Adapting Rural Living and Land Use to Environmental Change (RELU Phase IV)

The RELU Programme, with additional funding from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), is to fund projects under a fourth call on the theme of "Adapting rural living and land use to environmental change". This RELU call has been codesigned with the Living With Environmental Change programme. The projects will tackle two objectives. The first objective is to build networks and capacity for creative knowledge exchange and learning between researchers and policy makers, businesses, practitioners, local communities and the wider public, with a view to strengthening adaptive capacities, primarily within the UK. The second objective is to explore and promote novel approaches and partnerships for interdisciplinary research and analysis on living with environmental change in rural contexts. Examples of issues that projects will address include:

•    The environmental and public acceptability of novel technological solutions and land use options for adaptation and mitigation;
•    The sustainability of changing patterns of rural living, including adaptation and mitigation responses and capacities of rural infrastructures (settlements, transport systems, energy, water etc.), sectors, businesses, households and local communities;
•    Urban-rural interactions and synergies, such as the rural environmental implications of making urban systems sustainable;
•    Agricultural transitions and environmental change, including adaptive changes in rural land use, forestry, farm mitigation strategies and policies and consumer behaviour;
•    Biodiversity responses, landscape change and the future of environmental designations;
•    Applying tools and approaches for evaluation, trade-off and governance of rural ecosystem services in the face of environmental change and the relationship to public and stakeholder perceptions/expectations;
•    Balancing food, fibre, water and energy security and resource management constraints (e.g. soil) in the face of environmental change;
•    Identifying and responding to changing patterns of plant and animal pests and diseases and changes in the chemical environment (nutrients, pesticides, pharmaceuticals etc);
•    Rural business knowledge needs, economic opportunities and knowledge exchange mechanisms for adaptation and mitigation actions and technologies;
•    The impacts of environmental change on the provisioning, nutritional quality and safety of food;
•    Adaptive strategies and responses in rural areas to flooding and water shortages;
•    Knowledge management, communication techniques and exchange processes for adapting rural living and land use to environmental change.

For more information see http://www.relu.ac.uk