Category: Environmental Change

Dadaism in Disaster Risk Reduction: Reflections against method

Posted on by janet.crompton
Much like Romulus and Remus, we the academic community must take the gift bestowed unto us by the Lupa Capitolina of knowledge and enact progressive change in these uncertain and complex times.

Reflections and introductions: A volta

The volta is a poetic device, closely but not solely, associated with the Shakespearean sonnet, used to enact a dramatic change in thought or emotion. Concomitant with this theme is that March is a month with symbolic links to change and new life. The Romans famously preferred to initiate the most significant socio-political manoeuvres of the empire during the first month of their calendar, mensis Martius. A month that marked the oncoming of spring, the weakening of winter’s grip on the land and a time for new life.

The need for change

Having very recently attended the March UKADR conference, organised by the Cabot Institute here in Bristol, I did so with some hope and anticipation. Hope and anticipation for displays and discussions that conscientiously touched upon this volta, this need for change in how we study the dynamics of natural hazards. The conference itself was very agreeable, it had great sandwiches, with much stimulating discussion taking place and many displays of great skill and ingenuity having been demonstrated. Yet, despite a few instances where this need for change was indirectly touched upon by a handful of speakers and displays, I managed to go the entirety of the conference without getting what I really wanted, an explicit discussion, mention, susurration of the role of emergence in natural disaster and resilience.

Understanding the problem

My interest in this kind of science is essentially motivated by merit of my Ph.D. research, here at the School of Geographical Sciences in Bristol, broadly concentrating on modelling social influence on, and response to, natural perturbations in the physical environment, i.e. urban flooding scenarios. From the moment I began the preliminary work for this project, it has steadily transformed into a much more complex mise-en-abyme of human inter-social dynamics, of understanding how these dynamics determine the systems within which we exist, both social and physical, and then the broader dynamics of these systems when change is enacted from within and upon them externally. A discipline known broadly as Complex Physical and Adaptive Systems, of which a very close theoretical by-product is the concept of emergence.
An enormous preoccupation throughout my research to this point has been in developing ways to communicate the links between these outlying concepts and those that are ad unicum subsidium. Emergence itself is considered a rather left-field concept, essentially because you can’t physically observe it happening around you. Defined, broadly, as a descriptive term whereby “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts”, it can be used to describe a system which is characterised by traits beyond those of the individual parts that comprise that system, some examples include a market economy, termite mounds, a rainforest ecosystem, a city and the internet. Applying this concept to human systems affected by natural disasters, to interpret the dynamics therein, is quite simple but due to the vast inter-disciplinary nature of doing so is seen as being a bit of an academic taboo.
A schematic representing the nature of a complex system. Vulnerability, Risk and hazards would co-exist as a supervenient, complex hierarchy.
So then, I remind myself that I shouldn’t feel downhearted, I saw clear evidence that we, the academic community, are certainly asking the right questions now and more often than ever before;
  • “How do we translate new methods for vulnerability and risk assessment into practice?”
  • “Are huge bunches of data, fed through rigid equations and tried and tested methods, really all we need to reduce the impacts of vulnerability and exposure, or do we need to be more dynamic in our methods?”
  • “Are the methods employed in our research producing an output with which the affected communities in vulnerable areas can engage with? If not, then why not and how can this be improved?”

Moving forward

Upon reflection, this pleased me. These questions are an acknowledgement of the complex hazard systems which exist and indicate that we are clearly thinking about the links between ourselves, our personal environment and the natural environment at large. Furthermore, it is clear, from the themes within these questions, that academia is crawling its way towards accepted and mainstream interdisciplinary method and practice. I am pleased, though not satiated, as I witnessed a discussion in the penultimate conference session where “more data and community training” was suggested as a solution to ever-increasing annual losses attributable to natural disasters globally. I am inherently pessimistic, but I am as unconvinced by the idea of Huxleyesque, neo-Pavlovian disaster training for the global masses as I am unmotivated by the value of my research being placed in the amount of data it produces to inform such exercises!
“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” – Robert Louis Stevenson (image is of The Sower, from The Wheat Fields series by Vincent Van Gough, June 1888 – source: Wikipedia.)
Thus, it is as we now enter the month of April, mensis Aprilis, a month that is truly symbolic of Spring and one which embodies a time where new seeds are sewn carefully in the fields, where thorough work can take place and the seeds may be tended after the long wait for the darkness and cold of winter to pass; that we must consider the work that needs to be done in eliciting progressive change. Consider this volta, allow the warmth of the April showers to give life to the fresh seeds of knowledge we sow and may Ēostre assist us in the efficient reaping of the new knowledge we need to answer the most pressing questions in this world. At least before the data is stuck in a biblical excel spreadsheet and used to inform global anti-tsunami foot drills, or some such!
————————–
This blog was written by Cabot Institute member, Thomas O’Shea, a 2nd year Ph.D. Researcher at the School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol. His interests span Complex Systems, Hydrodynamics, Risk and Resilience and Machine Learning.  Please direct any desired correspondence regarding the above to his university email at: t.oshea@bristol.ac.uk.
Thomas O’Shea

CAP should be replaced by a sustainable land-use policy

Posted on by janet.crompton
Wheat harvest by Jim Choate

Whatever your thoughts about Brexit, one thing most agree on is that it offers an opportunity to rethink how we in the UK look after our agricultural land.  The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has long been a source of resentment. It accounts for 40% of the EU budget yet has systematically failed to address, in some cases even exacerbated, the biggest concerns in European agriculture. Unlike most transnational sectoral market correction schemes, even much of the general public are aware of its shortcomings.

CAP is formed of 2 pillars. Pillar 1, which accounts for the 70% money spent, is simply a payment for land owned. The more land you own, the more money you get. This promotes large-scale mono-cropping, and acts as a rigid barrier to entry for young would-be farmers. Pillar 2 makes up the rest of CAP’s budget and consists of agri-environment schemes. Whilst well intentioned, Pillar 2 promotes an agricultural divide, where some land is responsibly stewarded while other land is intensively farmed. It is not the most efficient or effective means of improving the state of our land.

