Tag: Bristol

What makes cities more environmentally sustainable: A comparative study of York and Bristol

Posted on by janet.crompton

Over the summer of 2017 I conducted 25 interviews with policymakers and key stakeholders – 17 in York and 8 in Bristol. The interviews involved wide ranging discussions on the three pillars of sustainability – environment, social and economic – in the city of the interviewee.

Some background to the study and why I chose Bristol to compare with York – coming from the Leeds/Bradford conurbation, York seems like such a pleasant place to me: incredible preservation of its heritage, affluent, with very few of the economic and social problems experienced in some other parts of Yorkshire. However, having lived in York for a couple of years, I’ve realised when you scratch the surface a little, it’s not perfect. There are quite interesting dynamics in the city that prevent it from achieving its potential, particularly environmentally…

Enter Bristol as a comparison city!

Having won the European Green Capital 2015, Bristol was an obvious choice. Although initially my concern was there are stark differences between York and Bristol in terms of size, culture etc., it soon became apparent that these differences only highlighted the dynamics within each city that I was trying to uncover.

My research found that York’s two largest challenges in trying to be a more environmentally sustainable city are its political flux – due to finely balanced politics based on geographic location within the city – and heritage. Because of the flux, there is a lack of long-term vision for the city in addition to large political risks to parties that seek to enact less salient environmentally sustainable policies. When the flux is combined with the city’s conservatism – due to a culture of preservation – York can lack ambition.

Furthermore, York lacks economic sustainability, which is due to several reasons: the relatively recent loss of many of its large anchor employers, such as Rowntree’s, Terry’s and the Carriage-works; a focus on the low value-added tourist industry; high-office costs; high-living costs for employees; and a difficulty in accessing government infrastructure funding due to being on the edge of two Local Enterprise Partnerships. Additionally, whilst York has many small to medium sized enterprises – who reinvest a higher portion of their income into the local economy than large companies – it lacks the alternative business models, such as those found in Bristol, that can bring wider benefits. Therefore, due to economic unsustainability and a lack of alternative business models, the city’s business focus is on job growth as opposed to wider societal and environmental benefits, such as was found in the business focus of Bristol. Many of the positives that York possesses are due to the natural advantages that result from its built environment. The lack of ambition and vision, however, is preventing York from achieving its full potential. Being a city rich in heritage does not mean that it cannot also have a strong environmental sustainability focus, as discussed by Paul McCabe, Strategic Manager – Sustainability and Transformation, City of York Council:

“Other cities around Europe have shown that the two things are not incompatible: old architecture, green architecture, big public spaces, bold things can work together and compliment older areas.”

Bristol is an example of what a city can achieve in terms of environmental sustainability in a country with a very centralized state whose policies at a national level may be perceived by some as regressive. Additionally, while Bristol does have social problems, many of these may be inherent in large British cities. Bristol’s pursuit of green capital can be seen as a means to identify itself on a wider stage for pride and to attract inward investment – In this context I am using the term ‘capital’ to express the assets that a city has available to itself. In this sense green capital is not only a physical asset of entities such as green spaces for instance, but an asset embedded in urban cultures that has wider consequences – Why Bristol is pursuing green capital may be due to seeing the makings of this within its own culture: Bristol has a notably vibrant culture that is hard to define and account for, but appears to be bringing many social, environmental and economic benefits to the city. This vibrant culture was commented upon by James Cleeton, Sustrans England Director South, “what Bristol does well, is what its people do: there’s still that culture, that socio-cultural drive behind a desire for a really sustainable and green city”. Furthermore, the pursuit of green capital may only be possible in the city due to a long-term vision that emerges from political stability, the importance of which is contrasted with York’s changing administrations and relative lack of political stability. Although Bristol stands to benefit economically from green capital, this pursuit of green capital is perhaps only enabled because Bristol is already economically successful.

Therefore, I found what makes cities more environmentally sustainable revolved around the interaction between four themes: culture, economics, politics and social. These four themes all, in varying forms, influence environmental sustainability in a very individual nature within each city. Perhaps the most important influence, however, was found to be the status and nature of the capital that each city possessed – be that the heritage capital that holds York back, or the green capital that pushes Bristol forward, in this regard.

To read the full study, please see two versions: a shortened version and the full version.

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This blog was reposted with kind permission from Bristol Green Capital Partnership.  View the original blog.

This blog was written by Graham Gill from University of York.  Graham can be contacted by email.

Graham Gill

The muddy debate: Is the Severn Estuary biologically productive?

Posted on by janet.crompton
Severn Bridge by Philippa Long

Traditionally, the Severn Estuary has been mistaken for an expansive, featureless landscape, dominated by fast-flowing muddy waters that prevent any pelagic biological activity. Although the latter could be true in terms of phytoplankton development, new research has shed light on the vital role that the benthic algal system has on controlling nutrient dynamics in the estuary.

Estuaries form at the margins between the land and the sea. The complex movement and mixing of freshwater and seawater governed by the tide, along with the trapping and recycling of continentally supplied nutrients and sediment, makes estuaries some of the most ecologically viable ecosystems in the world, in line with the biological productivity of coral reefs and tropical rainforests.

