PODCAST · society
Understorey
by RTRFM
In ecology, the understorey grows where light shines through the forest canopy. Our award-winning Understorey journalists highlight local and globally-connected environmental issues that the other media may commonly pass over. RTRFM’s long-running dedicated environment program makers Adrian Glamorgan and Elizabeth PO’ bring together stories from near and sometimes afar, whether it be conservationists rehabilitating habitat, citizen scientists gathering data, campaigners at the frontline, or decision-makers at their desks, seeking solutions together to the challenges affecting our shared air, water, land and life processes.
Episodes
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Understorey Asia: AUKUS vs Climate Action & Peaceful Pathways
Understorey brings the second part of Adrian Glamorgan’s interview with Greens Senator Jordon Steele-John. Australia’s youngest senator warns that a belligerent “white saviour” attitude is not the best way to ease international tensions in our region. Jordon argues we should close all foreign...
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Understorey Asia: AUKUS, Nuclear Proliferation, & the Democratic Deficit
Australia’s youngest Senator, Jordon Steele-John, is well known for his campaign which led to the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability. But apart from his concern about peaceful inclusion for people with disability, the Australian Greens Peace...
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Understorey: Beyond COP and Coal is Landscape Pt 1
Only days after COP26 closed its doors in Glasgow, Woodside and BHP announced they will go ahead as joint venturers building one of the world’s biggest fossil fuel developments, Scarborough gas field in the North West. The Scarborough Gas “abatement” plan involves increasing emissions until close...
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Understorey: Climate Justice and Loss & Damage
On the last day of COP26, hundreds of people representing civil society walked out of the convention centre, wearing blood-red ribbons representing the red lines already crossed by COP26 negotiations. The whole civil society scene at COP was one of strong feelings about climate colonialism, an...
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Understorey: Women of Colour call for Climate Justice
Climate Justice addresses climate effects that are borne by peoples who have had no real connection with causing the problem, nor have they gained any special benefit from the historic exploitation of fossil fuels. Thus global warming has sometimes been called climate colonialism, while climate...
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Understorey: Youth (and great-grandparents) are Rising Up for Climate
Yesterday Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison was in Scotland, explaining to the world how Australia will stick to its 2015 targets in order to reduce even more carbon. But not everyone is convinced that recycling the Paris Agreement will keep temperatures rising no more than 1.5 degrees.…
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Understorey: Traditional Owners waiting still to see Minister Dawson’s new Cultural Heritage Bill
Last year’s destruction of the 46,000 year old rock caves at Juukan Gorge in the Pilbara was felt around the world. Those concerned with protecting Aboriginal cultural heritage in Western Australia say Juukan Gorge wasn’t the first event of this kind, and it won’t be the last. Hundreds of sites…
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Understorey: Finding WA’s Climate Courage
WA Climate Leaders want the Minister for Climate Action, Amber-Jade Sanderson, to set clear climate targets that honour the 2015 Paris agreements, and to lead the whole community in the face of our new climate realities. That includes explaining why we mustn’t allow warming of our climate more…
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Understorey: Greens’ WA Climate Action Plan fills the policy vacuum
COP26 opens in Glasgow in 18 days, with at least 120 world leaders turning up to show their commitment to a transformed world. Our own Prime Minister might even make it. But back home, not since Geoff Gallop’s 2003 State Sustainability Strategy has any Western Australian government offered a...
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Understorey: Speaking of young people’s environmental futures…
Today on Understorey we meet Mandurah’s Junior Mayor Tamsyn Hill and Deputy Junior Mayor Zoe Thompson, to find out about the Mandurah Junior Council and their role in the city, and particularly their active concerns about the environment. The last part of the program features an inspiring young...
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Understorey: Millennial Kids and Environmental Democracy
Understorey discovers more about how young people are seeking a better environment, and with that a more conscious democracy. At this week’s Australian Association for Environmental Education national conference, Adrian Glamorgan catches up with two Millennium Kid alumni: Mandurah Mayor Rhys...
