Adaptation and Resilience to a Changing Climate

Adaptation and Resilience in a Changing Climate (ARCC) brings together research projects involving existing buildings and infrastructure, including transport and water resource systems in the urban environment.

A coordinated network of engaged end-users has also been set up to increase the efficacy and breadth of the dissemination of research results, as well as the ability of researchers to engage potential end-users. A further benefit of the coordinating network is related to looking forward and identifying further investments in research.

This £6M programme will enable the design of urban systems that are more resilient to climate change. The programme held its inaugural event in May 2009. For more information on its projects visit the ARCC website: http://www.ukcip-arcc.org.uk/

Living With Environmental Change partners involved:

• Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)
• Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC)

• Both are working alongside the UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP)

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

AVOID - providing key advice to the UK government on avoiding dangerous climate change

The AVOID Programme brings together, for the first time, four of the most established providers of climate change advice in the UK: Met Office Hadley Centre (lead organisation), Walker Institute, University of Reading, Tyndall Centre, Grantham Institute, Imperial College.

The consortium is designed to operate by using the strengths of the
individual partners but to also be integrated to maximise the production and application of research results. Other institutes will be engaged as needed.

The combined expertise of the consortium includes climate research, impacts analysis, economic modelling, integrated assessment modelling, and analysis of mitigation technology and socio-economic changes.

The three main outputs of the AVOID programme will be:

•    Policy-relevant evidence and research needed to achieve international agreement on greenhouse gas emission reductions for CoP15 and beyond.
•    Core research for understanding dangerous climate change and its implications - including impacts, economic and social consequences and responses.
•    A framework that will further encourage the integration and communication of scientific and socio-economic research on climate change.

The benefits of the AVOID programme will be:
•    The UK Government better placed to achieve international agreement on emissions reductions.
•    Mitigation and adaptation policy even more strongly grounded in scientific evidence.
•    Scientific information more accessible and relevant to a wide range of stakeholders.
•    Research on all aspects of climate change more effectively integrated in the UK.

For more details see www.avoid.uk.net

The AVOID programme relates to the following LWEC objectives:

• Climate Change
• Ecosystem services
• Human, plant and animal health
• Resilient Infrastructure

Biofuels Executive Research Board

The Biofuels Executive Research Board aims to help fulfil a government commitment by bringing together Chief Scientific Advisors from across government to provide a forum to monitor and manage research into biofuels and facilitate successful engagement with experts outside UK government.

The primary objectives of the Biofuels Executive Research Board are to:
a.    co-ordinate, manage and monitor research being conducted across government on biofuels
b.    monitor research being conducted across industry and academia and by EU and international partners on biofuels
c.    identify and prioritise gaps in this research in line with policy needs and requirements
d.    facilitate identification of funding for departments to carry out work to address these gaps
e.    ensure the outcomes of the research are timely and feed into development of government biofuels policy, and into the wider European and global debate on sustainable biofuels.

Board activities

• The Board will monitor and pursue research on renewable fuels for transport, biofuels, including work into their sustainability and development.
• To ensure the work of the biofuels research programmes is aligned with technical developments in related areas, the Board will monitor, but not actively pursue, research on related issues such as biomass and other forms of bioenergy and renewable energy.
• The Board will aim to address policy needs and requirements and the outcomes of the research will feed into development of biofuels policy. The focus of the Board’s work is on research and technical issues. It will discuss policy issues only where clarification is needed to ensure alignment of work with policy requirements.

The first task of the Board will be to assess how the government departments can best work together to close biofuels research gaps, highlighted in the recently published Biofuels Research Gap Analysis (http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roads/environment/research/biofuelsresearch/)

The government’s biofuels research is steered by an inter-departmental group co-chaired by the Chief Scientific Advisers (CSA) of DfT and Defra. This brings together CSAs from across Government on a regular, quarterly basis to share knowledge, agree research priorities, identify potential sources of funding, and ensure that progress made within research programmes is fed into development of policy.

Business Relationships Accountability, Sustainability and Society Centre

BRASS is a joint venture between Cardiff University’s School of City and Regional Planning, Business School, and Law School. http://www.brass.cf.ac.uk

It pursues high quality, interdisciplinary social science research and engagement with research users, to create knowledge and tools that will promote more sustainable stakeholder relationships amongst and within businesses, society and the environment.

The Centre’s research work aims to generate knowledge, skills and learning, and to facilitate practical changes within businesses and policy arenas, based on four areas of distinctive research competence which promote:

• More sustainable and responsible use of technologies and natural resources by business: addressed through research from a legal perspective looking at the role of the environmental protection regulation and extended producer regulation in minimizing environmental damage by companies. It also examines the role of CSR strategies in areas such as extractive industries and emerging technologies such as nanotechnologies and GM
• Patterns of consumption and other behaviours, which promote wellbeing and sustainability: addressed through research into the role of consumption and marketing in creating progress towards more sustainable societies. This includes work focusing on key issues of sustainability impacts including transport and food, and the promotion of particular forms of more sustainable consumption such as ethical trading initiatives. This research also considers other forms of individual and collective behaviours linked to lifestyles, organisational behaviour and collective action to promote wellbeing and sustainability.
• More resilient local economies and communities through the application of sustainability principles: addressed through research work on sustainable communities and the role of businesses within them including small businesses, social enterprises (and other Third Sector organisations). The promotion of more localised food production and procurement systems is a particular focus for this work, along with the generation of new patterns of living and working geared towards sustainable development (SD) and wellbeing.
• More socially responsible and accountable approaches to governance, management and learning: addressed through research work into the ‘soft’ pathways towards sustainability of improved leadership, management strategies, reporting, learning and knowledge transfer. It includes investigating how social, ethical & environmental aspects of business (and economic activity) can be better managed, measured and reported. Governance also forms a key theme for this research bringing together issues of corporate governance and financial governance with issues related to food governance, environmental governance with SD policy.

Environmental change is a common theme across these projects, either as an influence of businesses, communities, organisations and consumers and their behaviour, or as a consequence of the activities of businesses and their stakeholders within our production and consumption systems.

BRASS projects address a number of the specific objectives of the LWEC programme including:

• Climate change orientated research, particularly projects looking at how consumers perceive and respond to climate change as an issue in their behaviour and lifestyles and the potential future impact of the ‘energy crunch’ on the economy and communities within Wales
• Work on environmental regulation and justice, including work on contaminated land and  regulatory protection of biodiversity
• Projects tackling human well-being including research on alternative economic indicators and measures of wellbeing, research into the impact of corporate social responsibility strategies on poverty alleviation in poorer countries, research into food security and waste minimisation strategies
• Research on biosecurity in agriculture and the food industry examining policies and practices which will limit the spread of disease and maintain food safety and the viability of rural economies
• Infrastructure related projects including research into reducing car dependence and promoting more sustainable forms of personal mobility and research into the behavioural aspects of reducing energy use in buildings
• Research into sustainable communities including how to improve cohesiveness and wellbeing through sustainability initiatives.

Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy

 The £4.7M Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy was officially launched on 27 January 2009 and will be addressing the economic and policy challenges identified in the Stern review and the debate that followed.

Human-induced climate change is occurring and could impose enormous costs on economies and societies if we persist with 'business as usual'. This is the consensus view of climate scientists and is increasingly accepted by climate-change economists. It is much less certain, however, that our economic, social and political systems can respond to the challenge.

Its overarching aim is to advance climate-change policy by improving both the evidence base for decision-makers and the tools and implementation strategies available to them. To reach this objective, an innovative combination of qualitative and quantitative studies will be conducted by a highly interdisciplinary team.

Although the centre's work will be firmly grounded in theory and will seek to be methodologically innovative, for example by linking science and social science and by combining quantitative and qualitative approaches, its primary focus is on improving climate-change policy and on increasing the capacity of decision makers (both public and private) to respond to one of the most critical challenges facing the world today.

While the fact of climate change and its potential costs are increasingly accepted, the response from economic, social and political systems has been slow; there is a clear and urgent need to increase the pace of efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to unavoidable climate change. The Centre's thematic objectives respond to this need. They are to:
•    Advance climate change policy and increase the capacity of decision-makers (both public and private) to respond to one of the most critical challenges facing the world today;
•    Support a 'new global deal' on climate change, both through a formal state agreement and through a wider set of policies and activities worldwide, by improving both the evidence base for decision-makers and the tools and implementation strategies available to them.

Rigorous and relevant research will be crucial in meeting these thematic objectives. Thus, the Centre's research objectives are to:
•    Undertake an ambitious, innovative and interdisciplinary programme of research, firmly grounded in theory but with practical applications, linking science and social science and combining quantitative and qualitative approaches;
•    Conduct research of the highest academic standard, subjecting it to internal and external review through seminars, briefings and publication.

In increasing the capacity of climate change decision-makers to respond to the challenge, the Centre places a great deal of importance of stakeholder engagement. Its stakeholder objectives are to:

Build an extensive network of links worldwide;
•    Hold 3 major conferences and 10 policy briefings and business roundtables to highlight the Centre's findings;
•    Establish a steering committee to allow strategic stakeholders to influence the Centre's research direction and create a stakeholder college to engage with programmes and projects;
•    Produce a range of outputs, many non-technical and all available freely and electronically,
•    Host an electronic discussion board or 'blog' to allow rapid reaction to the Centre's research and from the Centre to developments in policy, the private sector etc.;
•    Organise regular press and media briefings of key findings, using the LSE's established expertise.

Finally, the Centre's capacity-building objectives are to:
•    Improve the capacity of stakeholders to understand how physical and economic models of climate change can actually support decisions;
•    Bring in the expertise of researchers and social-scientific disciplines yet to make a significant contribution to climate change research;
•    Provide research training and career development opportunities for masters and PhD students, post doctoral fellows and young researchers.