Public money for public goods

Michael Gove made a lot of enemies whilst at the Department for Education. However, since being appointed Minister for the Environment, he appears to have bucked the trend of expert-bashing. The government’s 25 Year Green Plan talks a very good talk – it’s a re-affirmation of the government’s laudable aim of leaving the environment in a better state than they found it, following on from the Lawton principles – but fails to walk the walk. There is much rhetoric, but very little explanation as to how goals will be met.

One consistent theme is that of spending public money on public goods. What this means is that tax-payers money should only be used to pay for the goods and services which are ‘consumed’ but for which there is currently not market. It is a way of addressing the tragedy of the commons argument, whereby, in pursuit of personal gain, individuals neglect that which they rely on for that gain, to the detriment of all.

Lake District by Les Haines

The Lake District as we know it has been shaped by generations of upland sheep farming. This practise offers extremely marginal returns, but many would agree there is a huge (but hard to quantify) value to the landscape of the Lake District. Public money should be spent to support such farmers.

In a post-Brexit landscape, there will be many competing demands on the public purse. The challenge, then, is to find alternative sources with which to finance the provision of these services provided by natural ecosystems.

Payments for Ecosystem Services

It is exceptionally difficult to put a value on nature. A market is needed through which farmers can ‘sell’ the services the land they own is able to provide, and beneficiaries of these services can purchase them. In many cases, one service may be provided by many land-owners, a single piece of land may provide many services, and there may be many consumers of each of these services. Clearly, this represents a complicated market structure.

But we can’t shy away from the task. The West of England Nature Partnership, as well as Green Alliance and the National Trust, have conceptualised a system through which such transactions can take place. Functioning as a sort of Green Investment Bank, an institution will package the suggested provision of a consortium of land-owners (for instance, the planting of woodland) for sale to a consortium of buyers. This might include water companies who benefit from cleaner water, Wildlife Trusts with a remit of improving the local access to nature, and developers with a requirement to offset/mitigate the impacts of their development.

In a similar light, Wessex Water have an online platform via which farmers can bid for money in return for adopting more sustainable farming practices. This system directly reduces the cost of water purification for the Water Company, acts as an incentive for good practice to the landowner, and provides landscape and wildlife benefits for the local population – a win-win-win.
Clearly its easier to pay farmers per hectare of land owner. But with the growing demands placed on our environment, and an increasing understanding of our reliance on it, such a system as described here could radically alter the terminal decline of Britain’s natural capital.

————————
This blog was written by Matthew Whitney who is currently studying an MSc in Environmental Policy and Management at the University of Bristol.

Matthew Whitney

 

Evacuating a nuclear disaster area is (usually) a waste of time and money, says study

Posted on by janet.crompton
Asahi Shimmbun/EPA

More than 110,000 people were moved from their homes following the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in March 2011. Another 50,000 left of their own will, and 85,000 had still not returned four-and-a-half years later.

While this might seem like an obvious way of keeping people safe, my colleagues and I have just completed research that shows this kind of mass evacuation is unnecessary, and can even do more harm than good. We calculated that the Fukushima evacuation extended the population’s average life expectancy by less than three months.

To do this, we had to estimate how such a nuclear meltdown could affect the average remaining life expectancy of a population from the date of the event. The radiation would cause some people to get cancer and so die younger than they otherwise would have (other health effects are very unlikely because the radiation exposure is so limited). This brings down the average life expectancy of the whole group.

But the average radiation cancer victim will still live into their 60s or 70s. The loss of life expectancy from a radiation cancer will always be less than from an immediately fatal accident such as a train or car crash. These victims have their lives cut short by an average of 40 years, double the 20 years that the average sufferer of cancer caused by radiation exposure. So if you could choose your way of dying from the two, radiation exposure and cancer would on average leave you with a much longer lifespan.

How do you know if evacuation is worthwhile?

To work out how much a specific nuclear accident will affect life expectancy, we can use something called the CLEARE (Change of life expectancy from averting a radiation exposure) Programme). This tells us how much a specific dose of radiation will shorten your remaining lifespan by on average.

Yet knowing how a nuclear meltdown will affect average life expectancy isn’t enough to work out whether it is worth evacuating people. You also need to measure it against the costs of the evacuation. To do this, we have developed a method known as the judgement or J-value. This can effectively tell us how much quality of life people are willing to sacrifice to increase their remaining life expectancy, and at what point they are no longer willing to pay.

You can work out the J-value for a specific country using a measure of the average amount of money people in that country have (GDP per head) and a measure of how averse to risk they are, based on data about their work-life balance. When you put this data through the J-value model, you can effectively find the maximum amount people will on average be willing to pay for longer life expectancy.

After applying the J-value to the Fukushima scenario, we found that the amount of life expectancy preserved by moving people away was too low to justify it. If no one had been evacuated, the local population’s average life expectancy would have fallen by less than three months. The J-value data tells us that three months isn’t enough of a gain for people to be willing to sacrifice the quality of life lost through paying their share of the cost of an evacuation, which can run into billions of dollars (although the bill would actually be settled by the power company or government).

Japanese evacuation centre. Dai Kurokawa/EPA

The three month average loss suggests the number of people who will actually die from radiation-induced cancer is very small. Compare it to the average of 20 years lost when you look at all radiation cancer sufferers. In another comparison, the average inhabitant of London loses 4.5 months of life expectancy because of the city’s air pollution. Yet no one has suggested evacuating that city.
We also used the J-value to examine the decisions made after the world’s worst nuclear accident, which occurred 25 years before Fukushima at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. In that case, 116,000 people were moved out in 1986, never to return, and a further 220,000 followed in 1990.

By calculating the J-value using data on people in Ukraine and Belarus in the late 1980s and early 1990s, we can work out the minimum amount of life expectancy people would have been willing to evacuate for. In this instance, people should only have been moved if their lifetime radiation exposure would have reduced their life expectancy by nine months or more.

This applied to just 31,000 people. If we took a more cautious approach and said that if one in 20 of a town’s inhabitants lost this much life expectancy, then the whole settlement should be moved, it would still only mean the evacuation of 72,500 people. The 220,000 people in the second relocation lost at most three months’ life expectancy and so none of them should have been moved. In total, only between 10% and 20% of the number relocated needed to move away.