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Understorey: Child’s Play, the Environment, and Deliberative Democracy
The natural world is essential for the healthy development of children, yet many screens compete for their attention in this Information Age. As young people grow older it may dawn on them that this world of nature is having its habitats torn down while its atmosphere is being heated up and...
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Understorey Asia: Climate Emergency at the Third Pole
Apart from air quality, a paramount environmental issue for the South Asia is the state of the “Third Pole”. That’s the area with the third largest endowment of snow, ice and glaciers on earth – the Hindu Kush and Tibetan Plateau . There’s 600 billion tons of ice at stake, and apparently it’s now...
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Understorey Asia: The United States of War
The world watches as Afghanistan falls disastrously under Taliban rule, while this week the United States commemorates the twentieth year since 15 Saudi Arabian nationals (and a few others) attacked the twin towers in New York. Three thousand civilians died in the 9-11 bombings, but up to 4.5...
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Understorey Radiothon 2021 Edition
On this edition of Understorey, presenter Fiona Bartholomaeus talks to Adrian Glamorgan, one of the two presenters that make up Understorey show. Since the early 1990s, the concept of the show has sought to uncover insights about precious world biodiversity hotspot ranging from the South West…
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Ecuador Protests Hanrine Prospecting
Buenos Aires, Northern Ecuador. From what started off as peaceful protests against Hanrine (subsidiary of Australian mining company Hancock Prospecting) and their gold and copper explorations on the local land, has resulted in escalation. The Federal Government of Ecuador has responded with harsh...
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Understorey: Climate Physics Code Red
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has three working groups preparing reports in the leadup to COP26 in Glasgow in November. Working Group I deals with the physical science basis of climate change, and has just released its contribution. Their key message, that the world has failed…
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Understorey: Recovering Country
Traditional Owners in Western Australia have said Aboriginal Affairs Minister Stephen Dawson “isn’t listening” to grave concerns about draft Aboriginal heritage laws. The Understorey Team look behind the different ways mining companies and traditional owners regard country, and what it means for...
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Understorey: “Straight Up” Aboriginal Heritage (Not Gagged)
Last week Ngalia elder Kado Muir addressed the United Nations expert mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, speaking about Western Australia’s outdated Aboriginal Heritage laws, and the state government’s failure to redress the problems that allowed Juukan Gorge to be destroyed. Kado…
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Understorey: “New” Aboriginal Heritage laws the old ones repackaged?
After the global outrage at Rio Tinto’s intentional destruction of Juukan Gorge, the state Labor government promised new Aboriginal Heritage legislation. Indigenous cultural rights would be respected. But the “new” heritage legislation may say all the right things except where it matters…
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Understorey: Australian Religions Respond to Climate Emergency
As our planet faces more anthropogenic-initiated emergencies, civil society actively seeks governments to act locally and globally. The world’s religions represented in our diverse Australian population are actively expressing their deeply felt urgency for corporate and political change to reduce...
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Understorey: Five Climactic Reports
Understorey brings one report on five reports, all to do with the climate. The news is not good, but there is a glimmer of hope – if only Australia will join with it. There is the Sustainable Development Report for 2021, gives Australia 10 marks out of a hundred for its climate policies, plunging...
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Understorey: Earthcare Play
Right now might be an excellent time to bring play and playfulness to the Earthcarers’ ethos. Lisa Wriley has received the rights to reinvent her favourite New Zealand board game from the 70s, hoping to make it available to all those who love a good sit round the table in the spirit of...
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Understorey: Oil & Gas prepare for their “Fighting Retreat”
The Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association held its national conference in Perth last week. Extinction Rebellion climate activists tried to draw attention to the climate emergency and the industry’s own International Energy Agency calling for a stop on all new major projects if...
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Understorey: Choosing Climate Damage
Last week, Understorey met with sustainability professor Peter Newman to hear his alternative energy vision for Western Australia – a world-leading, thriving, decarbonised, renewable energy economy. Since then, newly appointed State Labor Minister for Environment and Climate Action and Commerce,...