These types of questions inform the work of the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy. Its mission is to advance public and private action on climate change through rigorous, innovative research.

http://www.cccep.ac.uk/

Living With Environmental Change partners involved:

• Funded by Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC)
• Interactions with other LWEC partners
• The LWEC Director sits on the Advisory Board

Centre for Environment and Health

This new £5M multi-disciplinary grouping using a mix of more traditional and leading edge techniques is centred around Imperial and Kings Colleges in London to identify and understand health impacts of a range of environmental changes on the scales that influence management policies and practices. http://www.environment-health.ac.uk/

Living With Environmental Change partners involved:

• Medical Research Council (MRC)
• Department of Health (DoH)

Additionally, the Health Protection Agency is working alongside the DoH.

Centre in Understanding and Managing Natural & Environmental Risks

As a cross-cutting aspect of Living With Environmental Change, LWEC partners have identified a number of risks and the way we deal with them. The Collaborative Centre of Excellence in Understanding and Managing Natural and Environmental Risks - The Risk Centre - is the focus for research, training, education and consultancy in strategic environmental risk appraisal. Based at Cranfield University, the £1.2M Centre will enable improved management of risk through focussing on better understanding the public responses to perceived risks in areas such as natural and man-made hazards, extreme events, and new and emerging diseases. http://www.cranfield.ac.uk/sas/risk/index.jsp

Living With Environmental Change partners involved:

• Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)
• Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)
• Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC)
• Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)

Character and Quality of England’s Landscapes

The Character and Quality of England’s Landscapes (CQuEL) project aims to assess change in the character and quality (the form and the function) of England’s landscapes.

CQuEL seeks to provide ‘place-based’ evidence about the character and function of landscapes and the provision and quality of selected ecosystem services delivered by England’s natural environment, where the natural environment is understood through the concept of landscape. The project seeks to develop a better understanding of the ways in which different landscapes are changing and what this means for the ecosystem services these places provide.

The CQuEL project has 4 objectives:

1. Providing ‘place-based’ evidence, combined with a compelling narrative, about the character and function of landscapes and the provision and quality of selected ecosystem services delivered by England’s natural environment.
2. Increased awareness and engagement with our stakeholders, including the public, on the nature and importance of the ecosystem services provided by England’s landscapes.
3. A integrated monitoring methodology for the natural environment which combines quantitative analysis and qualitative assessment so that the question ‘do changes matter to people?’ can be answered.
4. Natural England’s reputation as a leading UK authority on ‘place-based’ assessment of ecosystem services is established.

In CQuEL ‘place’ provides a means of integrating different perspectives and concerns, and a framework in which the cultural and ecological aspects of landscape and ecosystem services can be brought together in a coherent and unified way. The notion of place is also a good starting point for fostering public engagement in questions about the value of landscape and ecosystem services, and for understanding the visions that different groups have for the future.

The principal outcomes are:

1. An up-to-date understanding of the quality of the natural environment and an enhanced understanding of the complexities of the English landscape. This will allow Natural England to understand its own contribution to enhancing and improving the condition of the natural environment (Natural England’s Strategic Outcome 1) but will also provide evidence to our key strategic partners, particularly Defra.
2. The Government is supporting the implementation of the European Landscape Convention (ELC) in the UK. Natural England, in partnership with English Heritage, leads the Convention’s implementation in England, on behalf of Defra.  The ELC includes specific objectives for greater engagement with the public, through understanding their aspirations and their perceptions of landscape in the development of strategies and policies in the management of landscape change. As public engagement will be a feature of the assessment process there is the opportunity to fully explore the link between landscape, public engagement and private inspiration.
3. Building on key data series from the two iterations of Countryside Quality Counts, CQuEL will extend the time period on which our understanding of change in landscape character is based. This will fulfil Defra’s wish that Natural England continues to report on an indicator of Countryside Quality, as required by the Rural White Paper 2000.
4. Place-based evidence about the provision and quality of selected ecosystem services as delivered by the England’s natural environment. This will secure Natural England’s role as the UK lead in place-based assessment of ecosystems services.
5. The operation of the project will require new ways of working for the Natural England teams involved in its delivery. CQuEL will act as transforming project allowing for the development of more holistic approaches to strategic monitoring of the natural environment and the evidence needed to support this activity.

Changing Water Cycle Programme

The Changing Water Cycle Programme directly relates to delivery of the NERC Strategy (in particular Climate System, Sustainable Use of Natural Resources (SUNR) and Natural Hazards Science Themes) and UK Government's Strategic Goals with respect to the adaptation to, and mitigation of, climate change. The programme will have global dimensions and dimensions that focus specifically on the UK/European region and Southern Asia and take advantage of international collaboration opportunities. The programme will be fully multidisciplinary aiming to bring science understanding across the themes in a fully integrated way.

The hydrological cycle is changing with some evidence that it is intensifying; and now we know that the climate is changing and is expected to change in future even with major mitigation efforts. The very high levels of uncertainty in predictions of water-related variables, and the importance of these variables for climate impacts, suggests that this problem should be afforded comparable importance to the goal of constraining climate sensitivity. Progress is essential, and urgent, to provide decision makers with the information they need to anticipate and respond to the changes taking place.

Over the next few decades, climate change and demographic and economic drivers will add further pressure to the water and soil life support systems on which we depend. Mitigation and adaptation measures linked to the forecast changes in water availability tend to focus on the demand end of the water balance. Sustainable solutions to climate change impacts on the water cycle mean getting to grips with changes in water supply, at scales from catchment to regional, and with the contingent changes in soil physical and biogeochemical processes.

Clear signals of human induced impact on river flows are beginning to emerge. There is evidence to suggest that changes in weathering rates over the past 50 years due to changes in climate and land use are changing the chemistry of rivers. The challenge is to predict where the freshwater will land, when, in what volume and how it will be transported through and stored within the terrestrial system. We also need to understand the implications for terrestrial and freshwater systems of measures designed to manipulate water availability such as large-scale water treatment movements, mixing raw water of different origin, and pumping water underground for storage. This programme will contribute to the fundamental scientific understanding needed to inform the planning and implications of such human interventions.

The programme will develop an integrated, quantitative understanding of the changes taking place in the global water cycle, involving all components of the earth system, improving predictions for the next few decades of regional precipitation, evapotranspiration, soil moisture, hydrological storage and fluxes. The programme will work to understand how local to regional scale hydrological and biogeochemical processes are responding and will respond to changing climate and land use, together with their consequent impacts on the sustainable use of soil and water and investigate the consequences of the changing water cycle for water-related natural hazards, including floods and droughts, improving prediction and mitigation of these hazards.  This programme will address the urgent needs to understand the changes taking place now; predict changes that will take place over the next few decades; and, through LWEC, work with partners to build resilience, mitigate problems, and develop adaptive solutions.

The Programme was officially launched on 5 February 2009.

Living With Environmental Change partners involved:

• Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)
• Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)
• Environment Agency (EA)
• Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC)
• Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA)
• Welsh Assembly Government
• Scottish Government

Continuous Plankton Recorder

The Continuous Plankton Recorder survey is the world’s most geographically extensive and longest-running (started 1931) large-scale plankton biodiversity monitoring activity.

The survey determines the abundance and distribution of microscopic plants (phytoplankton) and animals (zooplankton) in our oceans and shelf seas. Using ships of opportunity from about20 shipping companies, it obtains samples at monthly intervals on about 30 trans-ocean routes. The survey is internationally-funded with a wide consortium of stakeholders.

Sampling devices are towed along standard tracks at approximately 10m depth across European seas, the North Atlantic and North Pacific. New routes have recently started in the Arctic and Southern Ocean reflecting environmental interests in boreal systems. Plankton are collected on a band of silk and subsequently visually identified (approximately 500 taxa) by experts in the laboratory at Plymouth and elsewhere. This information is collated and assessed, and data and samples are archived.

NERC and Defra/Cefas provide 60% of the survey’s Full Economic Costs. To meet these stakeholders interests, survey objectives include:

1. To maintain the spatial and temporal integrity of the core North Atlantic survey, by ensuring an adequate sampling coverage and adding further years to the time series.
2. To extend the long-term baseline of the near-surface distribution, abundance and diversity of phyto- and zooplankton and provide research opportunities on pelagic ecosystems at temporal and spatial scales that would otherwise be impossible.
3. To provide the UK government with information and advice on changes in the marine life of UK, European and adjacent waters, in the context of fishery management, the sustainable provision of ecosystem services, and compliance with international agreements on the conservation of marine biodiversity including specifically phytoplankton and zooplankton and good environmental status in the NE Atlantic and UK waters as required by the European Marine Strategy Framework Directive. 
4. To promote the Continuous Plankton Recorder approach in international programmes such as the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) and organisations such as the Scientific Committee for Oceanographic Research (SCOR), the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC)
5. To promote and advance education and knowledge about the marine environment for the public benefit by disseminating information derived from the study of plankton populations in the ocean and coastal seas.

The Survey forms part of NERC’s National Capability within its Strategic Science Programme Oceans2025. The Survey has been co-designed significantly since it started in 1931 when it was an aid to fishermen in the North Sea. In past decades, the survey has been codesigned to provide data to underpin a wide range of strategic issues related to Environmental Change including Biodiversity (500 taxa), Climate (changes in distribution), Fisheries (ecosystem approach), Environmental Health (harmful algae), Eutrophication (algal blooms) and Pollution (plastics in the ocean). Defra (formerly MAFF/DoE) support has been provided since 1989 and has helped in the evolution of the survey. For instance, the survey identified the northerly movement of plankton by >1000km in the past 5 decades and then responded by working in the Norwegian Sea to track this northerly movement into the Arctic Ocean. This is of fundamental strategic importance since this is the likely zone of expansion of European fisheries in the next five decades.    

Expected outputs:

The main outputs are repeated on a rolling annual cycle:

• Completion of the analysis of Continuous Plankton Recorder samples and the processing of instrumentation results by October of the year following the collection of the samples.
• Incorporation of results for the previous year into the main CPR database, after quality control checks by December of the year following the collection of the samples.
• Ensuring that data requests, especially from Oceans 2025 partners, are processed rapidly and efficiently.
• Annual publication of an ‘Ecological Status Report’ on the status of the seas around the United Kingdom with specific reference to the results from the Continuous Plankton Recorder.
• Publication of Annual Report, summarising research outputs and logistics in the previous year.
  

