Oliver Fritsch

To assess how scientific contributions reflect trends in environmental management in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand and meet the needs of the environmental profession, we reviewed peer-reviewed articles published in the Australasian Journal of Environmental Management from 2004 to 2024. The 449 publications demonstrate a strong interdisciplinary focus on governance, policy and social dimensions as well as balanced attention to land and water issues across a wide set of contemporary and continuing environmental concerns, including climate change and conservation. We found the journal makes a sound contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals. Much of the research by the 1,044 authors is multi-sectoral, with growing collaboration among government, industry and not-for-profit organisations. The journal’s knowledge base aligns well with the needs of the environmental profession as identified in a recent report. Topics warranting greater representation in future publications include climate change, disaster and resilience, political influence on policy, environmental education as well as Indigenous resource use. Although performing well on equity criteria, the Australasian Journal of Environmental Management encourages more contribution from Indigenous and female authors from both New Zealand and Australia.

Welcome to the fourth and last 2024 issue of the Australasian Journal of Environmental Management (AJEM). As Editors, we focus on upholding AJEM’s reputation for excellence and relevance in addressing environmental issues in Australasia. A key achievement is the regular publication of the quarterly issue, each featuring five to six high-quality articles, reflecting the journal’s rigorous review process and focus on cutting-edge research. We have expanded the editorial board by incorporating new members with diverse expertise and fresh perspectives. We have engaged renowned scientists to join the Advisory Board of Editors, ensuring the journal’s alignment with global scientific advancements and environmental priorities.

Recognising the importance of outreach, we focused on promoting articles on social media to increase their visibility among academics, practitioners and policy makers. Summaries and highlights make the research more accessible and widely shared. We also send prioritised emails to authors, thanking them for their contributions and encouraging a collaborative publishing experience.

These efforts help the journal remain a strong platform for impactful research. We aim to enhance the journal’s reach, build an inclusive scholarly community, and contribute to global environmental management and sustainability discussions.

Water governance involves complex interactions among diverse stakeholders across various scales and locations, necessitating a deep understanding of stakeholder network dynamics for effective management. This research aims to explore and contrast the dynamics within water governance networks by examining two specific contexts: first, the variation between upstream and downstream areas of a river basin, where water scarcity intensifies from upstream to downstream; and second, the differences between upper-level (provincial) and lower-level (county) administrative bodies. This study seeks to understand how these distinct spatial and administrative settings influence the management and governance of water resources. This study employs social network analysis to examine the water governance structures within Iran's Karkheh basin, focusing on the distinctions between comparing provincial and county levels, as well as upstream and downstream areas. Through semi-structured interviews and surveys with 43 institutions, it analyses relationships using network measures such as density, transitivity, and centrality. The analysis reveals stronger network structures in upstream counties than downstream and at the county level (lower administrative level) than provincial level. The results highlight the need for reform to enhance coordination and grassroots participation. Recommendations include forming a joint provincial-county committee to effectively improve governance and address water scarcity challenges.

This article offers an in‐depth analysis of the meaning and scope of biosafety and biosecurity in China, thereby relating domestic debates to global developments, exploring notions of safety and security in public policy more broadly and embedding a key policy initiative, Chinaʼs new Biosecurity Law, into attempts by Chinaʼs leadership to develop a holistic national security strategy. The article finds that biotic threats have more recently been reframed as matters of national security, in ways that undeniably go beyond conventional un-derstandings of biosecurity and that blur the boundaries to more accident‐focused biosafety measures. Given Chinaʼs political and economic importance this apparent trend to securitise biotic risks is likely to impact on global trade relations, international transport and passenger traffic, not the least in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative.

Marine ecosystems are under increasing pressure from human activity, yet successful management relies on knowledge. The evidence-based policy (EBP) approach has been promoted on the grounds that it provides greater transparency and consistency by relying on 'high quality' information. However, EBP also creates epistemic responsibilities. Decision-making where limited or no empirical evidence exists, such as is often the case in marine systems, creates epistemic obligations for new information acquisition. We argue that philosophical approaches can inform the science-policy interface. Using marine biosecurity examples, we specifically examine the epistemic challenges in the acquisition and acceptance of evidence to inform policy, discussing epistemic due care and biases in consideration of evidence.

Through a meta-analysis of all publicly available research over a span of 25 years, the article assesses the productivity impact of the employment protection legislation reforms that have been introduced in Italy since 1997. European Union institutions and domestic reformers advocated the reforms in order to increase the competitiveness and productivity of the Italian economy. Yet, by incentivising temporary employment, the reforms have favoured competitive strategies that have reduced the productivity of the country’s firms.

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) not only recast water management practices within the European Union (EU); it also opened a new chapter for the EU’s external ambitions in the field of water. The central vehicle here is the EU Water Initiative (EUW I), a transnational, multi -actor partnership approach that was established in 2002 to support wider United Nations development goals. The EUWI is underpinned by principles such as river basin planning, resource efficiency, and participation, and the WFD serves as a legal and political template for achieving these aims in interested partner countries. This article analyses the implementation of the Initiative in all five partnerships: Africa, China, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia, Latin America, and the Mediterranean; it argues that the Initiative’s origins in sustainable development related global debates led to selective interpretations of water management principles in these diverse social, political and ecological contexts. In short, these five partnerships emphasise different aspects of the three pillars of sustainable development, and their respective interpretations result in the different WFD variants outside of Europe. These patterns, we argue, not only reflect contextual differences but also strategic EU and member state foreign policy imperatives that have influenced how the WFD has been promoted globally.

Increased river flows and sea level rise in a changing climate are of great concern in deltas and makes sustainability particularly important for delta societies. This article reviews current approaches to assess delta sustainability, results of these assessments and what they mean for policies regarding deltas. We particularly ask whether deltas need transformations in order for delta living to be feasible in the future. The reviewed literature is mostly based on socio-ecological systems theory with small contributions from socio-technical systems theory, and struggles to take account of all relevant interrelationships. The technological interventions that shape the relationships between societies and delta environments should be highlighted by considering deltas as complex socio-ecological-cum-technical systems, in part because technological interventions are the most feasible societal response to secure delta living in the short term. The reviewed research suggests that most deltas are locked-in to an irreversible path towards unsustainability. We examine the pathways for transformation offered by socio-ecological systems and socio-technical systems research, and we assess whether they are technically and politically sufficient, feasible and acceptable to achieve the required transformations. We conclude that while the experimentation advocated in research may support local adjustments, their up-scaling to delta level is challenged by political disagreement and societal resistance. (C) 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.