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Understorey: Scarborough Gas~ New Environment Minister’s Moment of Truth
Woodside’s proposed Scarborough Gas Project off the Burrup Peninsula will outdo Adani’s coal mine for greenhouse gas emissions. Newly appointed WA Environment Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson is due any day to release her decision about what greenhouse offset conditions she will require should this...
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Understorey: The New Boardroom Climate
Recent articles in The Guardian and The Conversation have highlighted the legal and market pushback that board directors now face if they ignore their obligations to humanity by harming the environment. Two weeks ago Rio Tinto became the first board in Australia to accept a shareholder resolution...
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Understorey: Clear Call for Sustainable Design
Any builder in Western Australia must contend with building codes which have been slow to promote sustainability. The rating code we have does not consider nor value sustainable materials, embodied energy, choice of hot water systems and lighting, electricity sources, collection of rainwater, the...
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Understorey: Fukushima H3 O!
While it’s standard practice for nuclear power plants to discharge radioactive tritium (H-3) into the sea, Japan’s own plan to pour Fukushima’s radioactive water reserves into the Pacific Ocean has garnered international concern. With a million and a half tonnes of tritium-contaminated water in...
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Understorey: Seven Ways to Protect
How can we protect what we don’t know? In WA there is no data on illegal native vegetation clearing, and that threatens precious specialised flora and fauna across the state. We simply don’t understand the key drivers and true extent of the problem. How to change that? One small word: data. A...
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Understorey: Shorebirds at Peel-Yalgorup Wetlands
The Peel-Yalgorup System Ramsar site is the most important area for waterbirds in south-western Australia, a great draw for bird enthusiasts and nature conservationists seeking refuge from urban overload. Dr Vicky Stokes, WA’s Program Manager with BirdLife Australia, outlines our shorebirds’...
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Understorey: Life Under Chernobyl
Thirty five years ago the world’s worst nuclear disaster contaminated large parts of Europe, and single-handedly rendered uninhabitable a large area intersecting Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Understorey speaks to a Russian scientist who lives and works a few hundred kilometres from the Chernobyl...
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Understorey: The Black Bream of Ramsar 482
Just an hour south of the Perth CDB, the Peel Harvey Estuary is a world renowned waterway, celebrated through its Ramsar listing, the international framework for the conservation and wise use of wetlands and their resources. The 26,530Ha of Ramsar site 482 listed wetlands in the Peel Yalgorup...
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Understorey: Bindjareb Gabi Wonga
The State government’s Protection Plan for Binjareb Djilba, Peel-Harvey Estuary, was published four months ago as a beautiful collaborative production between Noongar and western ways. It also chronicles the ecological collapse of this precious Estuarine System. Understorey went along to the…
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Understorey: In from the CALD
Understorey explores the apparent absence of culturally and linguistically diverse individuals from various environmental campaigns with Dr Sukhmani Khorana, from Western Sydney University. Her research, done along with Claudia Sirdah, entitled “Young Australian Migrants and Environmental…
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Understorey: Extinction Rebellion’s Climate Action & Circles of Love
Action on climate change is not a spectator sport. Yesterday, the first group of those arrested for civil disobedience actions in last week Extinction Rebellion actions faced court. They each received a fixed penalty of $100, with $130 in court costs. More cases from their autumn rebellion are on...
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Understorey: Extinction Rebellion Prepared to Protest
Understorey goes behind the scenes before Monday’s “die in” at St Georges Terrace, to find out more about how Extinction Rebellion prepares for protests. The diversity of activities suggests a movement for change far bigger than any one protest, with a new orientation to community and...
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Understorey: Extinction Rebellion Takes On the Terrace
In the past, Premier Mark McGowan has said he doesn’t believe there is a climate emergency, and doesn’t want to scare young people. Labor’s remarkable victory in Saturday’s state election suggests business-as-usual in Western Australia will continue for four more years: and that means gas and...