The Severn, the largest of 133 estuaries in the UK, has a mosaic distribution of intertidal mudflats, saltmarshes and wetlands, making it a unique habitat for a wide range of species. Alongside nationally scarce plant species, important wildfowl, wader populations and migratory European birds inhabit and refuel in the biologically-rich banks of the estuary. The estuarine waters are also home to over 100 fish species that use the estuary as a nursery, supporting many of the UK’s commercial fish stocks. With such a wide socio-ecological and economic importance, it is clear why the Severn was designated a Special Area of Conservation in 2009.

However, it’s less obvious as to why it has been over two decades since there have been systematic sampling studies in the Severn. Reviews have come and gone during this time, widely associated with renewable energy projects such as the Severn Barrage, but have often repeated findings from the 1990s. Furthermore, any commercially driven studies and their findings are often not disclosed to researchers or the public. This has left, in many aspects, knowledge of the Severn and its current ecosystem condition in a state of limbo. One aspect that’s often overlooked in many hydrological systems and is often overshadowed by carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus, is the element silicon, which may be one of the most important nutrients in the Severn’s environment.

Sand Bay by Holly Welsby

Why is silicon important?

Dissolved silicon is an important nutrient in aquatic environments, and is essential to siliceous organisms, for example, photosynthetic diatoms, which use dissolved silicon to form their shells (or frustules) made from biogenic silica. Diatoms are broadly categorised as ‘centric’ (round), usually occupying the surface oceans, and ‘pennate’ (long and thin), inhabiting coastal and seafloor environments, including sea ice, and intertidal mudflats such as those in the Severn Estuary.

Despite their small size, diatoms are an important group in supporting most food webs, and due to their abundance, contribute close to half of all surface ocean productivity! Diatoms are a key factor in affecting climate change due to this high productivity, as they remove the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and export the organic carbon from the surface ocean to the seafloor when they die. Dissolved silicon and biogenic silica have been widely used to study marine silicon cycles but the impact that diatoms may have on estuarine cycles, and the potential influence on river silicon inputs to the ocean, has only recently come to light.

Silicon cycling in the Severn Estuary: new research

After the receding of the tide, large intertidal mudflats form along the shores of the Severn Estuary, which has the second largest tidal range in the world! These nutrient-rich intertidal mudflats are inhabited by pennate diatoms that live in microbial mats, called biofilms, on the mudflat surface. These biofilms, which are visible to the naked eye (the golden-brown shimmer that can be observed on the mudflats at low tide), are low in biodiversity but high in diatom abundance. Biofilms are an important food source to many mud-dwelling creatures, such as estuarine ragworm and laver spire snails, and migratory visitors such as the whimbrel and ringed plover. These ‘sticky’ mats also contribute to sediment stabilization, through the production of an organic rich network around sediment grains, and control nutrient fluxes to the overlying water.

Biofilm on the intertidal mudflats of the Severn by Holly Welsby

Compared to the well-studied carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, the importance of silicon in the Severn Estuary is less well understood. New research that has been carried out at the University of Bristol has aimed to tackle this gap, with an in-depth, seasonal study of silicon cycling along the Severn river-estuary-marine continuum. Each season in 2016, the surface and bottom waters of the Severn were sampled aboard Cardiff University’s research vessel.

It was found that the strong tidal forces and seasonal river flow fluctuations controlled dissolved silicon and other associated nutrients. In line with previous studies, the high mud water content – referred to as turbidity – limited water column primary productivity by blocking out light. This meant that there was minimal biogenic silica production in the water column itself. Instead, biogenic silica depended on the suspended particulate matter, and displayed seasonal cycles associated with benthic biogenic silica production by the diatom biofilms on the mudflats. In other words, the suspended sediment in the Severn not only originated from the rivers discharging into the estuary, but also from the erosion of the intertidal mudflats. This erosion of the mudflats in this high energy system, led to the suspension of the diatom biofilms, and so increased the biogenic silica concentrations in the water column.

This research has shown that since the 1990s reports, diatom biofilm biomass (i.e. their presence) has increased on the mudflats. These diatoms were also efficient at photosynthesis, resulting in a high potential to cycle silicon. These biofilms break up and reform rapidly between tides meaning that a large amount of silica is shuttled from the mudflats to the water column every day. This benthic biogenic silica export, which is transported further compared to dissolved silicon, could dissolve and replenish the Celtic Sea, with the dissolved silicon ready to be used by plankton that supports our commercial fish stocks.

Severn River in winter by Tim Gregory

Looking ahead

The Severn Estuary – in all its natural wonders – is a valuable resource in terms of renewable energy, tourism and business. Many of us also call it home. But what does the future hold for these diatom biofilms on the mudflats of the Severn Estuary? In many ways, their prospects are low. With extreme weather events, erosion and coastal squeezing causing a loss to our mudflat and saltmarsh habitats, influx of microplastics and associated toxins, alongside proposals for large construction projects that may alter sediment/nutrient loadings and deposition patterns, the future of these biofilms hangs is in the balance. But based on recent findings, these diatoms are tolerant to the mudflats harsh environmental conditions, which suggests they have the capability to adapt to these adverse conditions. Diatoms are a miraculous species, and their benefits to the estuary is not fully recognised.

We are beginning to understand that there is a limit to the degree that we can modify our environment, but if we could only assign an economic value to this biologically productive system, perhaps the benthic diatoms future on the Severn Estuary mudflats could be aided.

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This blog has been written by Cabot Institute member Holly Welsby, from the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol.