To support our research, colleagues at the University of Manchester analysed hundreds of possible large nuclear reactor accidents across the world. They found relocation was not a sensible policy in any of the expected case scenarios they examined.

More harm than good

Some might argue that people have the right to be evacuated if their life expectancy is threatened at all. But overspending on extremely expensive evacuation can actually harm the people it is supposed to help. For example, the World Heath Organisation has documented the psychological damage done to the Chernobyl evacuees, including their conviction that they are doomed to die young.

From their perspective, this belief is entirely logical. Nuclear refugees can’t be expected to understand exactly how radiation works, but they know when huge amounts of money are being spent. These payments can come to be seen as compensation, suggesting the radiation must have left them in an awful state of health. Their governments have never lavished such amounts of money on them before, so they believe their situation must be dire.

The ConversationBut the reality is that, in most cases, the risk from radiation exposure if they stay in their homes is minimal. It is important that the precedents of Chernobyl and Fukushima do not establish mass relocation as the prime policy choice in the future, because this will benefit nobody.

————————————-
This blog has been written by Cabot Institute member Philip Thomas, Professor of Risk Management, University of Bristol.

Professor Philip Thomas

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Watermelon work

Posted on by janet.crompton

Did you eat any melon over Christmas? Or a strawberry? Have you seen a watermelon since the summer, maybe cut up in pieces in a boxed-up plastic ready-to-eat fruit salad? If so, that will help you relate to the dilemma for Spanish farmers and the workers they employ that I wrote about in an article called Misconceiving ‘seasons’ in global food systems, the case of the EU Seasonal Workers Directive published in the European Law Journal [1].

In this journal article, I essentially analyse a law, a European Law, but one that now governs the conditions under which seasonal workers from outside the EU can come to Europe to work in agriculture (and other ‘seasonal’ sectors) [2]. It also outlines their rights while they are here, making it both labour law and migration law [3]. This is brought together in an attempt to meet the needs across Europe for workers that pick the counter-seasonal crops such as strawberries, raspberries, melons and watermelons, as well as those summer vegetable crops that I have written about in the past.

A central theme in my work is about the disconnections of modern food production. But it is also about work. Labour, work, people, people who move, people who stay still. You can’t have workers without people. We are, and they are, one and the same. Yet law after law, country after country, policy after policy attempts to do just this by limiting the rights of workers when they come to host countries to work. The EU Seasonal Workers Directive is a recent version of this attempt to disconnect the rights and needs of people who migrate to work, from their status as workers.

Although the UK played a large role in its negotiation, they ultimately opted out of its adoption, and then, as we know, opted out of the EU altogether. Yet, this doesn’t mean that the influence of this directive stops at the UK border. The workers that pick many of our out of season crops in countries such as Spain and Italy, are governed by it. Furthermore, the UK is looking for options post-Brexit for how to govern seasonal work by migrant workers and this could give an insightful suggestion of what that might look like. This blog then, brings out a few elements of the article, which looks at the directive from the lens of a case study in Southern Spain: where our watermelons come from.

The farmers that I interviewed in Southern Spain work within the law. They ensure that they produce to the highest health and safety regulations, that they are registered, and work with certified exporters. These exporters (sometimes called co-operatives because they began as farmer cooperatives) then do an extensive quality selection in which they throw away much of the fruit and vegetables which do not meet the standards that you, your mum or your Grandparents might want for your year-round desert of prepared fruit salad.

Due to the very low wages and hard working conditions, not many people want to work picking these fruit and vegetables. The labour market is therefore dominated by migrant workers who have fewer language and transferable skills to find better paid and easier work elsewhere. Most people have all the legal requirements to work. However, for various reasons, the most vulnerable do not. They may not been in the EU long enough to regularise their status, they may not have employers to support them in doing this, their papers may have been rejected, they may not have had the money or the contacts to get a visa, they may have escaped distressing situations, made arduous (planned or unplanned) journeys towards the EU, some may also be refugees. In any case, these individuals also suffer from the need to work in order to live, and are some of the most vulnerable in the labour market. Furthermore, farmers generally do not want to hire them because they risk a €10,000 minimum fine if they are caught employing workers who do not have legal permission to work. So what happens?

The European Union want to solve the seasonal need for fruit pickers by offering temporary visas for people to come for a few months at a time to European countries (where most of your strawberries, tomatoes and watermelons are produced). In theory this is a model of carrot and stick – the carrot, the incentive, for prospective workers in countries like Morocco or the Ukraine is the temporary visa. I will ignore in this short blog the contradictions of the idea of ‘circular’ migration although I’ve covered this in the article. In short, it is not as advantageous as it seems at first glance. The main ‘stick’ or disincentive is increased border control that has been happening in the same context as the development of this directive, and the increased marginalisation of undocumented migrant workers who are already within the European Union but who are not given any options under this new directive.

Although this may sound logical, the EU Seasonal Workers Directive, in fact, is created in a context of false divisions and it therefore creates several more problems. Firstly, as we have explored, seasonal agriculture, in a context of intensive production, follows the time periods of when you like to eat melon, as opposed to when melon (etc.) is naturally in season. That means more than a few months of the year. So farmers like workers who are already in the country, who they can hire in person and work with over a steady period of time, building daily working relationships with.

Under temporary work schemes such as the EU Seasonal Workers Directive, migrant workers have reduced rights, therefore facilitating the creation of a legally mandated second-class tiered labour force. Temporary workers are also highly vulnerable to falling outside of the terms of their visa. Such seasonal work visas link their visa permission to their employers, something that makes them highly dependent on them and vulnerable to abuse [4].

Finally, seasonal migration is simply a form of temporary migration, aimed at avoiding the creation of a long term ethnic community in the host country. Historically, wherever host countries have attempted to invite ‘guest workers’ yet avoid settlement of migrant workers, this has failed. So the EU here, is criticised as still wanting to import ‘labour’ and not ‘people’ [5].

