Asia-Pacific Eco Health Conference 2007

Please find below details of preliminary workshops and book launches.

Please note that this program is current at time of publication and is subject to change without notice.

Book Launch
Valerie A. Brown AO's book Leonardo's vision. A guide to collective thinking and action. Rotterdam, SENSE Publishers 2007 offers realistic and productive ways to regard the world, not as a set of compartmentalised silos, but as an integrated socioecological system with a sustainable future. To be launched during the conference by the Hon. Barry O Jones AO, FAA FAHA FASSA FTSE (a Fellow of all four Australian Learned Academies, a public intellectual and designated as a national treasure).

PHAA Climate Change Forum - Friday November 30th

This is a workshop designed to help those interested in developing a practical understanding of the health dimensions of climate change and the political and community adaptations to it. The purpose of the Health and Climate Change Workshop is to provide an informal setting where conference delegates can discuss, with a variety of experts:

- the health implications of climate change,
- the frameworks (health, political, legislative and regulatory) and processes available to help those whose health may be affected by climate change,
- inequities in the distribution of health effects, and the critical measures for which we as a community need to be advocating immediately and in the medium term (five years).

The outcome of the workshop will be the development of a paper that outlines the background to health and climate change and proposes a protocol or set of policy/advocacy actions that will help minimise the health impacts of climate change on the various populations in Australia.

Getting it together in a changing world - presented by Valerie A Brown

Whole of community thinking, transformational change and a sustainable future
An interactive workshop on integrative thinking and action for those working in areas of social change, environmental futures, action research, community development, professional extension, and strategic planning. All of these areas require very different parties to come together to rethink their perspectives, in order to contribute their distinctive capacities to concerted transformational change.

Skills to be explored include management of dialogue, whole-of-community engagement, positive conflict outcomes and collective social learning. Workshop members will share experience and skills while trialling a collective social learning framework.

This workshop will be run by Emeritus Professor Valerie A. Brown AO, please go to our speakers page to find out more information about Valerie.

Contemporary ecotherapy in action - presented by Ambra Burls[BSc (Hons)]
This interactive workshop presents a short DVD about a showcase project in London (MIND) as an example of good practice. The DVD portrays some of the grassroots experiences of people who use the public natural green space, which is managed by citizens with mental health problems who also receive therapeutic support and work experience. The session will be complemented by research findings about the social and educational ramifications of this symbiotic relationship. They will give delegates an opportunity to examine and share their diversity of experiences, creative applications and outcomes.

Participants will be able to:
1. Share experiences and outcomes of the project which offers an example of how ordinary or even vulnerable citizens can inspire change by example and have a direct impact on community involvement, self-directed social inclusion based on ecological responsibility, human-nature relationships and the health benefits of green spaces.

2. Understand the process of "embracement", a process which promotes a spontaneous need to become included, to further develop creatively as a member of the community, brining about a heightened personal growth, wholeness and belonging and a drive to defend our ecosystems and to help overturn society's denial about ecological degradation.

3. Discuss the planning, implementation and management of professional training to work and manage environmental and therapeutic projects, which have the added value of delivering health, social and environmental goals in an integrated way for whole of community.

Catchments as Settings? - presented by Pierre Horwitz and Margot Parkes
Studies that examine the relationships between humans and ecosystems have tended to focus on the environment from the perspective of disrupted ecology: as a source of disease, risks and hazards. This diminishes the reciprocal nature of the relationship in many ways. There is much to be learned from viewing ecosystems as the context for proactively promoting health and sustainability as well as preventing disease and illness. One strategy for framing this relationship is through the lens of healthy settings which, although manifesting in contexts ranging from 'healthy cities' to 'healthy islands', has often overlooked the role of ecosystems. This presentation examines 'healthy ecosystems' as a 'setting' (sensu the Ottawa Charter) for promoting health and sustainability, with a particular emphasis on hydrological catchments (or watersheds). Catchments are ideal units of analysis since they foreground water, around which all life revolves. This workshop will seek to critically examine this proposal, with participants discussing, inter alia, issues of governance, local involvement, and case studies.

Venue :
Deakin University, Melbourne Campus at Burwood
221 Burwood Highway
Burwood VIC 3125
Australia

Deakin Event Management Services
Deakin University Waterfront Campus
1 Gheringhap Street
Geelong VIC 3217
Ph: +61 3 5227 8121
Fax: +61 3 5227 8157
Email: [email protected]
http://www.deakin.edu.au/events/ecohealth2007/index.php