Demonstration test catchments

The Demonstration Test Catchments (DTC) project is a joint Defra, Environment Agency (EA) and Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) initiative.

It will develop an evidence-base for wider application to the management of river catchments across England and Wales. The project will initially set up three instrumented catchments with an integrative data infrastructure to provide a shared-use network as the framework for collaborative analysis. Research and mitigation actions in other catchments will also be drawn in and supported where relevant, to enhance the developing evidence base.

This research platform will host long-term, large-scale research projects to assess the effectiveness of on-farm abatement measures applied as part of integrated farming systems to reduce diffuse pollution from agricultural sources, deliver food production and environmental benefits across whole river catchments. It will consider the impacts and effects on both ecosystems and sustainable production and aims to reduce current uncertainties in predicting and controlling diffuse pollution from agriculture.

The DTC network will cover a range of English and Welsh agricultural land uses, geologies, soils, climatic regions and river types. An initial set of catchments (Eden (Cumbria), Wensum (Norfolk) and Avon (Hampshire) has been selected to build on existing infrastructure, datasets, knowledge and farming contacts developed through previous and ongoing initiatives, which have not previously been well linked. These catchments are presently undergoing enhanced monitoring through the England Catchment Sensitive Farming Delivery Initiative (ECSFDI).

In each Demonstration Test Catchment, a suite of experimental locations positioned on working farms will be established to host future multi-disciplinary catchment scale R&D funded by Defra, the Environment Agency, Research Councils and other organisations. Collaboration within and between research groups, and links to key stakeholders, will be fostered and promoted.

The project will be managed by Defra and WAG in collaboration with the EA.

Who will benefit from this activity?
Government
The research will provide an improved evidence-base for Defra and WAG to deliver policies that contribute to meeting WFD objectives. A policy group consisting of Defra, EA and WAG officials has been established to set the research agenda for the project. The project will deliver improved national scale models and decision support tools to predict the outcomes of proposed policy instruments.

Delivery bodies
The project will develop novel practices in water quality monitoring including the establishment of a sensor-web to control and interrogate instruments.  This will provide the opportunity for Environment Agency to design and test of these approaches on a large spatial scale will help facilitate their future development and ultimate deployment for monitoring progress against Water Framework Directive targets nationally. In addition, river basin/ catchment scale models and decision support tools that will be developed will inform future delivery approaches by the EA and Natural England. 

Researchers
The project will provide open source data and models which will be accessible to the wider research community. It will provide the physical and cyber infrastructure to cost-effectively host additional research on catchment science and freshwater ecology.

Water industry
DTC research activities will be aligned with parallel expenditure by water industry on catchment approaches to improve water quality.  The evidence provided by the project will help inform the water industry and OFWAT on the likely effectiveness of catchment scale schemes to protect drinking water sources.

Farming industry
The project will disseminate information to the farming industry on methods to mitigate diffuse water pollution whilst maintaining productivity. The testing of measures will include a socio-economic analysis of the cost effectiveness of measures and likely impact on farm business. The data generated by the project will be accessible to farmers and will help the sector improve their net environmental performance.

Designing a Programme to Address Evidence Gaps in Greenhouse Gas and Carbon Flux from UK Peatlands

The ''Designing a Programme to Address Evidence Gaps in Greenhouse Gas and Carbon Flux from UK Peatlands” project is now officially accredited under the Living with Environmental Change programme.

The project specification has been co-designed by the Joint Nature Conservation Committee in conjunction with Defra, Natural England, the Countryside Council for Wales, Scottish Natural Heritage, the Forestry Commission and Department for Energy and Climate Changes with support from the Scottish Government, Scottish Environment Protection Agency, and the Welsh Assembly Government. The project is overseen by a Steering Group which will ensure collaboration and contributions of data and information from each partner and ensure that the outputs will useful to all.

Importance of peatlands

Over the past 10,000 years UK peatlands have stored (sequestered) significant amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Our peatlands contain over half the approximately 4500 million tonnes of carbon stored in UK soils. However, peatlands in the UK have been extensively degraded leading to the release of carbon dioxide and other greenhose gasses.

Damaged peatlands can also lose their stored carbon through rainwater pathways underground and through streams, as particulate or dissolved organic matter, and as dissolved inorganic carbon derived from organic materials.

There is increasing pressure to restore damaged peatlands, partly to protect the carbon that they store. This restoration will prevent losses of peat carbon, but may also increase methane emissions. The importance of peatland management to the releases of greenhouse gases has been recognised globally and within Europe. In the UK the ECOSSE project and the Partnership Project to protect and enhance Peat Soils have key objectives to understand the impacts of management and land use on carbon and green house gases fluxes in peatlands. However a recent review indicates a lack of monitoring data to indicate the typical range of emissions that are associated with peat under different management regimes.

The relationship between peatland management and rates of water-borne carbon loss has been well studied in a few upland peatland sites in the UK, owing to their importance for water quality, but other types of peatland (e.g. lowland fen peats) have not been studied. Also, the fate of carbon lost through these pathways remains unknown.

An understanding of the impact of management on peatland green house gases and carbon flux will inform improved management of peatlands to deliver climate change mitigation and adaptation. It will also provide more detailed information on the influence of our peatlands on national green house gases flux, and enable quantification of green house gases and carbon flux reductions from peatland restoration to be recognised as an ecosystem service.

This project brings together a wide range of UK government agencies and departments with researchers to design a programme of research which will address key evidence gaps relating the management of UK peatlands to their flux of greenhouse gases and carbon.

Results should be available by the end of July 2010 and further details will be posted on this website at that time. A synopsis of the work being undertaken can be downloaded here:

Detection and Identification of Infectious Agents Innovation Platform

The research and development that will be funded by the Innovation Platform will be aimed at producing new rapid diagnostic tests and Point of Care (POC) devices for the detection and identification of infectious agents in both humans and animals. The range of diseases and areas chosen were prioritised by government (DH and DEFRA) Success for this Innovation Platform (IP) would be the development by UK industry of diagnostic tests including Point of Care (POC) devices for the rapid and effective detection and identification of infectious agents to be used in the UK and globally.

The devices should be rapid, sensitive and specific, cheap, easy to use, minimally invasive, compact, stable and compatible with existing systems. POC devices bring healthcare closer to the patient, offering convenience as well as the potential for quicker diagnosis and treatment. With infectious diseases accounting for over a fifth of human deaths, there is likely to be significant global demand for state-of-the-art disease detection and identification technology. Infectious diseases are a constant threat to the health and wealth of the nation.

In the UK approximately 10% of all deaths and 4% of all hospital admissions are attributed to infectious diseases, and 35% of GP consultations (50% in children) are due to an infection. Hospital-acquired infections cost the NHS around £1bn each year. Taking into account loss of national productivity and payment of sickness benefit the cost is considerably higher; around £3-11bn for MRSA alone. Animal diseases can be equally costly and serious. The 2001 outbreak of foot and mouth disease cost the UK about £7bn; and bovine tuberculosis, the largest endemic animal health issue in Great Britain, cost the taxpayer around £80m in 2007/08 for surveillance, research, testing and compensation.

Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation (ESPA)

This £40.5M programme will address key environmental vulnerabilities in areas of the world where poverty is worst. The aim is to find ways in which poverty can be reduced by accounting for regional variations in climate, weather patterns and land use without causing or worsening enduring environmental problems. For more information see: http://www.nerc.ac.uk/research/programmes/espa/

Living With Environmental Change partners involved:

• Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)


• Department for International Development (DFID)


• Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC)

Environment and Human Health Programme

Estimates suggest that some 30% of human health problems worldwide have a strong environmental component. In the UK damage to human health from poor air quality costs us all on average six months of life expectancy and the nation some £20bn a year in health care. Environmental change may exacerbate this and key uncertainties in air quality pollutant dynamics need to be resolved. Equally we need to prepare for new and emerging diseases in ways that require close NERC, MRC and DoH collaboration. A further £20M is expected to be allocated to these research areas. For more information see: http://www.nerc.ac.uk/research/programmes/humanhealth/

Living With Environmental Change partners involved:

• Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)
• Environment Agency
• Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)
• Department of Health (DoH)
• Medical Research Council (MRC)
• Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC)
• Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)
• Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)

The Wellcome Trust, The Ministry of Defence and the Health Protection Agency are also working on the programme.

ESRC Climate Change Leadership Fellowships

Climate change has contributed to a rise of both policy and research debates, within the UK and internationally. These six leadership fellows propose innovative approaches and application of leading edge social science to addressing key research issues in mitigating and/or adapting to climate change. The fellowships are intended to complement existing initiatives in the field, and will form an important further step in mobilising leading UK expertise to respond readily to the social science research challenges raised by climate change.

Flood, vulnerability and urban resilience

Flood, vulnerability and urban resilience: a real-time study of local recovery following the floods of June 2007 in Hull

This research used diaries, interviews and group discussions to follow the recovery experiences of people across Hull after the floods of June 2007 which affected over 8,600 households across the city. It had the following objectives:

• To identify and document key dimensions of the longer term experience of flood impact and flood recovery, including health, economic and social aspects.
• To examine how resilience and vulnerability were manifest in the interaction between everyday strategies of adaptation during the flood recovery process, and modes of institutional support and the management of infrastructure and the built environment.
• To explore to what extent the recovery process entailed the development of new forms of resilience and to identify the implications for developing local level resilience for flood recovery in the future.
• To develop an archive that will be accessible for future research into other aspects of flood recovery.

The findings show flood recovery to be a long and difficult process with no clear beginning or end. Far from being an incremental, linear process, respondents’ recovery is punctuated by ‘highs’ and ‘lows’ which are closely tied to other pressures and life events. Recovery is not complete when people move ‘back home’, as aspects of daily life are shown to have fundamentally changed – both for better and for worse.

Many of the difficulties experienced by residents result from the existence of a ‘recovery gap’. This emerges as the legally-defined contingency arrangements provided to the community by its local authority diminish and the less well-defined services provided by the non statutory/private sector (e.g. insurance, builders) start. The nature of this gap means that residents receive little support during this time and, as a result, they must attempt to coordinate the actions of the different organizations involved. Such ‘project management’ is time-consuming, exhausting and stressful as it requires residents to acquire new skills, challenge ‘expert’ judgements and engage in new kinds of physical, mental and emotional work.
 
