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The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of Australian climate scientists in advancing the state of knowledge about the causes and mechanisms of climatic change and variability in the Southern Hemisphere during the 1970 and 1980s.

The paper uses the methods and insights of environmental history and the history of science to analyse archival and published data pertaining to research on atmospheric pollution, the Southern Oscillation and the regional impacts of climate change.

Australia's geopolitical position, political interests and environmental sensitivities encouraged Australian scientists and policymakers to take a leading role in the Southern Hemisphere in the study of global environmental change.

This article builds on critiques of the ways in which planetary and global knowledge and governance disguise the local and situated scientific and material processes that construct, sustain and configure them.

Sustainable atmospheric management today involves a complex set of issues arising from the deliberate or inadvertent use of the atmosphere as a repository for waste products arising from human activities. Urban pollution affects human health, building materials and vegetation. Acidic emissions and excess nutrients produce both acid rain and dry deposition that affect terrestrial, freshwater and ocean chemistry and ecosystems. The production and effects of atmospheric pollution can transcend national boundaries and thus mitigation will require cooperation on regional and global levels, as well as local action. Global pollution includes greenhouse gases and atmospheric particles which are changing the global climate and affecting human health. While technological solutions will play an important part, the large reductions in emissions necessary to achieve sustainability will involve adopting lifestyles that conserve energy and minimise pollution. These concerns were foreshadowed in the writings of Fritz Schumacher.

Gordon Boyce, is a senior lecturer in the Macquarie University Department of Accounting and Finance, where he is a member of the Social and Critical Research in Accounting and Accountability Group. His interdisciplinary research encompasses social, critical and interpretive perspectives on accounting. Previous publications include research on environmental and social accounting; public administration, ethics and accountability; interactions between globalisation and accounting; and accounting education. Gordon presently teaches subjects in accounting information systems, accounting and society, social and critical perspectives on accounting and contemporary developments in accounting research.

The concept of vulnerability in climate change literature is underpinned by numerous theoretical contributions across different disciplines leading to disparate understandings of what climate change vulnerability entails, as well as different methodological frameworks for assessment. This multiplicity of contributions helped not only to frame and shape different understandings of vulnerability but also to define the conceptual and analytical elements considered as critical in any climate change vulnerability assessment. The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on climate change vulnerability and explore and synthesize those conceptual and analytical aspects considered fundamental in a vulnerability assessment in climate change.

Drawing on existing literature on climate change vulnerability and vulnerability assessment frameworks, the paper provides a review of the conceptual elements regarded as critical in integrated assessments of climate change vulnerability to date.

A review of the existing literature identified nine critical elements in vulnerability assessments: the coupled human-environment system and place-based analysis; key components of vulnerability; multiple perturbations; scales of analysis; causal structures of vulnerability; engaging stakeholders; differential vulnerability; historical and prospective analysis; and dealing with uncertainty. The paper concludes by highlighting some of the remaining challenges and limitations for the development of integrated vulnerability assessment in climate change research.

The paper presents a synthesis that draws on existing literature on climate change vulnerability theory, as well as vulnerability assessment frameworks that attempt to apply those concepts in the assessment of climate change vulnerability.