.
• Monash's School of Geography and Environmental Science will offer a unit "Cultural Landscape, Environment and Sustainability in Italy" later this year.

See also: GES3260/GYM4260 Cultural Landscape, Environment and Sustainability in Italy (pdf. 432kb)

Making business accountable

'Over the last 50 years, humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period in human history, largely to meet fast growing demands for food, fresh water, timber, fibre and fuel.'

This alarming statement included in the United Nations 'Millennium Ecosystem Assessment', highlights the need for a stronger framework to protect the Earth's vital ecological services, says Wayne Gumley from Monash. Mr Gumley, from the Department of Business Law and Taxation, contributed to a submission for the recent parliamentary inquiry into corporate and social responsibility. He advocated reforms to directors' duties, under the Corporations Act, so they would be obliged to consider the wider social and environmental consequences of their operations.

In its final report, the inquiry recommended that the current range of directors' duties should not be changed. However, it recognised that "corporate responsibility is an issue of critical importance in Australia's business community", and that "by international standards, Australia lags in implementing and reporting on corporate responsibility".

The inquiry made a series of recommendations to encourage voluntary uptake and disclosure of corporate responsibility activities.