By suggesting ways in which residents can be better supported, the research is of direct practical relevance for organizations involved in recovery and the building of resilience. An unique archive of data has also been established to promote future learning and allow secondary analysis.

For more information go to www.lec.lancs.ac.uk/cswm/hfp

Icesheets and sea level rise

Icesheets and Sea Level Rise: estimating the future contribution of continental ice to future sea-level rise

This programme is the NERC component of a large EU FP7 programme called Ice2Sea. The British Antarctic Survey component of this activity is part of a €10M EU Framework 7 (FP7) programme called Ice2sea (see www.ice2sea.eu). There are 24 institutional partners in Ice2sea, with BAS as the lead partner. The Ice2sea Programme Office is hosted at BAS.

Ice2Sea is an integrated programme that includes:
  - targeted studies of key processes in ice sheets in both polar regions (Greenland and Antarctica)
  - improved satellite determinations of changes in continental ice mass
  - development and implementation of ice-sheet/glacier models to generate detailed projections of the contribution of continental ice to sea-level rise over the next 200 years.

Who will benefit?

The results will be delivered in forms accessible to scientists, policy-makers and the general public, which will include clear presentations of the sources of uncertainty. Ice2sea has a work package that is specifically targeted at providing policy makers with the information they require on future sea level rise. A specific target is the provision of input to the up-coming Fifth Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This report is due to be finalised in late 2012, with publication planned for early 2013.

A key objective of the EU FP7 programme is to provide input to the up-coming Fifth Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) due in 2013. Specifically, it will provide:

1. Improved understanding of the key processes that control how glacial systems respond to atmospheric and oceanic climate change.
2. New methodologies for the prediction of global sea-level rise based on improved models of the response of ice sheets and mountain glaciers to climate change.
3. Updated assessments of the likely contribution of the cryosphere to sea level rise over the next 200 years, based on two emission scenarios.
4. A collective view of the likelihood of catastrophic sea-level rise, due to collapse of either the Greenland or Antarctic ice sheets.
5. A clearer view of where the uncertainties in predicting future sea-level rise arise, and how these may be reduced in future.

Identification and modelling of the processes that govern climate on multi-decadal to centennial time-scale

Identification and modelling of the processes that govern climate on multi-decadal to centennial time-scales; quantification and reduction of the uncertainty in predictions for the next century

Climate change on centennial time scales is a major scientific, societal and policy issue. The work here is geared to addressing the key science questions and providing information for evidence-based decision making to the relevant stakeholders, including government departments (Defra and DECC). It will feed into the international research and policy arenas through contribution to IPCC and WMO/UNEP assessments. It will be closely aligned to the Joint Weather & Climate Research Programme, and will involve wide collaboration with the Met Office.

Background

The evolution of climate on multi-decadal to centennial time-scales is influenced both by the response of the physical climate system (atmosphere, ocean, land, cryosphere) to anthropogenic forcing and also by a wide range of feedbacks involving interactions between the marine and terrestrial biosphere and changing atmospheric composition.

For example, changes in climate cause changes in tropospheric and stratospheric ozone concentrations directly, through the influence of temperature and winds, and indirectly, e.g. by modifying the biogenic emissions of ozone precursors. Equally, ozone is a climate gas and its changes impact the climate system directly, via radiative transfer, and indirectly, e.g. by damaging the terrestrial biosphere and thereby affecting carbon uptake.

Such “Earth system feedbacks” have the potential to amplify, or damp, significantly the rate of climate change, and they are a major uncertainty in projections of climate for the twenty-first century. Improved knowledge of these feedbacks is urgently needed to guide the formulation of policies to mitigate climate change, since the impact of any reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases is felt primarily on multi-decadal and longer time-scales.

We urgently need improved quantitative knowledge about feedbacks involving, for example: composition and aerosols; the depletion and recovery of the ozone layer, the uptake and transport of heat by the ocean; the uptake and emission of carbon compounds; clouds and water vapour.

Developing the appropriate models with the increased complexity to address these issues is a major challenge; exploiting the models of process studies, using new data from satellites, from long-term measurement stations and from focused field campaigns, is a major opportunity.

Through a large modelling programme, including model development and exploitation we will:

• Advance capability for coupled modelling of the physical climate system and of interactions between climate and atmospheric composition.
• Identify the role of atmospheric processes in Earth system feedbacks that have the potential to influence global climate on multi-decadal to centennial time-scales.
• Improve model representation of Earth system feedbacks.
• Exploit existing and new observations to test Earth system models at a process level and to quantify the relative importance of different feedbacks.
• Play a leading role within the NERC community in the development of climate modelling.
• Contribute to addressing science questions relevant to climate mitigation policy, including underpinning research required to assess proposed geo-engineering schemes.
• Play a leading role in major international assessments of global change (IPCC, WMO/UNEP)
• Provide key policy-relevant information to DECC and Defra
• Be a focus for scientific training, including PhD and postdoctoral training, summer schools and specialised courses

Expected outcomes

We will enhance UK capability in earth system science and in studies of global change in centennial time scales. Our legacy will be:

• new earth system models, which will maintain the UK’s position as a leader in international climate science research
• a new generation of scientific experts.

The programme will play a leading role within the NERC community in the development of climate modelling and lead to increased understanding and application of UK numerical models by the international community.

The programme will allow the UK to play a major role in international scientific assessments (IPCC; the WMO/UNEP assessment of the state of the ozone layer). Scientists working in this programme will be directly involved, at a variety of levels, in production of the assessments.

The assessments, and our direct advice to government departments (Defra, DECC), are a crucial input to policy.  We will also respond to science questions relevant to climate mitigation policy, including conducting underpinning research required to assess proposed geo-engineering schemes.

Likely beneficiaries and stakeholders

Policy makers

Emissions policy for global change questions needs to be science-based. Our results will be a key component of the science base which is required by UK government departments (Defra, DECC, etc.). They support our involvement in these activities. We will take every opportunity to provide information through formal and informal channels.  We will work to develop formal mechanisms for communicating our findings to policy partners.

Industry

We will continue to provide advice to industry, e.g., the national and international chemical manufacturing industry, the aviation industry, etc.

Communication

Media: the press (national, international and local) and television and radio all come to us for information and science articles. We will continue to play an active role in translating complex science for these outlets.

The general public: we will engage in communication with the public on global change issues, in a variety of ways, to disseminate and promote the public understanding of this complex field.

Insect Pollinators Initiative

The Insect Pollinators Initiative was launched on 22 June 2010

For more information on the projects funded under the Initiative see http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk/pollinators/

Importance of insects

Insects contribute substantially to the pollination of a wide variety of cultivated and wild plants, and play important roles in both crop production and the maintenance of natural ecosystems. However, there is evidence that populations of managed and wild insect pollinators are currently declining in the UK and elsewhere, in the face of threats from rapid changes in the environment such as emerging pests and diseases, habitat loss, intensive agriculture and climate change. An evidence base is needed to inform the conservation of wild insect pollinators and to improve the husbandry of managed species, in order to avoid the potentially catastrophic loss of the ecosystem services they provide.

With a common recognition of the importance of honey bees and other insects in the pollination of food crops and wild plants, and in the light of concerns about recent widespread declines in their abundance, a consortium of five funders has come together in a joint initiative to support research into the causes and consequences of threats to pollinators, and to inform the development of appropriate mitigation strategies. Each of the five partners has a different mission and remit, but all of them agree that there is an urgent need for innovative research to provide a basis for reducing current declines and sustaining healthy and diverse populations of pollinating insects for the future.

Initiative purpose

The purpose of the Insect Pollinators Initiative (IPI) is to promote innovative research aimed at understanding and mitigating the biological and environmental factors that adversely affect insect pollinators. The causes of pollinator declines are likely to be multifactorial, involving complex interactions between pollinators, their pests and pathogens, and the environment. Multidisciplinary and systems-based approaches will be important in elucidating them. In particular, the funders are keen to bring to bear on these issues - alongside the expertise of the existing pollinator research community - relevant new skills such as state-of-the-art and high-throughput “post-genomic” technologies, and the latest techniques in epidemiological and ecological modelling.

Funders and partners

Collectively, BBSRC, DEFRA, NERC, the Scottish Government and the Wellcome Trust will commit up to £10M over five years to support multidisciplinary research under the auspices of the LWEC partnership, in an initiative that aligns with several of LWEC’s six strategic objectives, in particular, those concerned with the implications of environmental change for ecosystem services (LWEC challenge B), food and water supply (LWEC challenge C), and plant, animal and human health (LWEC challenge D). The scope of the initiative includes all insect pollinators, both managed and wild.

Integrated Climate Programme

The Integrated Climate Programme is a five year programme with the aim of providing tailored climate change advice to UK government, and supporting DECC and Defra in developing policy to tackle climate change. The Met Office undertakes research into climate change and variability on behalf of DECC and Defra under the ICP. The primary outputs of the Integrated Climate Programme are:

1. World class research into climate change and variability which contributes to UK government policy objectives;

2. The communication of science and evidence of change and impacts; (a) to DECC/Defra for policy formulation and delivery, and (b) to the widest possible stakeholder community including media and the general public, in the UK, Europe and world-wide;

3. The provision of ad hoc advice to the funding departments and for the UK government generally. The ICP delivers policy relevant science research outputs.

These are:

1. Evidence Basis – scientific assessment and understanding of climate change, weather and climate events and processes.

2. Mitigation – evidence to enhance UK government input to deliver international mitigation policy, on; (a) avoiding dangerous climate change; (b) negotiations for mitigation options.

3. Adaptation and planning – evidence to enhance UK government input to deliver climate change adaptation strategies in the context of sustainable development, both nationally and internationally.