Food Connections

Posted on by janet.crompton

Last week the Bristol Food Connections festival explored “all that is GREAT about food in Bristol (and beyond)” [1]. This made me realise that what I am exploring are the separations in our global food system. While so much of food in Bristol is ‘GREAT’ there is still much work to do about what is NOT SO GREAT. In the global food system, the separations between those who produce and those who consume what is transported around the world are many: income, origin, lifestyle, language, history, opportunities, culture, diet, microbiome – you name it there are separations in the way we eat and live.

This weekend I co-facilitated an event, Philosophy Breakfast: The ethics of global food production, with Julian Baggini, philosopher and author of the book, Virtues of the table: How to eat and think, [2]. Julian focused our thoughts on ethics and justice, and I grounded us with a case study, on tomatoes produced in Morocco, based on my recent fieldwork. We were treated, literally, to food for thought, in the form of a breakfast bap and coffee from the Boston Tea Party as well as a full house of attendees ready and willing to reflect on their role in the food systems. I was determined that this group, who had been motivated enough to get up for a 10 am Sunday start, also be given space to tell us what we should be considering in relation to the ethics of food. So, we invited each table to choose a breakfast food element to reflect upon, bread, coffee, tea, bacon, tomatoes and mushrooms, as they slowly digested its nutrients and food dilemmas.

Framing the session Julian considered our role as consumers by drawing on the thoughts of some classical philosophers from Plato to Sen: we should not, he suggested, be afraid of always getting everything right, but we should at least do our best to avoid contributing to what we find clearly morally wrong. How to go about this? I asked our participants to think of questions which might help us reflect on each of the breakfast items to help us consider these dilemmas. Furthermore, perhaps we might have questions for others; for the supermarkets, for the governments, and for the companies involved. My favourite question from this savvy group was, for meat: “was it worth an animal dying for me to eat this?” something that connects to my blog on the great value of seeing meat as sacrifice: ‘L hawli‘.

My talk related more to the question about coffee, “What labour standards (how bad would they be) would stop you buying coffee?”. What a question. International labour standards usually boil down to a mutual agreement that the countries involved in trade will apply their national labour laws. They may also be required to ensure that these national laws meet international standards, but what are these international standards? Since the 1998 ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work (ILO, 1998) [3], international labour law has been focused, or in practice narrowed, depending on your perspective, to just eight core conventions covering four areas (collective bargaining, forced labour, child labour, non-discrimination at work), out of a possible 189 conventions covering many other very important areas [4]. So this is a relatively weak starting point, which in most cases simply attempts to ensure already existing minimum standards (laws) are implemented.

What happens also, when national laws do not meet the needs of workers? Too often agricultural work is excluded from normal labour standards, or minimum wages are lower in this sector. This is not just the case in poorer countries. In the USA, the world’s richest state, many agricultural workers are exempted from minimum wage and overtime entitlements of the main national labour legislation, the Fair Labour Standards Act [5]. This is discrimination sanctioned by law.

Such discrimination between agriculture and other sectors is also the case in Morocco, where I carried out fieldwork. Whilst the legal minimum wage in other sectors is £8.29, the minimum day wage for agricultural workers is significantly lower at £5.37. OK, you may think, but life is cheaper there. Not that much cheaper. We can convert that minimum agricultural wage to a UK equivalent via the Purchasing Power Parity formula, (or PPP) this tells you what the equivalent wage would be in the UK. That equivalent of that minimum agricultural wage in a UK context with UK housing, food and other costs would be £13.51. This is not enough to live comfortably, barely enough to survive.

This is why then, the first findings chapter of my thesis is entitled “No Money”. If a major supply chain, feeding us year round with produce that we increasingly depend upon, rests on a starting point of an unreasonably low minimum wage, we cannot consider this a socially sustainable global food connection. And it is a connection. Although we are separated by distance, language, culture and long food chains, it was not difficult to find tomatoes just on our doorstep. Even last week when the ‘counter-season’ was officially over (as we now produce more in the UK so there is less market for non-EU producers) I could easily identify tomatoes in Bristol from a major company in business just outside of Agadir, Morocco (where my research is focused). I know workers from this company’s greenhouses and packhouses and spent months in daily conversations with them about what needs to change. They are calling for increases in wages and working conditions, better childcare and better social infrastructure. The separations then, are there to be bridged.

Transparency came up a lot on the morning of our event. How is there so much information about the attributes of food itself, and so little about those that produce it? We can only find out about food if actors involved in the sector are willing to be open (governments, retailers, employers). This showed at the Bristol Fruit Market, which I also visited as part of the Food Connections festival. The openness of the owners to discuss their business and show us around their distribution centre was in very clear contrast to the supermarket distribution centres which are shrouded in secrecy. Yet this is not the case at every stage of the process and it is only by asking questions, and showing that we care, that we can have any leverage at all to shift the harshest dynamics of global food systems.

Why are wages so low in the food sector? How can we revalue food? How can we keep alternative routes to market going (such as through wholesale)? How do we know if workers are treated fairly? What does that mean? How can we improve social and labour conditions in global production? These some of the questions that I am working on at the moment.

Groups feed back from their discussions at the Philosophy Breakfast event 17 June 2018

[1] Bristol Food Connections Festival website

[2] BAGGINI, J. 2014. The virtues of the table: How to eat and think, Granta Books.

[3] ILO 1998. ILO Declaration on fundamental principles and rights at work. International Labour Conference. Geneva: International Labour Office.