Let’s return to the watermelons and the farmer who intends to play it by the book. Unfortunately, this famer’s ultimate buyer doesn’t care much for the rule book. What they care about is ensuring that you get your summer fruits, cheaply, regardless of the season and regardless of who picks it and how protected they are or not. So the farmer is placed into a very difficult position which seems to sum up the tensions between our year round demand for cheap food and the just-in-time immediacy and demands that this puts on the people that produce it. A small farmer in Southern Spain described the situation in this way:

Once they were going to come [the export cooperative], we were arguing about the watermelons, whether we should pick them or not and in the end they said to me; “alright, this afternoon we pick them” and I said, “this afternoon I don’t have any workers” and they said; “either we come and get them this afternoon or we don’t come”. So I said, “Well, come” and when they come to pick the watermelons, I need a lot of workers, four people, and so I say, “where am I going to find those people? I can’t get…” so I went to the garage in El Ejido and there were four Africans just there.
[cited in 1].

The ‘watermelon dilemma’ of this farmer therefore demonstrates the final reason why the EU Seasonal Workers Directive, and other similar laws ultimately do not answer the problem of seasonal work: much seasonal work does not require workers for three or five or nine months, but a couple of days. In small scale production, you could perhaps ask family to help, but not on this scale. In these ‘enclaves of production’ at the European border, where everything is orientated so that it can provide cheap food to Tescos, Waitrose or your local greengrocer, the most vulnerable workers will always be needed to take this work. If they need the scarce work they can get without papers, while this work exists, they will probably be ready to take it. Yet the EU regulators prefer to simply ignore these watermelon pickers. By not offering them a route to legality this work will also condemn them to ongoing poverty and precariousness. In the process of drafting the EU Seasonal Workers Directive, an option was proposed to allow such migrants to apply for a seasonal workers visa (which would be fitting as they are the real ‘seasonal’ workers), yet this was rejected, leaving the watermelon pickers in an ever more precarious situation, dependant on the ever more scarce and desperate farmers whose lack of profits push them to take the risk to hire the people in most need of work.

There are many problems with this directive. However, in my opinion, the biggest problem that it represents, is the disconnection. This is the disconnection between a society that is happy to eat cheap food but that does not want to accommodate the workers that produce it with the same rights as they enjoy. Should the UK come up with similar legislation in the upcoming years we should be very careful indeed to pay attention to the underlying assumptions and disconnections and their impacts on the people that might come to do seasonal (or un-seasonal) work and on those who are already here doing it. In the meantime, this directive is up for revision in 2019.

References

1. Medland L (2017) Misconceiving ‘seasons’ in global food systems: The case of the EU
Seasonal Workers Directive. European Law Journal, 23(3-4), pp.157-171.

2. European Union (2014) Directive 2014/36/EU on the conditions of entry and stay of third-country nationals for the purpose of employment as seasonal workers. Official Journal of the European Union L 94/375.

3. Fudge J and Olsson PH (2014) The EU Seasonal Workers Directive: When Immigration Controls Meet Labour Rights. European Journal of Migration and Law 16(4): 439-466.

4. Rijken C (2015) Legal Approaches to Combating the Exploitation of Third-Country National Seasonal Workers. International Journal of Comparative Labour Law and Industrial Relations 31(4): 431-451.

5. Zoeteweij-Turhan M.H (2017) The Seasonal Workers Directive: ‘… but some are more equal than others’. European Labour Law Journal, 8(1), pp.28-44.

————————-
This blog was written by Cabot Institute member Lydia Medland, it was originally published on her blog Eating Research and has been re-published here with her permission.  Lydia is a PhD student at the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies at the University of Bristol. Her research looks at the Global Political Economy.

Lydia Medland

Read Lydia’s other blog: Olive oil production in Morocco: So many questions.

Localising the Sustainable Development Goals for Bristol

Posted on by janet.crompton

In 2015 the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were ratified by 193 of the UN member nations. These goals set ambitious targets to address worldwide issues of sustainable development, such as social inequality, responsible and inclusive economic development and environmental protection. They were created for everyone, everywhere and have been described as ‘the closest thing the world has to a strategy’.

Who will be responsible for ensuring we achieve these goals and how will they be achieved?
In the realm of international agreements, national governments have traditionally been responsible for local implementation. But a combination of profound global demographic shifts and a sense that national governments are increasingly incapable of tackling complex global challenges due to domestic political wrangling has given rise to a global movement to place cities at the heart of efforts to tackle both local and global challenges.  This movement, which is coalescing around a constellation of city-to-city networks (such as ICLEI, C40 and the Global Parliament of Mayors), is now grappling with the challenge of ‘localising the SDGs’. How can we usefully translate this global agenda into local practice in a way that meaningfully transforms lives?

This is the question we are working to answer through a new University of Bristol funded project on Localising the SDGs for Bristol, in partnership with the Bristol Green Capital Partnership (BGCP), Bristol City Council and Overseas Development Institute (ODI).

Bristol is a city of great wealth and has strong environmental credentials as the former European Green Capital in 2015. The city is also home to a vibrant cluster of ‘green economy’ companies and environmental charities. However, Bristol also faces many challenges. Homelessness is twice the national average; nearly 16% of Bristolians live in England’s 10% most deprived areas; and Bristol health outcomes are worse than the national averages for many indicators (e.g. life expectancy, suicide, childhood obesity, smoking).

These are precisely the kinds of challenges that the Sustainable Development Goals are encouraging us to confront and tackle by 2030. Importantly, ‘sustainability’ isn’t just about the environment; it is also about building a prosperous and inclusive economy that leaves no one behind. Inclusion, equality and opportunity are essential to achieve sustainability.

Our research seeks to identify and support mechanisms for embedding the SDGs in local planning and governance processes by engaging with a wide range of stakeholders in the city.