Integrated Research Programme to assess the Impacts of Climate Change in the UK and Adaptation Options

Each project within 'Integrated Research Programme to assess the Impacts of Climate Change in the UK and Adaptation Options' has been designed to collectively produce a portfolio of work that makes excellent use of the UK’s climate change projections (UKCP09). Individually, but more so together, they provide a substantial body of evidence on which to develop robust adaptation policies, and outputs will be integrated in to the Adapting to Climate Change Statutory National Climate Change Risk Assessment.

Projects include “Assessing the impacts of climate change on river flows using UKCP09 projections” initiated by the Water Availability and Quality team at Department of Environment Fodd and Rural Affairs with funding from the Environment Agency and ''Climate Impact Risk Assessment Methodology'' which aims to maintain and optimise defence capability by addressing the impacts of climate change on Ministry of Defence sites.

Investment

The total spend by all organisations involved in this body of work will be around £1.6 million.

Who will benefit?

The UK will benefit as a whole from this activity as all outputs will contribute to forming the evidence base for the Adapting to Climate Change Statutory National Climate Change Risk Assessment.

More generally, some outputs will be in the form of leaflets, given to specific communities so they are aware of their options should they choose to adapt. We are also in the process of setting up two workshops to ensure that knowledge is transferred across all organisation involved, and articles will be published where possible based on the any research conducted.

Organisations involved

The research programme is managed by the Adapting to Climate Change evidence team in Defra and there are 6 other government departments, public bodies and government agencies currently involved in managing and commissioning work, amongst several others who are providing technical advice and other expertise: Environment Agency, Department for Work and Pensions, Ministry of Defence, Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Partnership for Schools.

Intelligent Transport Systems and Services Innovation Platform

The £56M Intelligent Transport Systems and Services (ITSS) Innovation Platform helps UK businesses develop innovative products and services in response to new market opportunities that may result from government interventions in transport. Traffic congestion is a specific challenge because of its impact on the economy, climate change and quality of life.

We take a broad view of congestion, and are exploring the wider issues around the mobility of people and the transport of goods by asking: ‘How can we move people and goods more intelligently?’ Through a series of strategic interventions, we will encourage private-sector R&D with the potential to improve efficiencies in the overall transport network and/or promote lower-carbon travel choices.

We believe that two approaches are needed to achieve this. First, taking a user-led systems approach, we need to identify and address the gaps in the UK’s current use of available technologies and services. Second, we should analyse human behaviours and attitudes in this context, and find how to influence people’s decision-making by providing them with the appropriate tools and information.

Economic impacts - the case for maximising the efficiency of the transport network
•    A 5% reduction in travel time on the roads could save businesses around £2.5bn; 0.2% of GDP.
•    Eliminating existing road congestion would be worth £7-8bn of GDP each year.
•    If left unchecked, the rising cost of congestion will waste an extra £22bn worth of time in England alone by 2025.

Climate change impacts – the case for minimising the carbon footprint of the transport network The UK Climate Change Act 2008 sets a number of challenging targets. These include a 26% reduction in overall UK CO2 emissions by 2020, which is part of an overall target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050 (baseline 1990). Transport contributes about 24% of the UK’s CO2 emissions.

Quality-of-life impacts - Delays and unreliability on the transport network result in direct costs to people, as well as stress and frustration.

Joint Weather & Climate Research Programme

The UK leads the world in predictive climate science and the overall success of Living With Environmental Change depends on making sure predictive capacity improves to the point where predictions can be used at the same time and space scales on which the economy is managed. This work will provide the evidence the UK needs in international negotiations, as well as underpinning much of the predictive work needed to develop and implement successful mitigation and adaptation policies. It will also provide the foresight that UK business can use to lead on approaches to mitigation and adaptation. The Programme was launched in March 2009.

In the short-term, the JWCRP will be funding a limited number of posts that will lead to the following specific work being delivered:
 
- Maintenance and efficient development of the United Kingdom Chemistry Aerosol (UKCA) model, including providing code and updated documentation for the regular release pattern of the Unified Model, contributing to peer-reviewed publications and reports on the assessment of UKCA within climate models and standardising a set of model assessment tools
- Creation of long term datasets of satellite based climate quality infrared radiances that can be used to test climate model simulations and be an independent measure of climate change
- Building and assessing a high-resolution global coupled model for research on weather, extremes and seasonal to decadal variability and predictability
- Analysis and understanding of the errors in the monsoon simulation through analysis of model runs, observations/reanalyses and the use of sensitivity experiments
- Provision of a predictive capability for rapid changes in ice sheets and their contribution to sea level change

The JWCRP is providing a joint high performance computing service, MONSooN, based at the Met Office in Exeter. MONSooN will be accessible by both Met Office and NERC-funded researchers and consequently will facilitate collaborative working on computer code and climate models leading to greater pull-through of code developments.

For more information see: http://www.nerc.ac.uk/research/programmes/jointclimate/

Living With Environmental Change partners involved:

• Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)
• Met Office

KnowSeas

Knowseas

KnowSeas is a large-scale integrating EU FP7 collaborative project with 30 partners from 15 countries, coordinated by the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS), a NERC Collaborative Centre. The total project cost is €7,413,669 (£6,335,740), with a total EU contribution of €5,764,200 (£4,923,570).

Europe’s four regional seas (the Baltic, Black, Mediterranean and NE Atlantic) have suffered severe environmental degradation due to human pressure. This damage not only affects the organisms living in the marine environment but also has impacts on the welfare of the human communities which are reliant on them.

The Ecosystem Approach to management, a management paradigm that encompasses humans and the supporting ecosystem, now a part of European Policy (Marine Strategy Blue Book) and mandated by the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive, offers a means of sustainably managing our seas to optimize both ecological and social well being.However, the science base for this approach needs strengthening and practical tools must be developed and tested for policy implementation. In particular, criteria for assessing costs and benefits of management actions are poorly developed, particularly in the complex marine environment where multiple uses and management conflicts are common.

The KnowSeas consortium will strengthen the science base for managing Europe’s seas through the practical application of systems thinking. It will work at the two scales envisaged for emergent EU policy: the Regional Sea Scale and Member State Economic Exclusive Zones (EEZs). We have developed a new approach of Decision Space Analysis to investigate mismatches of temporal and spatial scale. For example climate change occurs at a global spatial scale and cannot be solved at the single nation level, similarly solving the problems of dredging and trawling damage to benthic habitats in a single location requires cooperation of all nations involved in the fishing and must be resolved at a European scale.

Knowledge created through the EU Framework Programme 6 project European Lifestyles and Marine Ecosystems, augmented with necessary new studies of climate effects, fisheries and maritime industries - in EEZ case studies - will provide a basis for assessing changes to natural systems and their human causes through a variety of modelling and social analysis techniques.

New research will examine and model economic and social impacts of changes to ecosystem goods and services and costs and benefits of various management options available through existing and proposed policy instruments. Institutional and social analysis will determine conflicts of interest and examine governance as well as stakeholder values and perceptions. Our research will develop and test an assessment toolbox through Regional Liaison Groups for each regional seas, including regional management authorities, such as the Scottish Government, DEFRA, NGOs and stakeholder groups such as fisheries representative organisations and offshore renewables groups.

The  KnowSeas  consortium  will  strengthen  the  science  base  for  managing  Europe’s  seas  through a number of specific tasks and deliverables which will be of immediate practical use to stakeholders, national governments and local decision makers.

Outputs:

1. A workable interpretation and understanding of the ecosystem approach for Europe as mandated by the Marine Strategy Framework Directive. This will be delivered in two specific deliverables describing and defining the ecosystem approach and tested through practical experience throughout the project.
2. Assessments of the causes and consequences of ecosystem change in each of Europe’s regional seas will be delivered using a combination of advanced ecological modelling approaches.  This will be delivered through practical modelling exercises and a written synthesis of the most successful modelling techniques.
3. An economic analysis of goods and services provided by Europe’s regional seas, including both the market and non-marketed benefits derived.  This analysis will also be supported by practical guideline on economic analysis for those with non economic backgrounds.  The transdisciplinary nature of the project means that ecological experts are required to understand economic arguments and terminology for integration with the ecological work.
4. An analysis of social and governance structures and their interactions with the implementation of the ecosystem approach which will facilitate adaptive management.
5. An Ecosystem Based Management System (being developed by a devoted team) which will provide guidelines and a suite of tools for the practice of ecosystem based management.  These tools include our DEcision  MAking (DEMA); COnflict  REsolution (CORE) and Enhancing Stakeholder CApacity (ECSA) tools. Our Decision Space Analysis tools will also identify how governance can effectively address issues of spatial and temporal scale mismatches in management of the marine environment. For example temporal scales for governance for “locked-in” processes such as eutrophication must be managed at the appropriate decadal timescale in order to succeed; other examples are provided in the summary.
6. All of the above will be combined with regional expertise to make development option appraisals for two case studies in each of Europe’s four regional seas. These include case studies examining trade-offs between deepwater trawling and the cold water coral Lophelia in the North East Atlantic waters of the UK as well as studies designed to optimise ecological benefits from offshore wind farms in the North Sea, recognising issues of scale and conflicting spatial use.
7. Published peer reviewed papers in high level scientific books and journals, and a dedicated special issue in a high impact academic journal.

Land based renewables

By 2020, the proposed EU requirement is that the UK meets 15% of its final energy demand from renewable sources, which equates to around 40% for electricity. There is an urgent research need to understand the environmental implications of this requirement, as the recent controversy over biofuels shows.

The UK seeks to exploit a finite land area to produce both low-carbon energy (from wind farms and solar power to biofuels) and to absorb carbon emissions via sequestration. At the same time, the urban land area continues to grow (e.g. London needs 125 times its own area to provide the resources it consumes). The vision for the ‘ecocities’ of the future embodies a multitude of microgeneration and shallow subsurface renewable energy technologies whose collective impact on terrestrial and freshwater systems is not known and whose potential for carbon sequestration has not been fully explored.

This action seeks to forecast the renewables ‘energyscape’ of the UK using a systems approach that incorporates non-energy land uses in the assessment, and predicts where the greatest (or least-damaging) environmental gains might be. The science goal is to develop an integrated, quantitative understanding of the consequences of using land for renewable energy production on the resilience of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. An exemplar objective is: a whole-systems analysis of the use of land for carbon manipulation.