[4] A list of the 189 ILO conventions

[5] See, Guide to the Fair Labor Standards Act

[6] This is known locally as the difference of the SMIG, the minimum legal industrial wage, and the SMAG, the minimum legal agricultural wage. The SMIG is set by the hour (13.46 Moroccan Dirhams). An 8-hour equivalent of the SMIG comes to the GBP of £8.29. This can then be compared to the minimum agricultural wage, set by the day at 69.73 Moroccan Dirhams, equivalent to £5.37 per day.
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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Lydia Medland and has been reposted with kind permission from her original blog.  Lydia is from the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies at the University of Bristol.

Lydia Medland

Find out more about the Cabot Institute’s Food Security research theme.

Water City Bristol!

Posted on by janet.crompton
Foot selfie at secret swimming spot

If you don’t fix things in words, they might float away. So, briefly, a skeletal accounting —

  • 3 open-water swims
  • 2 workshops in maritime writing
  • 1 public lecture
  • 1 trip up the canal locks to Saltford
  • 2 days at #MT2018 (Marine Transgressions Conference)
  • 2 keynotes
  • ~ 12 panels
  • 1 Blue Humanities roundtable
  • 2 receptions
  • [a poetry reading that I missed]
  • And many half-garbled memories, starting in the middle —
The Llandoger Trow, where Daniel Defoe met Alexander Selkirk

Toxicity, the Ocean, and Urban Space (Wednesday)

I was trying some new things for this public lecture, knowing that the audience would swirl together academics with non-academics, be mostly composed of city-dwellers, and further include mostly those with a particular interest in the sea. Unpicking the knots of writing and thinking I’ve been chasing down in the wake of Oceanic New York, my talk splashed through some recent watery adventures, included images of Thanos the purple God of demonic Malthusianism, strayed into verse in three of my own poems, and — maybe? — crossed wild water to make landfall with hopeful gestures toward Ocean citizenship. How can our Cities and our bodies prepare themselves for and live with rising waters? I’d like to speak that as a not-only tragic story.

Public lecture at the University of Bristol

The Henleaze Swimming Club (Monday)

On Monday afternoon, jet-lagged and still-missing my baggage from the overnight flight in via Dublin, I bought a replacement suit & goggles from the hotel & Uber’d up to Henleaze, a former quarry that’s been a private swimming club since 1919. This gorgeous, narrow, fresh-watered lake now overflows with people, half with swimmers and half fisherfolk. What better anti-jet lag tonic can be?

Underwater Bristol (Tuesday)

Building on the perpetual inspiration of underwaternewyork.com, I hatched a plot with members of the U of Bristol English faculty to incubate some to-emerge-later responses to Bristol’s waterways. So many glorious things! A sailboat named Svendgar that I spotted a few days later for sale in the harbor. Brown mudflats. The kayaks that were paddled around the Bay by the Inuits kidnapped in Frobisher’s Second Voyage to Newfoundland in 1577. A football pitch next to a Cadbury Chocolate Factory that I’d seen earlier that morning while riding a canal boat up five locks to Saltford. Plastic. Breeding eels. What will they all become?

Brunel’s suspension bridge over the Avon

A secret monastic pool (Wednesday)

Having been promised a bit of true English wild swimming on the condition that I not mention the name or location of the waters in which I would plunge, I suppose I was a bit surprised to come around the corner of the quiet country lane to discover maybe sixty students lining the pool’s far bank, sunning themselves in post-exam freedom. The secluded pool, built “in the Middle Ages” to store fish for the Abbey of St. Augustine (founded 1140), now hosts lily pads, a gorgeous 15-foot tall purple rhododendron, supposedly a few tench, and — alas! — some horseflies that enjoyed landing on my bald head. It’s an excellent place for an afternoon’s swim. Thanks to my hosts for taking me there!

Bristol Harbour on the last night

Sea-themed creative writing workshop (Wednesday)

I was deeply impressed by the almost-dozen enthusiastic  Bristol undergrads who submitted maritime poetry and prose works for an post-term bonus workshop. I was joined also by Shakespearean Laurence Publicover and poet David Punter, and we spent a thrilling two hours wrestling with the joys and frustrations of writing with and into oceanic spaces. The student writing was gorgeous and wonderfully ambitious, from a narrative built from fragments of a diary from the S.S. Great Britain to a brilliantly post-Agatha Christie cruise montage, a boat-launching story, several quite lovely lyrics about blue spaces, and a hashing of Pip’s dream of drowning from Moby-Dick that spoke to my Melvillean core.

Clevedon Marine Lake (Fri)

Diving into Clevedon Marine Lake

Located as far upstream as big boats could travel the tidal Avon, Bristol today is water-filled but brackish rather than salt. Much of my time there was semi-marine, from the walks along the harbour to the floating bar the Marine Transgressions Conference decamped to after our final keynote. But though the Avon is tidal for a long distance and boasts (I am reliably assured by tide-guru Owain Jones from the Environmental Humanities department at Bath Spa) the second-highest tides in the world, there’s not a lot of open salt water in the city. I wanted to swim in the Bristol Channel (still known in Wales as the Severn Sea), so the morning of the conference’s last day I met swimographer Vanessa at an early hour that precluded other swimming companions, and we Uber’d out to the Clevedon Marine Lake. I’ve seldom or never seen a more starkly ideal swimscape. The pool is built, framed in by concrete and stone, but at high tide the swell tops the wall and fills the pool with ocean water. The tide was near the ebb when we arrived that morning, and over 100 yards of brown mudflat extended below the “lake,” reflecting the gray sky up toward us. The water was perfect — cool but not cold, salty but not bitter, manageable even though I’d forgotten my goggles in the hotel, and a generous 250m per lake-length. One of the few other swimmers who was also there on a grey misty morning was a man training for 70km in Lake Geneva. He churned in slow circles around the lake and planned to swim through dinner time. We had panels to rush back to in Bristol, but I was tempted just to keep swimming.

