Announcing our Next Iteration!

Starting in 1987 as the Centre for Water Policy Research, the Centre for Ecological Economics and Water Policy Research has a solid international reputation in the environmental research and training area. From 1998, the Centre broadened its interests from the integrated water resources area into the transdisciplinary ecological economics field with an extended focus into the domain of integrative community-environmental-econonomic sustainability and resilience. With over 25 Phd research projects, contract research projects worth many millions of dollars and many very significant and change inducing community engaged partnerships, the Centre has had a wonderful track record of regional relevance and impact.

The Centre's network has become fundamentally international and highly diverse in terms of geographical location, professional ties and disciplinary interests. We have become a truly discursive community! It has become increasinlgy evident that a genuine transdisciplinary communty should offer no barriers to engagement; it should not be tied to any single geographically-based entity or to the expectation of any specific funding arrangements. It should be neutral ground in term of disciplinary space and organisational or political connection.

Consequently, the Centre for Ecological Economics and Water Policy Research is combining interests with the Environmental Gateway initiative to cross feed and synergise what we anticipate will be a particularly fertile collaborative endeavour. The intention is to catalyse a continually emergent discourse on the nature of and prospects for resolving today's most challenging environmental issues. We aim to explore the extent to which the potential of 'Web 2.0' can be harnessed to improve environmental decision making at all levels. We offer a meeting ground between theory and practice; a praxis playing field that will both keep our theory making focused and relevant while being transparent and meaningful to those at the 'coal face' of the issues that concern us all. A forum such as this would aim to maintain active feedback loops between theory and practice at all times. This will be no place for exclusive theory making.

Independent of all organisations, Environmental Gateway is a cluster of virual networking spaces to encompass open-access dialogue, collaborative research, focused training and dialogue based news/communication facilities. Environmental Gateway comprises:

Environmetal Gateway (the core of the network)

Water Gateway (Environmental Gateway's water focus)

Transdisciplinary Gateway (Environmental Gateway's research focus)

Ecotourism Research (Environmetal Gateway's sustainable tourism and community engaged regional development focus); and

Bicyclism.net (Environmental Gateway's quirky exploration of alternative cultures of sustainability)

So, click the reset button once more to enter the virtual world of Environmental Gateway!