The activity on Land-Based Renewables forms part of the Sustainable Use of Natural Resources (SUNR) Theme of the NERC Strategy. Other Actions within the SUNR Theme e.g. on Marine Renewable Energy will also help meet this need. Up to £2.4 million has been invested to date in support of collaborative grants to address this topic, including a financial contribution from Shell UK of £350k. Natural England is contributing support in kind to the research programme which has included expertise helping define the scope. The projects that were funded were developed and assessed via a Sandpit process that was held in June 2009. Natural England and Shell UK both participated in the Sandpit.

How the research will be used

The results of the programme will directly relate to the delivery of the NERC Strategy (in particular Sustainable Use of Natural Resources Science Themes) and UK Governments Strategic Goals with respect to the use of land based renewable energy.

The outputs of these research projects will contribute to the use of scientific evidence to inform policy and decision making about the future deployment of energy systems, directly benefiting agencies such as Natural England and the Environment Agency. 

The results will provide important information to land users and planners such as Forestry Commission, utility companies and land-owners, to make informed assessments on renewable energy.

The UK economy and society in general will benefit from any subsequent deployment of land based renewables, there will be direct benefits to energy security and the impacts of climate change, and this research will contribute towards the UK meeting the planned reductions in carbon emissions by 2050.

By maximising the benefits of using land based renewable energy this will in turn relieve some of the increased pressure on other ecosystem services.

UK and international academics and research communities will benefit as the results of these research projects, which should identify gaps in our current understanding and provide a focus for opportunity for new research, in addition to providing new data and improved methods in the area of renewable energy.

Low Carbon Communities Challenge

The Low Carbon Communities Challenge is an innovative approach to policy development being taken forward by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), working alongside a number of government departments.

Recognising that Government doesn’t necessarily know the best means of helping people cut their carbon emissions, the LCCC is a two-year research programme designed to test delivery options through practical delivery on the ground at community level. 

Through the project, Government is providing up to £500,000 to 22 test communities in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Its aim is to support both technical innovation and understand the social changes that are needed to help meet carbon reduction targets.  So it’s about understanding the science and the context.

Through the Challenge, the experiences of people living and working in communities that take part will be shared publicly, along with the quantitative data on carbon and energy savings. In doing so, we will engage closely with the selected communities so that the data is openly shared and so that the communities have the tools and opportunities to be active participants in the learning. The programme will include:

• Hard data on energy use - baseline and historical trends.
• Socio-economic and environmental behaviour data: we will commission a household survey across the successful communities - one before the challenge begins and one at the end - involving a sample of residents in each community to capture information on the wider impacts of the Challenge. 
• Public dialogue & co-inquiry: A series of facilitated ‘events’ in each of the 22 communities to understand the emerging lessons from the Challenge - for the project, the partners as well as for policy making.

The Sciencewise Expert Resource Centre for Public Dialogue In Science and Innovation (ERC), funded by the Department for Business Innovation & Skills (BIS) will be co-funding the public dialogue and co-inquiry element of this programme. Sciencewise-ERC helps policy makers commission and use public dialogue to inform policy decisions in emerging areas of science and technology

Communities also receive practical help from a range of third sector partners (including Global Action Plan, Groundwork, National Energy Action and others). This includes dedicated help to set up social enterprises, thanks to support from the Office of the Third Sector's Social Enterprise Action Research programme.

Applicants to the £7.5 million investment - the 'Energy and Communities Collaborative Venture'  have been invited to explore synergies with the winning LCCC communities. Jointly funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the fund is spearheading collaboration between academics and communities.

The LCCC represents a new approach to policy making and this is recognised by the Cabinet Office, who have chosen the project as one of three 3 demonstration areas for their ‘Listening to the front line’ initiative – along with work by the Department for Health on obesity and Lewisham Council's work on customer redress. The work, aims to reconnect policy making with front line professionals and ensure that those who develop policy do so in close partnership with the people who are responsible for its implementation.

See the full details on http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/what_we_do/consumers/lc_communitie...

Low Carbon Vehicles Innovation Platform

The Low Carbon Vehicles Innovation Platform aims to maximise the benefit to UK-based businesses of the rapidly-developing low carbon vehicles market, and to help accelerate the adoption of low carbon vehicles in the UK. The growing pressure from customers and regulators for more environmentally friendly vehicles is creating new business opportunities for both the established industry and innovative new entrants.

The Low Carbon Vehicles Innovation Platform invests jointly with the industry and Government partners in interventions that promote UK-based R&D in low carbon vehicle technologies, and strengthen the relevant supply chains within the UK. The Innovation Platform currently supports two key activities:

The Low Carbon Vehicles Integrated Delivery Programme The programme has over £200m of joint government and industry investment, and co-ordinates the UK’s low carbon vehicle activity from initial strategic academic research through to industry-led CR&D. To date, the DfT and EPSRC, together with regional development agencies Advantage West Midlands (AWM) and One North East (ONE), have agreed to invest in the programme. Further support will be sought from other regional development agencies and the devolved administrations.

The Integrated Delivery Programme is guided by an industry-led advisory panel. Flexible rolling opportunities are provided for industry to seek support for high quality CR&D work which takes technology through to system or vehicle concept readiness. There are also aligned Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) managed competitions for university-based strategic research.

The Ultra Low Carbon Vehicle Demonstrator Over £25m has been invested in an ultra low carbon vehicle demonstration competition. Co-funded by the Technology Strategy Board with DfT, AWM, ONE and the South East of England Development Agency, it will deliver over 340 new and innovative cars on the road in the UK by late 2009 /early 2010. The programme will showcase new and emerging low carbon vehicle technologies in real world situations, and identify potential barriers to their wider adoption.

The demonstrators will include in-vehicle data logging, user perception surveys, and consideration of the required local infrastructures.

Low Impact Buildings Innovation Platform

This £53M platform aims to help th UK construction industry deliver buildings with a much lower environmental impact, responding to growing demands from customers and regulators. The UK cannot meet its declared environmental targets without dramatically improving the life-cycle environmental cost of buildings. The UK construction market is worth over £100bn per year, and there is growing pressure from customers and regulators for more environmentally friendly buildings, creating new growth opportunities for innovative businesses. The UK Government has set a number of challenging targets for improving sustainability, starting with the overarching goal of an 80% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions in the UK by 2050. Some of the largest environmental impacts in the UK come from buildings. These include:

Marine predators as indicators of the integrity and health of marine ecosystems

The research programme at the Sea Mammal Research Unit aims to fulfill a need for information within government and industry about the upper end of marine food chains.

Marine mammals reflect underlying process within a complex ecosystem and are vulnerable to anthropogenic effects. Interest in marine mammals is a good way of promoting public engagement with environmental issues.In summary the programme includes:

1. Provision of formal scientific advice annually, on behalf of NERC, to DEFRA and Scottish Government about the management of marine mammals (See Conservation of Seals Act 1970 and the Marine(Scotland) Bill)
2. Operation of the science advisory review process for some of this Advice through the UK Special Committee on Seals
3. Provision of support for the UK government for its commitments under the EU “Habitats” and “Marine Strategy Framework Directives”
4. Conducting annual and multi-annual surveys and status reviews for marine mammals in UK territorial and European offshore waters

the research will

• allow prediction of the distribution and abundance of marine mammals in the UK
• explain the population dynamics of marine mammals in the UK
• examine and quantify the vulnerability of marine mammals to anthropogenic changes including offshore developments, direct and indirect effects of fishing and pollution
• quantify the extent to which marine mammals can be used as indicators of change in marine ecosystems, including the effects of climate, fishing and the consequences of pollution including within parts of the human food chain
• develop novel technological solutions for sensing the marine environment using marine mammals a instrument platforms
• develop technologies for sensing the responses of marine mammals to environmental change, including anthropogenic change.

Much of this programme is currently being directed at provision of advice in connection with offshore marine renewable energy developments; the effects of different kinds of anthropogenic pollution (including noise); reducing the effects of fisheries by-catch on marine mammals and the implementation of a new marine management and licensing system in Scotland that will probably see regional management plans being developed for marine mammals especially in connection with aquaculture.

The activity is part of the NERC Strategic Science Programme (Oceans 2025) and also of the emerging Scottish Marine Science Strategy. This programme of activity is one of the most tangible links between the marine science activities of NERC and the marine interests of the Scottish Government and has been explicitly designed to meet the needs of Defra, Scottish Government and NERC in combination.

Implicitly, it has also been designed to provide support for DECC (mainly in connection with marine renewable energy) and the Minstry of Defence. The programme was established as part of the “National Capability” within NERC’s Oceans 2025 programme.

It is explicitly co-designed with Scottish Government and Defra because of the commitment placed on NERC within the Conservation of Seals Act 1970 and the Marine (Scotland) Bill (enacted through a Section 104 Order within the UK Parliament) to provide advice to government about the management of seals. De facto, this also extends to cetaceans although Defra and Scottish Government fund considerable parts the programme to cover the research carried out on cetaceans and this reflects the high level of co-production taking place.

Methods for Quantifying Uncertainty in Predictions of Regional and Local Climate Change and Climate Impacts

£1.4M is currently being made available to the climate science community (in addition to that under the Joint Climate Research Programme) to address the key issue of uncertainty in climate modelling. Unless we can better quantify uncertainty – or become more confident in the way we handle uncertainty in predictions of change – it will be difficult to develop effective mitigation or adaptation strategies. UK scientists aim to use this work to have a major impact on the work of the IPCC.

The quantifying Uncertainty programme will be delivered by a single collaborative award - End-to-end Quantification of Uncertainty for Impacts Prediction (EQUIP). This involves the universities of Leeds (lead partner PI Andrew Challinor), Exeter, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Liverpool, Reading, as well as the London School of Economics and the Plymouth Marine Laboratory. Project partners include the Met Office, Environment Agency, CAFOD and University of Leeds Africa College. Additional partners are welcome to become members of EQUIP. EQUIP will particularly focus on crop production, marine ecosystems and European heatwaves and droughts.