#MT2018 Marine Transgressions Conference (Thursday & Friday)

In front of Nancy Farmer tiles with Vanessa Daws at Clevedon

My visit to Bristol was fortuitously timed with an interdisciplinary conference on Marine Transgressions — a geologic term of art for moments in which the sea invades the land. Packed in to the last two days of my stay, the conference’s turbulent energy kept me going even when my own energy flagged. From Helen Rozwadowski’s amazing opening keynote on Jacques Cousteau and utopian fantasies of homo aquaticus in the 1950s and ’60s all the way through Tim Dee’s gorgeously lyrical evocation of the human and avian intertwinings of gulls and landfills, #MT2018 was an stirring mixture. I can’t do justice to all the great panels and papers that I heard over the two days, but I was struck by the variety of disciplinary perspectives — lots of poetics, history, and environmental humanities, but also marine law, policy, science, technological remediation, and other things. All these were joined together by a shared passion for the oceanic “blue” — though of course we all know, and we repeated as a kind of refrain over two days, that the ocean is also and meaningfully green, gray, purple, and many other colors — including gold, in the memorable image of the geochemist Kate Hendry describing the glimmer of microscopic diatoms on the salt flats of the Severn estuary at low tide.

Blue Humanities Round Table (Friday)

The best parts of a small conference come from listening to new things, and also from catching an extension of someone’s work over a beer at the floating bar after the day’s sessions. But in addition to many great discoveries, I’ve seldom had more fun at an academic presentation than I did chairing a Blue Humanities Round Table near the end of the second day. The amazing panel of disparate thinkers and makers included Owain Jones, whose hydrocitizenship project connects Bristol’s to its people and its past; Vanessa Daws, swimographer and immersive artist; Kate Hendry, a biogeochemist whose fields work takes her to both the Arctic and Antarctic ice fields; and my friend from the CT Shoreline Helen Rozwadowski, historian of science and founder of the Maritime Studies Program at UConn Avery Point. I started us out with a general question — “What can you do because of your focus on the sea that you could not do otherwise?” — and our conversation waterfalled down through several memorable twists and turns into a fantastic question period. With thanks to Alexandra Campbell and her twitter-agility, here’s a partial reconstruction of the ship we built as we sailed along:

  • The sea is not a metaphor (quoting Hester Blum) — except that sometimes it is, and sometimes its metaphors rub against and into the real salt water.
  • The sea is history (not-quite-remembering to quote Derek Walcott) — and given a few generations of blue humanities historical scholarship it should hopefully become more richly historicized.
  • The sea disorients and distorts, always and relentlessly, even as humans respond partially to that disorientation.
  • Is water alien? Does it come from outer space or from inside the earth’s core? Why might it matter? (in dialogue with Lindy Elkins-Tanton)
  • The sea’s lack of visibility redoubles its its moral challenge, informs the cultural history of its monstrous depths, and increases the force of its alien elements. (I rambled here about the “Creature from the Black Lagoon” poster art on the walls of Catch-22, the fish & chips place where I ate my first Bristol meal.)
  • Does the weakness of human eyesight underwater attenuate our moral connection with sea creatures? (A Levinas-ian question, though we didn’t mention his name)
  • Can science “illuminate” (Kate’s word) the sea in ways that increase its ethical claims on human subjects?
  • What are the politics of the interdisciplinary ocean? How can the sea speak to social justice, especially remembering the twin horrors of the slave trade and transoceanic capitalism (which two things might actually be parts of the same thing)?
  • Can the sea be a space of hope? (Last question, I think? We said yes. But I’m not sure that we’re sure.)

 

Selfie with mermaid and Vanessa Daws in Clevedon

“Under the sea everything is moral”

The hardest and most evocative phrase of the conference came when Helen quoted Cousteau or one of his fellow sea-utopians in her opening keynote. What might it mean for “everything” to be “moral” beneath the waves? “It’s all subtle and submarine,” says Walcott, thinking about Atlantic slavery and Caribbean beauty. Owain quite rightly objected that the underwater industriousness for which Cousteau was a booster has fouled our waters. The panel speculated together about the morality that emerges from the shared vulnerability of terrestrial human bodies in deep waters. I thought about, but did not share, a terrifying vision of drowning and struggle from Macbeth —

Doubtful it stood / As two spent swimmers that do cling together / And choke their art (1.2)

There’s another way, it occurs to me now as my big green metal bird arcs past the southern tip of Greenland, in which the undersea might be “moral.” It’s not that all undersea activities are permitted or approved, but that the questions we face — what we talk about when we talk about oceans — become starkly and painfully ethical. As mer-scholars, academic selkies, blue humanists, we swim into hard questions about disorientation, about buoyancy, about living-with alien lives. We face questions of social justice and tragic history, of oceanic dislocation and ongoing violence. Moral urgencies splash into marine lakes in the West Country and haunt overcrowded refugee boats in the Eastern Med.

