by Katrina Szetey

Since I have just submitted my first PhD paper, I thought it’d be a good time to give an overall update for how things are going with my PhD, and with my life in general during this strange time.

First up – I have submitted my first paper to Global Environmental Change and am currently awaiting a decision from their editors. I have been advised not to get my hopes up too much, so I am anticipating rejection – which is fine!, we will submit it to a different journal if that’s the case. The idea behind this paper is to create local sustainability pathways by linking the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs). The SSPs were designed for climate change research but their foundation is flexible enough to be adapted to different scales and different contexts. From the community engagement work we did in Forrest in 2019, we had enough qualitative information to understand the goals and aspirations the community has for the future. Using this information, we were able to co-create pathways of what the future might look like under different sustainability priorities, with different combinations of economic growth, social inclusivity, and environment prioritised. We wrote six different narratives ranging from a utopia with full sustainability, through to a perfect storm with no sustainability priorities. I’ll be able to use these in some later work where we quantify the pathways in order to model them. I have uploaded this paper to a preprint server if you would like to read it before it undergoes peer review.

*The process of localizing SDGs and SSP driving forces in order to create local pathways and explore the futures that may arise with different levels of SDG implementation*

Right now, I’m in the throes of co-writing The Forrest and District Plan with community collaborators based upon the extensive research and community engagement work we did last year. This plan is a community building, strategic plan being written with the blessing of Colac-Otway Shire, and its purpose is to guide development in Forrest over the next 10 (or more) years. The local community anticipate that they will be able to use this document when applying for grants and funding to demonstrate that they have an overarching plan and have done the necessary research to back it up. We are about three-quarters of the way through the first draft, and we will send it out for community comment at the beginning of June. Along with this, I am writing a short paper on using the Sustainable Development Goals as a framework for rural sustainability planning. When the plan and aligned paper is all wrapped up, I’ll be returning to doing system dynamics modelling work based on the pathways I developed in my recently submitted paper. I originally started work on this back in February but things got a bit disrupted with the COVID-19 lockdown, when my community collaborators brought forward the writing of the Forrest and District Plan.

Our Local SDGs group has been doing some communication work as well, getting two pieces published in April. The first was to do with how the SDGs can assist with resilience and recovery from disaster, with reference to the recent bushfires and then COVID-19. This was published in Deakin Disruptr. We also wrote a piece published in The Fifth Estate specific to the COVID-19 crisis, about how a Green New Deal recovery plan supported by the SDGs would allow humanity to not only survive but thrive as we emerge from the pandemic.

Also positively for me, I applied for and was accepted into the INMIS Industry Mentoring scheme which is new to Deakin this year. This scheme will match me with a high-level volunteer industry mentor who will provide me with mentoring for at least one hour per month for the next year. I have only just set up my profile [KS1] , but the program will begin in July. I am very much looking forward to seeing an industry-based perspective on sustainability, and getting advice on my future.

Apart from all that, I have been busily working away at home. I’m extremely grateful to have had ongoing employment and income during this time of COVID-19 but occasionally feeling a little envious of all these other people who have had so much more free time than I have! While the lockdown did disrupt some of the plans we had to do more work with the community in Forrest, we were able to adapt with writing the Forrest and District Plan, and continuing all my other research work. Actually, COVID may have actually increased my workload with the extra paper I’m writing that wasn’t part of my original plan! I have been keeping safe and sane at home, since fortunately many of my hobbies are home-based; gardening, knitting, spinning, etc. I was sad to have had some much-anticipated gigs cancelled in May, but apparently Iron Maiden will be coming back to Australia in 2022...