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Understorey: Right Relationship with Home 2
This week another 12 Australian native animals have been declared extinct (total now 34), also there are more finds of industrial plastic waste along our Swan River, ongoing cultural vandalism to Aboriginal sites, and less-than-thorough environmental licensing and regulation. So what should be…
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Understorey: Right Relationship with Home 1
For 2021 World Wildlife Day, as more reports emerge of ecosystems collapsing around us, the Conservation Council of WA, with its 100+ member organisations, shows the way forward in their policy document, “A Bold Vision For Conservation, Climate and Communities in WA.” The WA environment movement…
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Understorey: Biophilia in Design
Urban design, wild nature meets human dwellings, lasting interdependence in our biodiversity hotspot – Understorey interviews Tuan Ngo, a Perth architect who focused on biophilic design in his Masters research at Curtin University, and wishes to see this nature-embracing concept in all future...
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Understorey: Nothing To Look At Here
Peace is an environmental issue: armies are notoriously environmentally destructive in battle, but also they take vast sums of money away from sectors generating far more jobs in health, education, and the environment. This week Understorey’s Adrian Glamorgan speaks with Canberra researcher and...
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Understorey: Democratic Deficit, Done Dirt Cheap
As people urgently readied themselves for Western Australia’s surprise pandemic lockdown on Sunday 3rd February, the Environment Protection Authority quietly posted on its website several contentious gas emission approvals, without fanfare or press release from the Minister for Environment’s...
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Understorey: Mayor Brad Pettitt on leading sustainability
Dr Brad Pettitt may have worked his last day of active mayoral duties at the port city. We wondered, what does it take to run a city as if the triple bottom line of environment, society, and economics really matters? From electric bicycles to working with the chamber of commerce, from homeless...
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Understorey: Robin Chapple’s Valedictory 2
Retiring Greens MLC Robin Chapple took the long way round to become Upper House member for Mining and Pastoral: starting off life in Blighty working on a pirate radio station with Kenny Everett, and… well, to find out more, join this reflection of Robin Chapple’s time serving the people and...
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Understorey: Robin Chapple’s Mining & Pastoral 1
Robin Chapple is retiring Greens Member for the Mining and Pastoral Region of the Legislative Council. His electorate is huge, covering much of the mining that occurs in this state. As an environmental campaigner, Robin Chapple has focused on the community impacts of mining, as well as…
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Understorey: Metronet’s Missing Links
In 2010 Premier Colin Barnett told the Chamber of Commerce that Perth was headed for a “decade of light rail.” Ten years on, the city transport planners have a full desk of tram routes announced, reformulated, abandoned, promised and now quietly delayed. Understorey’s Adrian Glamorgan takes us...
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Understorey: Consulting for Climate Change
Understorey’s Adrian Glamorgan speaks to Tristy Fairfield about her journey from community climate change campaigner to climate solutions corporate consultant.
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Understorey: Population, environment and corporations
For most of history, the total human population number has remained somewhere under 1 billion. Today in 2020 we find ourselves 7.8 billion people. Yet to speak environmentally about population is a difficult issue, because different people have different understanding as what the problem exactly...
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Understorey: Divesting Market Forces
Market Forces identifies institutions that may be financing environmentally destructive projects, and helps furnish market information so that Australians can enter into more informed discussions with these companies and funds. They help investors, those saving money for their retirement, like...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
In ecology, the understorey grows where light shines through the forest canopy.
Our award-winning Understorey journalists highlight local and globally-connected environmental issues that the other media may commonly pass over.
RTRFM’s long-running dedicated environment program makers Adrian Glamorgan and Elizabeth PO’ bring together stories from near and sometimes afar, whether it be conservationists rehabilitating habitat, citizen scientists gathering data, campaigners at the frontline, or decision-makers at their desks, seeking solutions together to the challenges affecting our shared air, water, land and life processes.
HOSTED BY
RTRFM
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Understorey have?
Understorey currently has 50 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Understorey about?
In ecology, the understorey grows where light shines through the forest canopy. Our award-winning Understorey journalists highlight local and globally-connected environmental issues that the other media may commonly pass over. RTRFM’s long-running dedicated environment program makers Adrian...
How often does Understorey release new episodes?
Understorey has 50 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Understorey?
You can listen to Understorey on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Understorey?
Understorey is created and hosted by RTRFM.
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