The sea supports and threatens human life. What moral dilemmas fix us from the cold glaze of a fish’s eyes?

Floating bar

Thanks to all who were there this week, and in particular to my hosts at the University of Bristol, the Perspectives on the Sea cluster run by Laurence Publicover, the Brigstow and Cabot Institutes, and all the people who made Marine Transgressions possible! I’m looking forward to my next visit to Bristol already.

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This blog has been written by Professor Steve Mentz, St John’s University, New York. The blog has been reposted with kind permission from Steve’s original blog.

From meatless meat to trustless trust – can Blockchain change the way that we work together to create knowledge in smart cities?

Posted on by janet.crompton
 
Smart Cities apply technology, connectivity and data to the urban experience, but they could easily become Fake Cities. Their factories still produce things – but they are staffed by robots. Their cars still take you where you want to go – but they are driven by autonomous systems. You can hold their digital products in your hands – but only via a smart phone.
In the worst case, Smart Cities trade down authentic human experiences for something artificial, virtual and ersatz. But can the Smart City ever trade-up and improve on the original?Take food as an example. Scientists are perfecting cultured cells to grow synthetic meat in laboratories. Far from producing an unpalatable substitute, the result is said to be nutritious and tasty. As the world’s population grows rapidly, meatless meat is seen as a carbon and resource efficient alternative that could represent “the future of food”.
In their recent report partners in the UnLoCK consortium considered whether Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies could similarly transform another basic human need – by creating “trustless trust.”
But might this be needed?
The argument goes that Smart Cities join-up multiple systems, more than have ever been connected before. The scale and complexity of the resulting ecosystem means that not all participants can expect to have pre-existing relationships with each other. In this context, it is difficult to know who or what to trust.
The blockchain is seen as a way for Information to be securely shared between peers. The important point is that rather than investing trust in one privileged partner, such as a bank, the focus moves to collectively creating a trusted system; one where peers collectively own and update the Distributed Ledger as a single version of the truth.
The UnLoCK consortium partners identify numerous areas where they would like to experiment with the application of this technology, from understanding the environmental provenance of goods and services within supply chains associated with new local approaches to house building, to systems that afford ‘smart citizens’ greater ownership and control of their personal data.
The consortium partners are planning further discussions to explore how to move from theory towards a working prototype. For more details of the UnLoCK consortium contact, Lisa Kehoe Lisa.kehoe@bristol.ac.uk and Stephen Hilton stephen.hilton@bristol.ac.uk
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This blog was written by Stephen Hilton, Director of Bristol Futures Global, and a University of Bristol Cabot Institute Fellow.
This blog was reposted with kind permission from PolicyBristol. View the original blog post.

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.
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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

 

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.

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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

Why cities are crucibles for sustainable development efforts (but so hard to get right)

Posted on by janet.crompton
Figure 1. Rural and urban population trends, 1950-2050.
Fox, S. & Goodfellow, T. (2016) Cities and Development, Second Edition. Routledge.
Sustainable Development Goal 11 outlines a global ambition to ‘make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’. It is arguably one of the most important of the 17 recently agreed Goals, but we’re unlikely to reach it in most parts of the world by 2030.
The importance of Goal 11 stems from global demographic trends. As Figure 1 illustrates, over 50% of the world’s population already lives in towns and cities, and that percentage is set to rise to 66% by 2050. In fact, nearly all projected population growth between now and 2050 is expected to be absorbed in towns and cities, and the vast majority of this growth will happen in Africa and Asia (see Figure 2).

These trends mean that when it comes to eliminating poverty and hunger, improving health and education services, ensuring universal access to clean water and adequate sanitation, promoting economic growth with decent employment opportunities, and creating ‘responsible consumption and production patterns’ (and achieving many other goals) urban centres are on the front line by default.

 

 

Figure 2. Estimated and projected urban population increase by region, 1950/2000 & 2000/2050
Dr Sean Fox, Lecturer in Urban Geography and Global Development, University of Bristol
But cities are complex political arenas prone to the kinds of conflicts that can thwart ambitious visions for transformative development.

To appreciate just how difficult it can be to achieve seemingly obvious and desirable improvements in cities, it is useful to examine some practical challenges. Consider the goal of ensuring access to clean, affordable water for all (Goal 6, Target 1; Goal 11 Target 1). In cities across Africa and Asia, a significant share of households live in informal settlements that lack piped water infrastructure. As a result, most residents rely on water provided by private vendors who sell water by the bucketful from tanker trunks or standpipes that they control. Perversely, the poor often end up paying a significant premium for their water on the open market, while more fortunate residents who are connected to municipal infrastructure pay far less. This perpetuates inequality, both between socioeconomic groups and between men and women (as women generally bear the burden of water collection in such contexts), and it also means that there are groups of people with fairly strong incentives to resist infrastructure investments: the water vendors. And these vendors sometimes take aggressive steps to protect their captive markets and thwart infrastructure development.

A similar dynamic is often at play when it comes to upgrading informal settlements more generally. In many cities poorer households do not have formal (i.e. legally binding) tenure security but rather pay some form of rent to a third party in return for protection against eviction. This form of ‘land racketeering’ is often undertaken by the very politicians and bureaucrats who should be seeking to improve citizens’ lives.
In other words, urban underdevelopment creates profitable opportunities for some, which in turn creates interest groups opposed to change.