Bristol City Council, a pivotal stakeholder is currently working to bring partners together for a new One City Plan. This Plan seeks to use the collective power of Bristol’s key organisations to achieve a bigger impact by supporting partners, organisations and citizens to help solve key city challenges and improve the lives of Bristolians across the city. The core themes behind this plan align with the SDGs and it provides a great opportunity for Bristol to lead nationally and internationally on the SDGs. As this plan comes together we aim to input insights from other cities around the world that are also working to implement the SDGs.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti committing to the SDGs for LA

To that end Allan Macleod, the Cabot Institute SDGs Research & Engagement Associate, recently attended the Global Ambition–Local Action Conference hosted by the Occidental College in Los Angeles. The conference focused on what cities can and are doing to address the SDGs and how they can mobilise data and resources to further their work. It was a very informative experience, but was it was also inspiring to see how Bristol compares to some of the largest and most important Global Cities. It was clear that Bristol has developed a solid foundation for SDG localisation and has a real opportunity to become global leader in implementing the SDGs. In doing so the city will both confront the need to develop a more inclusive and sustainable local economy while contributing to global efforts to tackle transboundary problems together with other cities.

This is a particularly exciting time to be working collaboratively on implementing the SDGs in Bristol as the city will be hosting two major conferences in 2018: the Data for International Development Festival at the end of March and the Global Parliament of Mayors Annual Summit in October. Both these events provide Bristol with an opportunity to showcase its leadership and demonstrate its credentials as an important international city that is working to improve the lives of all its citizens.

What experiences do you have of the SDGs abroad or in Bristol? Do you have an ideas or lessons that can be applied to Bristol? If you have any further questions or comments, feel free to get in touch at Allan.macleod@bristol.ac.uk.
———————————————-
This blog is written by Dr Sean Fox, a Lecturer in Urban Geography and Global Development at the University of Bristol and Allan Macleod, Cabot Institute SDGs Research & Engagement Associate.

Sean Fox

 

Informal power in the city: where does change come from?

Posted on by janet.crompton

An event in December shared the findings of a new collaboration between the University of Bristol and Bristol Pound into the use of informality and how informal approaches at a city level can extend influence, support innovation and ultimately inform policy.

“So, what is informal power? An academic term is ‘informal governance’ and it’s the unseen and undocumented activity that contributes to city and policy change. It might be a conversation in the street, meeting a colleague or friend for coffee, or a networking event where ideas are discussed and developed. To an extent therefore it’s about who you know and who you feel comfortable discussing a new project or approach with, drawing on shared values and aims.

Over the course of this year, Sarah Ayres and myself at the University of Bristol have been working with Ciaran Mundy and colleagues at Bristol Pound to see how our academic understanding could be translated into the way that a city-wide social enterprise could play a part in city leadership, how its values might be shared and ultimately might influence policy. Bristol Pound is a great example of an alternative form of city leadership and it has been really interesting to explore with the staff, directors and city partners how informality works for them. We have found that there are many people in the networks of informality that exist in the city, but that they are not always conscious of how their informal interactions can influence the more formal decisions. As one of our participants said:

‘Informality helps to inform the making of strategy and policy – and informality helps to actually get it done once you’ve got that context in place’

These informal networks can bring together a range of people who might not normally come into contact – but they might also, consciously or unconsciously, perpetuate old power structures. Our aim, through this research, is to recognise how these networks operate – and then to challenge the things that might lead to some people feeling excluded. Happily, many people are keen to challenge the status quo, to seek out new voices and ensure that other views are represented – and informal approaches can be very effective in making new connections and bringing in other perspectives.

Informality is particularly useful where there are new ideas to be tried out, explored and developed and where a formal meeting might limit creativity, reduce the number of people involved and constrain what is discussed. It can be a more flexible and enjoyable way to work, but we also recognise that at some point these informal discussions need to be brought into formal decision making if city change is to happen.

There are many people in the city who feel strongly about making Bristol ‘the best it can be’ – drawing on long-held ‘collegiate’ approaches to city leadership which stretch far beyond the council, incorporating both key city organisations and strong grassroots innovative thinking. If the city of Bristol has always been good at making space for informal approaches and a wider ‘diffused’ city leadership, in resource-strapped times this confidence in alternative approaches can only be helpful – but the reduction in council resources still has an impact. Whilst the council has allowed (or not interfered with) the many activities and collaborations flourishing independently across the city, it has also provided some ‘webbing’ to bring groups and individuals together and facilitate collaboration. There are opportunities in this new void, for other organisations like Bristol£ and the Bristol Green Capital Partnership, to facilitate these informal dialogues across the city, steering a course for more ‘sustainable city with a high quality of life for all’.

————————

This blog was written by Cabot Institute member Caroline Bird, a Research Fellow in the School for Policy Studies at the University of Bristol. She’s also involved in city initiatives such as the Bristol Energy Network and her research connects across academic and city sectors to share knowledge for urban sustainability.  This blog was reproduced from the Bristol Green Capital Partnership blog.

Reliable and sustainable micro-hydropower in Nepal

Posted on by janet.crompton
Rolling hills of Baglung District

Despite massive potential to generate electricity through large scale hydropower, Nepal often faces power cuts and the national grid only reaches around 65% of the population. Much of the non-grid connected population live in rural, hilly and mountainous areas where grid extension is difficult and costly. Micro-hydropower plants (MHPs), which deliver up to 100kW of electrical power, extract water from rivers and use it to drive a generator before returning the water to the same river further downstream. These systems can provide electricity for lighting and productive end uses that can vastly improve people’s quality of life. Since the 1970s, micro-hydro turbines have been manufactured in Nepal. Now there are around 2,500 MHPs installed across Nepal.

When these systems break or run poorly it has an adverse effect on the quality of people’s lives. Through my research, I am hoping to find methods to improve the reliability and sustainability of MHPs in Nepal. The aim of this project was to see how well systems were maintained and interview the people who run, manage and rely on hydropower plants. I hoped that interviews would help me to understand some of the technical and social challenges that MHPs face.  Whilst in Nepal, I was working with a Nepali NGO called the People, Energy and Environment Development Association (PEEDA) who helped me to identify sites, arrange visits and conduct interviews.

A micro-hydropower plant

During my time in Nepal, Prem Karki (from PEEDA) and I visited a total of 17 sites in the neighbouring districts of Baglung and Gulmi. Prem and I spent 12 days in the field, making our way from one site to the next via bumpy jeep rides and on foot. Nepal’s hills make it suitable for hydropower but also make travelling complicated. Many of the roads we travelled on were unpaved and we saw lots of places where landslides had damaged roads during the monsoon. This showed us how difficult it is to move equipment and materials when plants are under construction. At each site, our visual assessment took us on some nerve jangling walks along canals that snaked around cliff edges to reach the intakes. Prem was responsible for interviewing the plant operator, management representative and consumer at each site so we could understand how plants were maintained, managed and their importance to beneficiaries. The local people were very helpful and interested by our work. We were often given free meals and sometimes even a place to stay!