Society is becoming increasingly aware of climate change and its consequences for us. Examples of likely impacts are changes in food production, increases in mortality rates due to heat waves, and changes in our marine environment. Despite such emerging knowledge, precise predictions of future climate are (and will remain) unattainable owing to the fundamental chaotic nature of the climate system and to imperfections in our understanding, our climate simulation models and our observations of the climate system. This situation limits our ability to take effective adaptation actions. However, effective adaptation is still possible, particularly if we assess the level of precision associated with predictions, and thus quantify the risk posed by climate change. Coupled with assessments of the limitations on our knowledge, this approach can be a powerful tool for informing decision makers.

Clearly, then, the quantification of uncertainty in the prediction of climate and its impacts is a critical issue. Considerable thought has gone into this issue with regard to climate change research, although a consensus on the best methods is yet to emerge. Climate impacts research, on the other hand, has focussed primarily on a different set of problems: what are the mechanisms through which climate change is likely to affect for example, agriculture and health, and what are the non-climatic influences that also need to be accounted for? Thus the research base for climate impacts is sound, but tends to be less thorough in its quantification of uncertainty than the physical climate change research that supports it. As a result, statements regarding the impacts of climate change often take a less sophisticated approach to risk and uncertainty.

The logical next stage for climate impacts research is therefore to learn from the methods used for climate change predictions. Since climate and its impacts both exist within a broader earth system, with many interrelated components, this next stage is not a simple transfer of technology. Rather, it means taking an 'end-to-end' integrated look at climate and its impacts, and assessing risk and uncertainty across whole systems. These systems include not only physical and biological mechanisms, but also the decisions taken by users of climate information. The climate impacts chosen in EQUIP have been chosen to cover this spectrum from end to end. As well as aiding impacts research, end-to-end analyses are also the logical next stage for climate change research, since it is through impacts that society experiences climate change.

The project focuses primarily on the next few decades, since this is a timescale of relevance for societies adapting to climate change. It is also a timescale at which our projections of greenhouse gas emissions are relatively well constrained, thus uncertainty is smaller than for, say, the end of the century. Work on longer timescales will also be carried out in order to gain a greater understanding of uncertainty. EQUIP research will build on work to date on the mechanisms and processes that lead to climate change and its impacts, since it is this understanding that forms the basis of predictive power. This knowledge is in the form of observations and experiments (e.g. experiments on crops have demonstrated that even brief episodes of high temperatures near the flowering of the crop can seriously reduce yield) and also simulation models. It is through effective use and combination of climate science and impacts science, and the models used by each community, that we will be able to quantify uncertainty, assess risk, and thus equip society to deal with climate change.

Living With Environmental Change partners involved:

• Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)
• Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)
• Met Office
• Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC)
• Scottish Government

National Ecosystem Assessment

The UK National Ecosystem Assessment (UK NEA) is the first analysis of the UK’s natural environment in terms of the benefits it provides to society and future economic prosperity. The UK NEA co-chaired by Professors Bob Watson (Defra Chief Scientific Advisor & UEA) and Steve Albon (Macaulay Institute) is a c. £1M initiative, based on the principles developed during the 2005 global Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA). 

Covering terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems, the assessment will create a compelling and easily understood explanation of the state and value of the UK’s changing natural environment and ecosystem services. The reports will be useful to institutions and individuals to raise awareness of the importance of ecosystems and the services they provide to society. The UK NEA will assist in strengthening policy-making and ensure effective management in the future, by providing the evidence foundation of the ecosystems approach to policy that Defra are leading on across Whitehall. The assessment will provide new information on plausible futures (scenarios) of the UK’s ecosystems and the services we obtain from them and outline societal response options to secure continued delivery of the UK’s ecosystem services, for all of society. Coordinated by United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), the UK NEA will be an inclusive process involving many government, academic, NGO and private sector institutions including many Living With Environment Change partners.

For more information please visit: http://uknea.unep-wcmc.org/ 

In February 2010 the UK NEA released ‘Progress and Steps Towards Delivery’. This brochure summarises the achievements of the UK NEA in its first nine months, including the development of the methodology, and outlines the next stages in the assessment process in preparation for the release of the final report in February 2011. The brochure can be downloaded from here.

Open Air Laboratories

Open Air Laboratories - OPAL is a multi-disciplinary programme that seeks to encourage and support collaboration between the academic, statutory, voluntary and community sectors in pursuit of excellence in environmental science focusing on the issues of loss of biodiversity, environmental degradation and climate change.

OPAL is delivered through a national network of universities, one in each region of England, together with the Natural History Museum, the Met Office, Field Studies Council, National Biodiversity Network (involving NERC-CEH), Royal Parks and the Open University. The project is led by Imperial College London. The Environment Agency and Defra are associate partners.  

The project is funded by BIG Lottery Fund who awarded a grant to Imperial College London of £11.75 million through their Changing Spaces Grant Scheme (£200m in total). Over one hundred people work on the OPAL programme. 

OPAL has five key objectives:

1. To get more people outside observing and recording the world around them
2. To develop an innovative and exciting environmental education programme for people of all ages, abilities and backgrounds
3. To inspire a new generation of environmentalists
4. To encourage and support collaboration between community, voluntary and statutory sectors and academia
5. To gain a greater understanding of the state of the environment.

OPAL’s main activities are:

1. Research
1.1 Develop and deliver regional research programmes relevant to regional environmental issues and involving local people;

• South West: Moorlands  (Plymouth University)
• South East: Traffic pollution (Imperial College London, Silwood Park)
• London: Climate change (Imperial College London - South Kensington)
• East of England: Orchards (Hertfordshire University)
• East Midlands: heathlands (Nottingham University)
• West Midlands: urban ecology (Birmingham University)
• Yorkshire and Humber:  Brownfield (York University)
• North East: industrial legacy of pollution (Newcastle University)
• North West: social science: public engagement in environmental (University of Central Lancashire)

1.2. Pollution: Develop and deliver a research programme investigating the impact of pollution on flora and fauna. Inform and engage local communities living and working in the research area.

1.3. Taxonomy: develop and deliver research and materials to improve our understanding and participation in   taxonomy.  Develop and deliver a small grants programme for natural history societies and recording schemes to help champion their work, increase membership and promote wildlife recording. To design new recording and mapping software.

1.4. Design and deliver five national ecological surveys that involved the public in collecting and reporting data: Soil and earthworms; Air and lichens; Water and aquatic invertebrates; Biodiversity and hedgerows; Climate change and thermal comfort.

1.5. Studentships: OPAL supports nine studentships linked to the regional and national research programme.

2. Educate

• Develop an informal educational pathway that explains our three topics (biodiversity, pollution and climate change) and provides interactive and downloadable materials for all ages, abilities and backgrounds
• iSPOT – online social networking site to encourage and develop identification skills
• Neighbourhood Nature Course– An introduction to ecology
  Climate change education programme
• Portal
• Exhibitions, events and Bioblitz

3. Communicate

Develop and promote the OPAL brand and raise awareness of OPALs objectives, research and activities through:

• OPAL portal www.opalexplorenature.org
• National and regional programme of OPAL events and activities
• Support for external events
• Media campaigns
• Publications
• Collaboration with other sectors at national, regional and local level
• International promotion through conferences and papers

Reducing Uncertainty in Models for Environmental Decision-Making

The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) in collaboration with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is supporting a scoping study on ‘Reducing Uncertainty in Models for Environmental Decision-Making’.

With the aim of enhancing the performance of environmental models, the study will focus on identifying priority science questions that a future research programme on this topic should seek to address, together with possible funding mechanisms for such a programme.

A large number of numerical models are used in environmental policy support or regulatory decision-making. Generally, such models have been developed to meet a specific purpose and have used the best science available at the time. In some cases, further work has been commissioned to remedy well recognised weaknesses, but in many cases the models continue to be used despite recognition of large uncertainties within their outputs.

The programme to be scoped is concerned with the study of individual environmental processes or properties, or the way in which they are described within models, with a view to enhancing the ways in which these models simulate the natural environment.

Resilient development in social science ecological systems

Research under this fellowship will develop a deeper and broader social science understanding of resilience and how the concept is applied to linked social ecological systems. It will do this by drawing on theory across a range of social science disciplines, synthesising recent research findings, and undertaking new empirical investigation of resilience. It will produce a book provisionally titled 'Towards Resilient Development' and a series of scientific papers targeted to social science and interdisciplinary journals.

Resilience is the ability of a system to absorb disturbance and still retain its basic function and structure. It involves three properties: the amount of change a system can undergo; the degree to which it can re-organise; the degree to which the system can build capacity to learn and adapt. Resilience is therefore about how to understand and manage change, and about working with change rather trying to maintain equilibrium.

Resilience is a concept which has become widely applied in ecological sciences, and more recently in policy communities where resilience is seen as a normative goal of environmental management and a key component of sustainable development. A resilience approach potentially can add to understanding and implementation of sustainable development, and bring a dynamic perspective on how societies can respond to and cope with change. It differs from conventional approaches by recognising and giving emphasis to complexity, surprise and uncertainty, and how society can learn and self-organise to bring about beneficial development and transformation. In the past two decades a new scientific field has emerged, a 'resilience science', evidenced by the Resilience Alliance scholarly network (www.resalliance.org) and new interdisciplinary research centres in Stockholm, Arizona and Toronto.

Much of the work in this new scientific field applies the concept of resilience to the notion of a linked social ecological system; resilience applies to social as well as ecological aspects of the system. However the concept of resilience is relatively poorly developed in the social sciences compared to the ecological sciences; in fact there are criticisms from some social scientists about using the term and applying it in this way. For example, it is argued that the systems approach over-emphasises structure and under represents human agency; and that the approach leads to environmental determinism.