But even rich cities, with well-developed physical infrastructure and formal tenure arrangements, often suffer from political gridlock that impedes progress. Consider the city of Bristol in the UK. Bristol was recently voted the best place to live in the UK, yet the city also suffers from dangerous levels of air pollution, which is linked directly to debilitating levels of traffic congestion in the city.

While Bristol’s transport woes have long been recognized, it has proven fiendishly difficult to tackle the underlying problem: a lack of metropolitan-scale transport planning and investment integrated with land use plans. This is due to a legacy of ‘horizontal fragmentation’ and ‘vertical dependence’.
Figure 3. Map of Greater Bristol with council boundaries

Horizontal fragmentation refers to the fact that Greater Bristol—i.e. the functional area of the city as defined by daily commuter behaviour—is home to over 1 million people spread across four different local government areas, each with its own budget, council, transport planning processes, etc. As Figure 3 clearly shows, the local government boundaries (in red) carve up this functional urban region into four artificial parts). Indeed, in some places, such as north Bristol, local government boundaries run straight through clearly contiguous built-up areas (represented as grey). The challenge of coordinating planning and investment across four councils is compounded by the fact that in the past any major infrastructure investment needed to be approved and funded by the UK central government (i.e. the problem of vertical dependence). This support is not necessarily forthcoming. An ambitious plan tabled around the turn of the millennium to integrate city transport with a tram network, and make the whole system more inclusive for low income residents, was rejected by central government. This is a prime example of how political challenges in wealthy countries impede development progress.

In sum, there are significant political obstacles to progress in poor cities and rich cities alike. But this doesn’t mean that progress is impossible. In fact, recognising and understanding these political complexities is helpful in identifying effective courses of action, whether as citizens, activists or policymakers. I doubt we will fulfil the aspirations of SDG 11 in a convincing manner by 2030, but I am hopeful that progress can be made if we approach the challenge with our eyes wide open to the political dynamics that could undermine our efforts.

Blog by Dr Sean Fox, School of Geographical Sciences. Originally hosted by the Policy Bristol blog.


The views expressed here are personal views and do not reflect the views of the funders of our research.

 

The Bristol Volcanology Group: Managing Britain’s volcanic crises

Posted on by janet.crompton

When Professor Steve Sparks moved to Bristol from Cambridge in 1989 to take up the Chair of Geology in the School of Earth Sciences little did he know what was in store for him. His time at Bristol would see him advise the government and become one of the most cited scientists of all time.

Sparks’s extraordinary journey as head of the volcanology group has lead it to study volcanism on every continent and has allowed it to grow from one man to a thriving collective of staff, researchers and students. The world-class science produced by the group has resulted in it receiving the Queen’s Anniversary Prize; the highest accolade in higher education.

 
Professor Kathy Cashman accepting the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher Education

Naturally, this evolution has been heavily influenced by volcanoes.  Unlike many sciences, the progress of volcanology can be episodic- driven by key eruptions and crises. For the Bristol group, two events have defined their work which has, in turn, altered the course of the science:

The eruption on the Island of Montserrat lasted from 1995 to 1997, killed 23 people and displaced several thousand.  As Montserrat is a British dependant territory, the British government was closely engaged in managing the crisis and wasted little time roping in Bristol’s volcanic expertise as Sparks explains: “Bristol was a key partner in establishing the Volcano Observatory on the island and several Bristol staff and PhD students were involved in the monitoring effort in the first few years.” This partnership has continued for the past two decades with Professors Sparks and Aspinall acting as directors of the observatory and heading up the advisory committee ever since. In addition, the research resulting from the eruption has contributed invaluable information to the science of volcanology including causes of volcanic cyclicity and eruptions.

More recently in 2010, the Eyjafjallajokull ash crisis cost the European economy $5 billion through the closure of airspace. In the midst of the decision-making surrounding this closure was a SAGE (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) meeting attended by six volcanologists, of which three were from Bristol. Bristol’s Professor Willy Aspinall, was one of the three called to advise, alongside Dr Matt Watson and Professor Sparks. He described the meeting as a ‘spectrum of people working in many areas from civil aviation to defence’.

 
Eruption column above Eyjafjallajokull

The role Bristol played was pivotal in the national response and was a turning point for the group as a whole as Watson explains ‘Eyja changed how we operated. Volcanology had previously comprised mostly of research produced for other researchers, but this was the first time we could use it practically in a crisis’.

Indeed, not only did it highlight the need for more applied approach to volcanology, it also prompted whole new field of research on volcanic ash involving analysis of ash deposits and advances in remote sensing techniques.  Such challenges were met head on by the group that has a huge breadth of research capabilities, from geophysics to geochemistry to petrology.

Looking to the future, the group’s challenge is to be prepared for new eruptions, wherever they may be.  The researchers are working in regions all over the world including countries such as Guatemala and Ethiopia. Bristol volcanologists hope to expand this aspect of their research through opportunities such as the Global Challenges Research Fund which will draw together expertise from all corners of the group to address volcanic challenges in less developed nations.