A winding canal

I was able to collect a large amount of information which I am still processing digitally and mentally! In general, I found that micro-hydro sites are often impressive feats of engineering which can make a big impact on people’s lives by powering homes, businesses and services. In challenging environments where the only means of transportation is manpower, the hard work of local people has led to their construction. Several times, we crawled through hand chiselled caves made solely for a hydro project’s canal. The impact of the projects was clear to see. Every interview respondent said that connection to an MHP had made their life easier.

Furthermore, the micro-hydro projects are invaluable to communities as a whole; they power workplaces, shops, health posts and mobile phone masts. In the town of Burtibang, with a population of around 10,000, every home and business is powered by electricity from micro-hydro projects.

This dependence on micro-hydropower makes its reliability very important. I found the quality of maintenance very variable. Some sites were well cared for with an evident daily effort to keep the plant running as best as possible. Other plants had little evidence of regular maintenance and were showing signs of deterioration. Promisingly, I found that sites with formally trained operators tended to be better maintained than those without.

In terms of sustainability, there was a good standard of management. Energy meters allowed accurate measurement of electricity consumption so that consumers were charged according to their use. Consumers are typically given a short window in which to pay and fined for late payment. At most sites, managers said that there was sufficient money collected for the operation of the plant and maintenance costs.

To maintain reliability and sustainability, there are a range of technical and social issues that MHPs must overcome. There were common technical issues in design. Many turbines were leaking, and plant operators mentioned bearing replacement as one of the most common issues. We also saw a big variation in the quality of  installations particularly for the  civil works. It is disappointing that despite the massive effort expended in construction, some features are not fit for purpose. Socially, we found four sites where the original operator had moved abroad for work meaning the present operator had not been trained. Plant managers also commented on the increasing demand from consumers resulting in pressure on operators to deliver more power. These issues develop for social reasons but result in problems which can harm the reliability of the system.
A micro-hydropower turbine
In my further research, I intend to work closely with a turbine manufacturer during the design, manufacture and installation of a micro-hydro project. I hope to identify opportunities to implement greater quality control to prevent the occurrence of the technical issues mentioned. By working in collaboration with governmental and non-governmental organisations in Nepal, I would like to find innovative ways to ensure the longevity of MHPs. As Nepal develops, the role of micro-hydro will change but I believe it still has an important role to play in rural electrification.
———————————-

This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Joe Butchers, a PhD student from the Electrical Energy Management Group at the University of Bristol.

Joe Butchers

 

 

CONNECTED – a new network to tackle vector-borne crop disease in Africa

Posted on by janet.crompton

 

Last week I was immersed in the world of African crop diseases, specifically the vector-borne kind, as part of the launch of CONNECTED. For those, like me, who aren’t an expert in the field – vector-borne diseases are those which are carried around by an organism (like a fly or insect) from one plant to the next.

This major new network brings together UK scientists with colleagues from across Africa to co-produce innovative new solutions to vector-borne crop diseases. And it turns out, there are a lot of them.

Africa has over 100 years of history with plant viral diseases. In 1894 cassava mosaic disease hit, followed by maize streak virus in 1901, and cassava brown streak in 1936.  Each had caused devastation, and in many cases, death.

Standing in the room and listening to presentations led by our African colleagues, there was a clear desire to work together – across disciplines and continents – to make a significant and lasting impact on crop disease reduction in Africa.

In this blog, I share just a handful of the things I learnt, alongside my thoughts for CONNECTED’s role in innovating for the future.

What are the challenges?

Almost every major crop in Africa is affected by disease

Yams, cassava, boy bean, cocoa, maize, coffee, bananas and many more of Africa’s key crops are affected by vector-borne disease.

That creates an ENORMOUS burden for the continent. Estimates shared by Prof Emmanuel Okogbenin suggest that yield losses due to plant disease cost $30 billion annually. In addition, it seriously affects food security and malnutrition in a continent where around 160 million of its population are already deemed food insecure.

As a result, demand is outstripping production for many crops (like maize), and Africa is heavily reliant on imported goods. These are undoubtedly more expensive than locally grown produce, and remain inaccessible or affordable to many.

Crucially, people have died as a result of every major outbreak.

When disease hits, it can cause severe losses

Sweet potato virus disease (SPVD) can lead to a 70-100% yield loss in infected plants.  The level of loss greatly exacerbates the issues described above.

So which crops are the most important ones to protect?

Well, it depends how you ask the question. 500 million people depend on cassava as a staple crop, and 158 million tons are produced in Africa by smallholders.

By contrast, 54 million tonnes of yam is produced annually, but 95% of this is produced in what is known as the ‘yam belt’, meaning it is considered critical in those regions. It also draws a value of c. $13.5M.

But it was clear from discussions today that we need to move beyond this idea of protecting a single crop. It turns out to be a lot more complicated than that.

In many cases, it’s not a simple case of a single vector and a single virus causing a single disease

Disease spread is highly complex. A single vector can carry many types of virus, and many viruses can be transmitted by multiple vectors. Additionally, some viruses affect a number of crops. This means it’s extremely difficult to know which vector/ virus to focus on tackling, or which crop to focus on treating, if you want to make a difference.

Perhaps surprisingly, some diseases only appear to ‘present’ when multiple viruses affect the same plant. In fact, around 69% of diseases in yams appear to be caused by 2 or more viral infections occurring at the same time.

To top it off, the vectors can often live on a number of different host plant species. This means that even if you create a crop that is resistant to a particular virus, it may still be present and spread between other plants.

