Desert Services that Work: Demand-responsive approaches to desert settlements

摘要: 1.1 BackgroundServices cover every aspect of life: housing, water, phones, power, roads, rubbish, health, education and more, meaning most of the necessities of modern living. In desert settlements these services come from governments, Aboriginal organisations and private companies, but distance, local conditions, communication challenges and other factors often mean that getting the best from them is difficult and can be extremely complex. Problems of access to services are endemic in desert Australia. Old hands might justifiably argue that the underlying issues have been around for a long time and unresolved for just as long.The research described in this report originated during the development of the Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre (DKCRC), when partners to the bid to the Commonwealth identified shortcomings in access to services as a key issue affecting the ability of people in desert Australia to achieve their aspirations to live and work in a sustainable way. The concept of demand-responsive services came from the work of the Centre for Appropriate Technology (CAT), which had developed its thinking in this area through the experience of working with Aboriginal people over some twenty-five years. CAT was particularly influenced by its research in the field of water and concepts of demandresponsive water services that emerged from the United Nations Water Decade of the Nineties (Black 1998).