 
Keri McNamara looking at a volcanic air fall deposit in Ethiopia, alongside some of the locals 

In recent years, Sparks has stepped down as the head of the group allowing for the appointment of Professor Kathy Cashman as AXA professor of volcanology and the group’s new lead.  Now, 27 years after it began, the group is not showing any signs of slowing down. The question is, when will next episode in the group’s history erupt?

 

This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Keri McNamara, a PhD student in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol.

 

Thank you to Alison Rust, Kathy Cashman, Matt Watson, Willy Aspinall and Steve Sparks for providing information for this blog. 

Bristol Geographers appear in The Times and condemn divisive Brexit rhetoric

Posted on by janet.crompton

The following text comprises a longer version of a Letter to the Editor that appears in print and online in The Times. The letter, signed by over 85 members from of the School of Geographical Sciences expresses our dismay and disillusionment with the recent divisive rhetoric from the government regarding foreign workers and an inclusive society.

Further, we are concerned that this rhetoric is already acting as a detriment to our university’s values, and the research and teaching we do.

The letter starts here:

“As a nationally and internationally recognised research and teaching department, we echo Lord Rees’ recent comments to express our deep concern at the divisive and ‘deplorable’ rhetoric during discussions about Brexit and immigration at the recent Conservative party conference. This rhetoric does not reflect the values we aim to uphold in our university and discipline, nor the diversity of feelings in the country. We are dismayed, further, that our Prime Minister, a former student of geography, seems to have forgotten our subject’s core teachings and values.

We are ‘citizens of the world’. Our department’s research, teaching, and study ranges across diverse fields: from financial institutions to flooding; from philosophy to parliamentary boundary reform; from colonialism and biogeochemistry, and all the planetary processes in between. We come from over 19 different countries, and virtually every populated continent. We come from everywhere. And we contribute to numerous global and local initiatives that seek to make our world a better, healthier, happier place.

What unites our diverse scholarly work is the recognition that how we make sense of the Earth – how we ‘geo-graph’ it – matters. How we understand our relationships to the Earth and each other matters for addressing issues affecting our shared planet, equitably and honestly. For this reason, we highlight our responsibility to one another and the many complex forces that make life possible; we recognise and value the many who make us, always, more than one.

Thus, we stand behind all of our staff and students who come from all corners of the world, and who contribute, as international citizens, to the strength of our department and its impacts locally, nationally, and globally. International staff and students now feel very insecure about their futures here. While we will do everything we can to protect their work and contributions, we hope the government will make clear that their futures – and those of our colleagues across the UK – are under no threat.

The School of Geographical Sciences

University of Bristol”

In order of signing:

Prof Paul Bates, Head of School

Prof Ron Johnston, OBE, FAcSS, FBA (former-VC, University of Essex)

Prof Clive Sabel

Prof Richard Harris

Prof Jemma Wadham

Prof Tony Payne

Prof Alexandre Anesio

Prof Sharon Collard

Dr T Davies-Barnard

Dr Merle Patchett

Dr Alex Farnsworth

Dr Sarah Greene

Prof Kelvyn Jones, FBA, FLSW, FAcSS

Dr Jon Hawkings

Dr Gemma Coxon

Dr Chris Williams

Dr Malcolm Fairbrother

Dr Fotis Sgouridis

Mr Earl Harper

Dr Niall Quinn

Dr Chris Yates

Ms Laura De Vito

Mr Matt Trevers

Dr Fiachra O’Loughlin

Dr Twila Moon

Mr Edward Armstrong

Mr Julien Bodart

Mr Rory Burford

Mr Erik Mackie

Dr Peter Hopcroft

Mr Gwilym Owen

Mr Michael A. Cooper

Mr Tim Morris

Mr Gregory J. L. Tourte

Dr Julie MacLeavy

Dr David Manley

Dr Patricia Sanchez-Baracaldo

Dr Winnie Wang

Dr Mark Jackson

Dr Sandra Arndt

Dr Sean Fox

Mr Nathan Chrismas

Mr Thomas Keating

Ms Catherine Midwood

Dr Luke Ridley

Dr Andrew Tedstone

Ms Jeni Milsom

Dr Dewi Owen

Mr John Hargreaves

Ms Claire Donnelly

Dr Victoria Lee

Ms Natalie Lord

Ms Ciara Merrick

Dr Ros Smith

Dr Rosalyn M. Death

Ms Amy Waterson

Dr Jamie Wilson

Ms Nina Williams

Ms Iskra Mejia Estrada

Dr J-D Dewsbury

Ms Sara Davies

Mr George Burdon

Mr Sam Berlin

Ms Emily Eyles

Prof Jonathan Bamber

Mr Stephen Chuter

Mr Alistair Anderson

Mr Jethro Brice

Mr Matthew Marshall

Mr Oliver Wing

Mr James Crosby

Dr Katerina Michaelides

Dr Jo House

Dr Fran Bragg

Mr Dominik Hülse

Dr Alba Martin

Dr Jeff Neal

Dr Julie MacLeavy

Mr Edward Thomas

Prof Paul Valdes

Dr Franklin Ginn

Mr Samuel Rogers

Mr Alan Kennedy

Dr David Richards

Prof Penny Johnes

Prof Dan Lunt

Mr David Hayes

Mr Mat Keel

List of countries people are from:

United Kingdom

Spain

Brazil

Sweden

Denmark

United States of America

Canada

Greece

Italy

Ireland

The Netherlands

Belgium

France

Colombia

China

Germany

Mexico

Israel-Palestine

Cyprus

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