And there are lots of vectors, spreading lots of diseases

Today I heard about so many vectors and viruses it’s impossible to name them all. However, here are just a few key examples that were covered by experts in the room:

  • Vectors: white fly, Aphids, leafhoppers, plant hoppers, mealybugs (my favourite, based purely on the name), thrips, and beetles.
  • Viruses: cassava brown streak virus, cassava mosaic virus, banana bunchy top virus, maize chlorotic mottle virus, yam mosaic virus, badnaviruses (yam, banana and coco), and legume potyviruses

Much disease is also spread by infected seed

In the case of sugarcane mosaic virus (SCMV), a large proportion of transmission is down to aphids, but an even greater proportion stems from the sharing of infected seeds. In a Q&A session on this topic, one audience member asked, ‘what’s the main barrier stopping people from using uncertified seeds?’ The answer? Cost. At present, many people buy seeds from friends, by the roadside, at local markets, or store their own supplies from year to year. These practices carry risk and whilst ‘certified’ (virus free) seeds are available, these are expensive. It was an important reminder that often, the scientific solutions are available, but there are social, political and economic factors to consider in ensuring uptake of these advances.

Over 80% of agricultural production in Sub-Saharan Africa is done by small holders

Whilst this has many benefits (people effectively have ‘control’ of their food production systems), managing disease across such a vast number of smallholder farms represents a major challenge. First and foremost – it’s difficult to engage with such a large number of individual farms to coordinate disease management strategies. Critically, it’s also difficult for smallholders to coordinate responses amongst themselves. In this context, ‘CONNECTED’ seems an entirely appropriate name for an initiative tackling this problem.

Summing up

In summary, day 2 of the CONNECTED conference helped us to share experiences, identify key challenges and research gaps, and decide where, as a network, we should best deploy our resources.

There was also a real sense that CONNECTED could bring far more than collaborative & impact-led research (though this in its own right would be exciting!). There were calls for joint databases, support with equipment purchases, training and capacity building, on-the-ground diagnostic support, e-resources, new technology development, incentivising public-private partnerships, and much, much more.

Through this network, there is great potential to forge important international collaborations and pool resources for maximum impact.

All in all, it has been incredible to see what expertise exists in both the UK and in Africa, hear about the collective ambitions of these fantastic collaborators, and begin to chart a path for CONNECTED.

I for one, am left feeling hopeful, inspired, and of course, ‘connected’.

The CONNECTED project

Our mission

Determined to fight malnutrition, poverty and food insecurity in Sub-Saharan Africa, the CONNECTED project is building a network of researchers to tackle vector-borne* plant diseases that devastate lives.

The challenges we face …

  • Established plant diseases carried by vectors* significantly limit the ability of Sub-Saharan Africa to produce sufficient staple and cash crops.
  • Limited production causes poverty, malnutrition and food insecurity, which in turn prevent economic and social development.
  • A range of new factors are set to compound the situation and raise the threat still further:
    • The emergence of new virus diseases
    • Climate change
    • A growing population
    • Resource limitations.

The solutions we are developing …

  • The CONNECTED** project is bringing together a network of world-class researchers to find and develop practical solutions to control plant disease.
  • We are pump-priming a range of innovative and potentially-transformative research activities, whose impact will be thoroughly evaluated. These research activities focus on five key areas:
    • Control strategies
    • Vector biology
    • New diseases
    • Vector / virus interactions
    • Diagnostics / surveillance / forecasting.
  • We are also providing training and capacity-building opportunities in the region during the three-year project lifespan.

And in the longer-term …

The aim is that the projects with the greatest regional impact can subsequently be grown into larger scale activities to achieve still greater bearing on the battle to control plant disease in Sub-Saharan Africa.

———————————-
This blog is written by Hayley Shaw who is the Manager of the Cabot Institute, and is a Network Advisor to the CONNECTED Network.

Notes
*A vector is a biting insect or tick that transmits a disease or parasite from one plant to another.

MetroLabs visit: Sharing experiences of implementing smart cities

Posted on by janet.crompton
Image credit: CarriAyne Jone, (Head of Science and Innovation, British Consulate-General, Atlanta)

In December 2017 I was invited to take part in the Metro Lab Annual Summit, taking place in Georgia Tech in the United States. I thought it worthwhile to share a few of my own thoughts about the meeting and what can be drawn from the experience.

The MetroLab Network includes 41 cities and 55 universities within the United States that have formed city-university partnerships that focus on research, development and deployment projects to offer solutions to many of the challenges facing urban areas. These allow decision makers and researchers to work together within their cities to achieve better urban living, while being able to share best practice from each other’s experiences.

The visit was facilitated by the UK Science and Innovation Network, part of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office who provide opportunities for international collaboration. As well as delegates from the University of Bristol and Bristol City Council, we shared the visit with delegates from Glasgow and Strathclyde and from Innovate UK. Bristol has been designated as the UKs ‘smartest city’ according the smart city index commissioned by Huawei UK. A number of current innovations at Bristol are helping to develop the smart city capability including Bristol is Open, a joint venture between the city and university providing a digital infrastructure; and the Digital Health strategy (including IRC SPHERE ) that utilises sensing technology to facilitate healthier living. My own future work plans fit into this agenda, as I am trialling air quality and meteorological sensors that will help inform when and where I can run my gas tracer and aerosol measurement experimental campaigns.

In the morning of the day before the Summit, our delegation was introduced to the Consulate General and staff in their Atlanta office. Afterwards, we visited Southface, a company that promotes sustainable development and green building. Their offices included buildings designed to be exemplars of the type of technologies that they promote. I look forward to finding out more on some of the work they are doing in the monitoring of pollutants indoors from outdoors. After this visit we attended the launch of the Smart city and data-driven energy policy program, within which presentations were given on how a city could increase energy efficiencies, and the net gains that could be achieved.

The first day of the summit was held in the Georgia Institute of Technology Historic Academy of Medicine. The sessions included round table discussions from civic leaders, including mayors and chief technology/data/information officers (or similar variations of that title) about the challenges facing cities in the future, and how technologies can be used to address them, particularly in the gathering of data. Hearing civil leaders emphasising their commitment to action on climate change and public health independently of national policy was an encouragement to me.