Research proposed here would add to this, and would represent a significant and original extension of social science analysis of resilience. Through four inter-related and temporally overlapping activities it will deepen understanding on how individual social actors frame and understand resilience by analysing Mental Models of resilience and their importance in individual and collective action. It will extend knowledge on social dynamics of resilience in social ecological systems by undertaking a Political Ecology analysis of narratives of environmental change and the winners and losers in society resulting from it. It will explore the political and policy implications of implementing resilience-led policy. This will lead to a reframing of development through a resilience lens, presented in a research monograph. 'Towards Resilient Development' will examine how a resilience approach might change our view of development, the implications for growth orientated strategies, and how development policy and interventions can deal with uncertainty and shocks associated with environmental change and other disturbances.

Contact

The ESRC Professorial Fellowship 'Resilient Development in Social Ecological Systems' is held by Professor Katrina Brown at the School of International Development, University of East Anglia.

Professor Brown is Deputy Director, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and for more information and contact details please see http://www.tyndall.ac.uk

Science and Heritage Programme

The Science and Heritage Programme takes forward recommendations made by the House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee report on science and heritage of November 2006, which concluded that there was a compelling need for a comprehensive national strategy for heritage science which covered both immoveable and moveable heritage. The joint five year research programme has a dual purpose: it will provide funding opportunities for high quality research to increase our understanding, and improve the resilience of cultural heritage in the face of 21st century environmental change; it will also develop the heritage science community by funding networks and other awareness-raising and capacity-building activities. http://www.heritagescience.ac.uk/

Living With Environmental Change partners involved:

• Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
• Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)

Social and Environmental Economic Research (SEER) into Multi-Objective Land Use Decision Making

This deliberately ambitious research project examines arguably the most fundamental of all resource problems: the optimal use of land. It seeks to assess this using a novel methodology intended to undertake simultaneous economic assessment of both (a) the primary effects of policy, market or environmental change upon land use and (b) the second round, dynamic consequences of that change which may in turn generate multiple feedback effects upon various other environments. When land use policy changes (e.g. reform of the CAP), or when the market for related products or costs changes (e.g. the price of cereals, fuel, etc.), or even when the environment itself changes (e.g. climate change) the resultant series of immediate and longer terms responses can be complex and far reaching.

Conventional analyses tend to focus upon single dimension, static and/or short term consequences. This project addresses such limitations through a new and innovative series of linked assessments of a variety of related dimensions and land use change impacts. These analyses include:
(i)    modelling the diverse determinants of land use itself (as mentioned, including policy, market and environmental factors);
(ii)    assessing the income and welfare economic impacts upon rural livelihoods (particularly farming) of such change;
(iii)    consequences in terms of the net climate change contribution of land use (via greenhouse gas equivalent assessments of farm operations, production activities such as livestock intensity, and soil carbon flux);
(iv)    impacts upon the water environment via diffuse pollution of nutrients and faecal organisms;
(v)    ecosystem services and biodiversity as measured by indicators such as bird species population characteristics, insect pollination services, etc;
(vi)    outdoor recreation services (and allied objectives regarding redistribution of related participation rates).

The Waste of the World

This programme of six linked projects aims to produce a defining social science study of waste, for academics, policy makers and stakeholders. Its overarching aims are to reconceptualise the place of waste and how we think about waste within social science.
The programme has three objectives.

1. First, it will provide the first investigation of newly emerging global waste economies, focusing particularly on hazardous waste, its trade, management and disposal.
2. Secondly, it offers a radical reconceptualisation of waste within productive activities. Rather than locate waste as the end point of production-consumption, we argue that surplus and loss (and therefore waste) is fundamental to all economic activity.
3. Thirdly, it will provide the first empirical examination of the disposal rituals surrounding the excess of economies in key parts of the world, within the EU and in India.

More detail
Our point of departure is the poverty of existing social science research on waste. In contrast to research in the physical sciences, notably engineering, and also the arts and humanities, where waste has been a core concern, waste has been for the most part ignored by the social sciences. Where it has been considered, it has largely been from within a sustainability perspective. This means that research has been defined by (rather than shaping of) particular policy instruments, and that research is overwhelmingly national-regional-local in its focus.

In contrast, the programme of research proposed takes a global approach, examining how places, people and materials are bound together through the movement, management and trade in wastes.  Such an approach is critical if UK social science is to attend to one of the most pressing economic, political and environmental issues of our time.

• Theme 1 addresses the global waste economy, focusing on hazardous waste.
• Theme 2 focuses on the generation of waste in production (i.e. in manufacturing activities).
• Theme 3 spotlights the technologies of waste management, taking a cultural approach to these issues.

The first two projects focus on ship breaking and nuclear waste respectively. Alongside a global economy that sees wastes moving from core to peripheral countries, more complex patterns are emerging. Peripheral regions in core countries are also becoming recipients of other peoples' waste, and waste dumps of the world, particularly with respect to hazardous waste.

Project 1 provides a comparative study of ship breaking in the EU and Bangladesh (Chittagong).

Project 2 examines the global trade in nuclear waste, nuclear decommissioning, and examines the siting controversies around nuclear waste, with a particular focus on host communities. 

Projects 3 and 4 examine how material wastes are produced and managed within various production processes; how production processes have been changed to minimise waste generation; strategies for waste revaluation; and the limits to waste elimination in production. The focus is on two sectors, steel manufacture and the food industry, broadly conceived.

Project 5 addresses the technologies of landfill, incineration and anaerobic digestion in the UK, examining how materials are moved into and through these technologies and the meanings they elicit. It also provides a comparison with Scandinavia, where the historic reliance on incineration is in sharp contradistinction to the UK's traditional reliance on landfill.

In Project 6 the focus on India. One of the fastest growing consumer economies in the world, India is one country where the global politics of waste generation will be at their most acute in the future, but growth raises key questions too for India's traditional capacity for recycling. This project examines these transformations, their effect and the implications and contradictions of these transformations, with a particular focus on textiles.

Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research

The Tyndall Centre brings together scientists, economists, engineers and social scientists, who together are working to develop sustainable responses to climate change through trans-disciplinary research and dialogue on both a national and international level - not just within the research community, but also with business leaders, policy advisors, the media and the public in general.

The Tyndall Centre work is guided by two key objectives relating to mitigation and adaptation.

1)    To identify and analyse the opportunities, benefits and social, technical and economic challenges associated with different greenhouse gas stabilisation pathways at different temporal and spatial scales; and

2)    To explore, evaluate and facilitate sustainable routes for adapting to climate change through policy, behavioural and technological innovation and robust decision-support tools.

Outcomes of Tyndall’s research are likely to be wide ranging and important to policy makers, and principally:

• implications for greenhouse gas stabilisation levels of different global emissions pathways and what such stabilisation levels and pathways imply for regional adaptation and mitigation;

• identifying the scope and scale of technological options across the full range of sectors (from energy and transport to agriculture and avoided deforestation) for contributing to mitigation pathways; and the institutional, behavioural and economic barriers to such technological trajectories;

• how different tiers of policy and governance can foster the co-evolution of mitigation and adaptation strategies;

• how individual and collective action can be mobilised to achieve mitigation and adaptation strategies;

• how such strategies should be adjusted to engage with and benefit from individual and collective action, and how such action may need to change over time and with the ‘severity’ of mitigation and adaptation strategies.

www.tyndall.ac.uk

Living With Environmental Change partners involved:

• Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)
• Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)
• Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC)

   

UK Ocean Acidification Research Programme

The Ocean Acidification Research Programme is a 5-year collaborative programme with a budget of £12m funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC).

The overall aim of the Research Programme is to provide a greater understanding of the implications of ocean acidification and its risks to ocean biogeochemistry, biodiversity and the whole Earth System. The programme will also provide effective policy advice and make a significant contribution to the Living With Environmental Change programme.

Atmospheric CO₂ concentrations are increasing as a result of human activity and are likely to continue to do so in the future, although the future levels of CO₂ are uncertain. In response to this rise, the oceans are taking up more CO₂ and becoming more acidic. The associated increases in ocean acidity over coming decades are likely to be at a rate and on a scale that is unprecedented in at least the last 20 million years. It is likely that large areas of the ocean could become under-saturated with respect to at least aragonite (one of two common polymorphs of biologically produced calcium carbonate) within this century. Under such conditions, organisms creating aragonite skeletons face serious challenges.

This acidification will clearly have major impacts on ocean biogeochemistry and biodiversity, but impacts will extend beyond this to the whole Earth System via impacts on air-sea gas exchange and sedimentation of material through the oceans. The scale and nature of the effects of acidification on marine systems and more widely are very poorly known. It is proposed that this Research Programme will run for five-years.

Research Programme activities will be focussed on the North-East Atlantic (including European shelf and slope), Antarctic and Arctic Oceans, and will include the effects of acidification on biochemistry and biodiversity, past responses to acidification, ecosystem structure and function, habitats and species, and socio-economic implications.  

More information:

http://www.nerc.ac.uk/research/programmes/oceanacidification

Coordinating Research and Observations

UK research funders can achieve more for less by working together to identify knowledge needs and aligning their investments to meet them. LWEC partner organisations have collaborated on the development of a tool kit to inform funding decisions.

The following tools can also each be used as an information discovery resource for a variety of purposes by businesses, NGOs, researchers, policy advisors, journalists and others.

Used together they can help to future-proof the UK's research response to some of society's most urgent problems such as flooding, food security and climate change:

UK First Flood Research Strategy

Click here if you wish to register your interest in attending an event and/or contributing in any way to this initiative or simply being kept informed of progress.

Addressing the economic and social costs of flooding is a high priority for the UK especially in the light of the increasing risk of flooding and coastal erosion posed by climate change. 

Many of the largest programmes of flooding research are coming close to finishing so LWEC partners see an urgent need to take forward a multi-institutional flood research strategy which will look at short, medium and long term needs for useable information, and cost-effective response options.

The project is led by John Rees, Theme Leader for Natural Hazards at the Natural Environment Research Council, and Andy Moores from the Environment Agency.

The aim is to produce a strategy that will make best use of UK research investment and contribute to the UK’s understanding of both the causes of flooding and responses to it. LWEC’s unique partnership approach can ensure that those who participate will be committed to developing a strategy that they can also deliver.

This project runs from April 2010 to the end of March 2011.

Click here if you wish to register your interest in attending an event and/or contributing in any way to this initiative or simply being kept informed of progress.