Throughout both days, a number of research and development projects were highlighted that showed the benefit of smart technologies. One such technology was Numina, demonstrated in Jacksonville, which tracked traffic, bike and pedestrian movements so that cities have a better idea of what is happening on their streets. An 18 mile stretch of highway near Georgia has been turned into a living lab known as the Ray C Anderson memorial highway (The Ray) incorporating a driveable solar road surface, EV charge points and tyre safety checks. Another presentation described an ambitious attempt to link Portland, Seattle and Vancouver in the larger ‘megapolitan’ region of Cascadia, which would provide better management of transport over the area.

James Matthews (second from left) participated in a panel discussion on Air Quality Sensing in Smart Cities.  Image credit: Melissa Wooten (Vice Consul for Prosperity and Economic Policy, British Consulate-General, Chicago).

On the second day, there were, among other things, discussions on data privacy and an update on the Array of Things. The Array of Things is a project by Argonne Labs and Chicago University that is building a platform by which an instrumented ‘node’ can be connected to an urban network, collecting environmental sensing data which could include air quality, traffic and meteorology. These are currently being trialled in Chicago and will soon be sent to participating partner cities, including Bristol.

In the afternoon it was my privilege to participate in a panel discussion on Air Quality Sensing in Smart Cities, where I provided the perspective of a researcher in urban meteorology and pollution dynamics who is attempting to use the Bristol is Open smart city technology to assist with my research. The other panel members were Vincent McInally from Glasgow City Council who provided his experiences addressing air quality in Glasgow, including maintaining air quality measurement networks in the city, and Don DuRousseau from DWU, Washington DC who has many years experience in real-time systems, cybersecurity and informatics and has worked to set up high speed connectivity in many MetroLab partners.

The discussion included concerns about low-cost, (or low-accuracy as Vincent suggested we  call them) sensors in reflecting true values of pollution in the city, and whether we can use the higher specification instrumentation to validate their usage and the related discussion on sensor placement and temporal variability or their output. The dangers of false positives, in particular from citizen sensing initiatives, was brought up in relation to these reliability concerns, and how these limitations can be communicated with the public such that the information can be better interpreted. There is certainly value in giving real time air quality information to the public, and it is something I have discussed with many project partners within Bristol, but this leads to the dilemma of whether the data needs to be filtered in some way so as to account for the errors, or whether the public have a right to all the data as a matter of course. The discussion also included some examples of how sensor measurements, and other initiatives, have been used to make a positive difference in city life.

Overall, the experience was a positive one for our delegation and shows the value of both using new technologies to affect positive change in city life, it underlined the merits in strong communication and collaboration between city leadership and the universities, and furthermore, showed the value of civic leaders and university academics from different cities coming together to share each other’s experiences of implementing smart cities. It may be time to consider how those cities in the UK could also bring together our own experiences.

——————————–
This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Dr James Matthews, a Senior Research Associate at the University of Bristol.  James is interested in the flow of gases in urban environments, and use perfluorocarbon trace gas releases to map the passage of air in urban cities.  He is currently running an extended field campaign measuring air quality for four months in Bangkok.
James Matthews

Presenting at the Oxford Symposium on Population, Migration, and the Environment

Posted on by janet.crompton

In my last blog post, I mentioned that the Cabot Institute would be sponsoring me to present my master’s dissertation at the Oxford Symposium on Population, Migration, and the Environment. The Symposium took place on 7 – 8 December 2017 at St. Hugh’s College.

My dissertation (which I also summarised in the last post), focusses on compensation for individuals or entities who bear the uneven costs of environmental policies. A well-designed environmental policy creates benefits, such as cleaner air and water, mitigated greenhouse gas emissions, or protection of a limited resource or species. These benefits are vital, and I opine that the world needs more and better-designed environmental policies, not fewer. However, my dissertation recognises the uneven distribution of costs in environmental policies—the companies that must purchase abatement technologies, the low-income homes that must pay more for electricity and heat, or the resource-dependent livelihoods that may struggle to make ends meet—and recommends how to compensate those who bear higher costs.

At Oxford, I presented my premise, methodology, findings, and ultimate recommendations for designing compensation for environmental policies. The listeners gave positive feedback. They had all encountered the concept of compensating environmental policies’ victims, but seeing an in-depth study of the concept was novel. After my twenty-five-minute talk, I had five minutes for a formal Q&A.

In my presentation, I mention that one potential uneven cost is the creation of stranded assets. Companies might be left with technologies or whole plants they can no longer use given new, more stringent environmental regulations.

One university professor from the USA commented that companies in Appalachia have left behind old plants of their own accord, leaving an infrastructural scar and economic stagnation. While we consider compensating companies left with stranded assets by policy, we should also hold companies responsible for decommissioning the assets they abandon as a strategic choice.

Another researcher from Poland detailed the difficulty in compensating poor families pushed by policy to buy more efficient heating stoves that they cannot afford. Government could subsidise the purchases if it has sufficient funding, but often these stoves have higher lifetime operating costs as well. Should government permanently subsidise the energy costs of poor families who upgrade their stoves?

These questions challenged me and further emphasised the complexity of designing well-meaning environmental policies and compensation. The symposium was well-planned for these kinds of conversations. Presentations began as experts detailing their work, but finished in a seminar-style unpacking of how the work should evolve and improve. The list of attendees was small, in the 30s range, so the room felt warm and open for discussions. Although small, the symposium was quite international. Presenters came from the UK, the USA, Mexico, Chile, Spain, Italy, India, South Africa, Japan, and elsewhere.

I gained not only from presenting my own work, but also from listening to the presentations of others. The topics varied, all loosely-related to the symposium’s title topics of population, migration, and environment. I am very grateful to the Cabot Institute for making my participation possible. I plan to submit my full manuscript to the symposium, which will publish selected ones a few months into the New Year. The Journal for Science Policy and Governance has already accepted a version of my dissertation for publication, so I am excited to work with its editors to further disseminate my work.

————————–
This blog is written by Michael Donatti in October 2017. Michael is a Cabot Institute Masters Research Fellow.

Michael Donatti

 

Sign up to our weekly newsletter for all the latest news, events and opportunities at https://bristol.ac.uk/cabot/news/subscribe. Find out more about our unique Master's by Research in Global Environmental Challenges at https://bristol.ac.uk/cabot-masters.