Tag: policy

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.

 

Interests in Aid and Development: a talk with Myles Wickstead

Posted on by janet.crompton

Ever wondered what a career in aid and development is like? Or how the world’s current development programmes came into being? Look no further than this blog on Myles Wickstead who gave a Cabot Institute lecture and short interview on his reflections and experiences on a colourful career in aid and development.

Among Wickstead’s notable achievements are a position as head of British Development Division in Eastern Africa, coordinating a British Government White Paper on eliminating world poverty and now being an advisor to the charity Hand in Hand International.

An audio recording of Myles lecture can be found above. His talk focussed largely on the inception of the building blocks of international development; the UN, the World Bank and the International Monetary fund. He began by turning back time towards the end of the second World War, in which the atmosphere of global reconciliation bred the need for trans-border institutions such as the UN that had the oversight necessary for peace to prevail.

Many years later, the UN decided to introduce development goals with the aim of reducing global poverty within a given time frame. The first of these was the Millennium Development Goals which were drafted in the UN head quarters with little external solicitation. In fact, Wickstead reminisced that environmental goals were almost completely overlooked and only added when a member of the committee ran into the director of the UN environment department on the way to the copier room…

Wickstead went on to add that a large parts of the Millennium goals were generally quite successful although there was still plenty of scope to be more inclusive. He also dwelt on the new Sustainable Development Goals drafted by the UN in 2015 and the Paris climate summit which, Wickstead claims, represent a much more integrated approach to propel international development into the future.

Below is my interview with Myles in which I question him on his talk and ask him about his career in aid and development:

You mentioned a fair bit in your talk about the importance of tying in environment sustainability with aid and development. How do you see that working in practice in a developing country when sustainable practices can be sometimes be quite anti-economic? 

Yes, the two things are brought together in the Global Goals for Sustainable Development agreed in New York in September 2015.  Let’s take an example of a country that’s well-endowed with forest resources. They could get rich quickly by chopping down the trees and selling the wood. You can’t expect those countries to simply say ‘we are not going to chop our forest down’. Firstly you need them to realise that for the long-term sustainability of their country they need to preserve the  forest. But second, because maintaining the forests helps protect us all from climate change they rightly expect some compensation from the international community to do so. There are (albeit imperfect) mechanisms in place for this. Despite this I do, on the whole, think they are being successfully implemented: take Brazil for example.

There are also examples where – often without the consent of the government – indigenous forests are being cut down to make way for palm oil plantations, with devastating consequences not only for the trees but the wildlife.  In these situations, governments need to be encouraged to take firm action against the individuals or  companies concerned, again with support from the international community as and if appropriate.

I work on volcanic hazard in Ethiopia and one of the things I’ve noticed is the more wealthy urban areas are developing fast with an expanding middle class, but the more rural areas are still subject to a lot of extreme poverty. What part should external aid play in helping this wealth filter down?

It’s a very important question and one I touched on when talking about the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which were in place from 2000-2015.  That period saw extraordinary progress, including halving the proportion of people living in absolute poverty, but many people (for example, those with disabilities or from ethnic minorities) were left out.  It is also the case that urban areas, with generally better infrastructure and more job opportunities, tended to make faster progress.  A lot of people in rural areas were in very much the same position in 2015 as in 1990. Within Ethiopia, a combination of rapid economic growth – supported both by investment and aid  – and good policies mean that the benefits are now being felt more widely.

The role of Chinese investment in infrastructure, particularly roads, has I think been quite a positive one. The Government of Ethiopia has a very clear five year growth and investment plan and they expect their partners to deliver; I remember one case of former Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles requiring a Chinese company to rebuild a road they had just built as it was not up to standard; I am sure they were equally exacting of other companies from other countries.  Not all African governments have that kind of determination but on the whole I think Chinese engagement has been a good thing.  And the fact that Africa was largely unaffected by the global recession following the crash of 2008 was not only because it was not as connected to the international financial system as other parts of the world, but also because China and other countries in Asia continued to buy its raw materials.

What influenced your decision to have a career in Aid and development?

I had lived and travelled overseas a little.  My father was a marine biologist and as a technical expert worked for the predecessors of DFID and lived and worked overseas in places like Singapore, Tanzania, and Jamaica.  So I probably got some of the wish to live and work overseas from him – though alas didn’t inherit the science gene, which passed me by!

I went through the civil service fast stream process, and having successfully negotiated that had to make a choice about which Department I wanted to join.  It was then the Ministry of Overseas Development; a few years later became the Overseas Development Administration of the FCO; and in 1997 became a fully-fledged Department of State with its own Cabinet Minister. Interestingly, DFID remains the most popular choice of all government departments for fast-steam applicants.

Is there a defining moment in your career you want to mention? 

I have been extraordinarily lucky in the choices that I have made – or have been made for me – in terms of where I was at particular time. To have had the chance to run a regional office in Africa; to have been on the Board of the World Bank; to have worked closely with Ministers both as a Private Secretary and in coordinating the 1997 White Paper (the first in 24 years); and to be Ambassador to Ethiopia and the African Union – it was a huge privilege (and very hard work!) to be given these responsibilities.  I ran the Commission for Africa Secretariat in 2004/5, and I suppose one of the great moments was going to present a copy of the Commission’s Report ‘Our Common Interest’ in 2005 to Nelson Mandela.

Someone asked earlier today- how do you keep positive despite the gloomy state of much of the world? My answer would be that the world has made extraordinary progress over the past quarter of a century in pulling people out of poverty, and that we have a real chance of completing the task, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals, by 2030. Of course there have been setbacks along the way, and there will be more – conflict and environmental challenges to name but two. But with political will, and by maintaining a positive focus, I believe we can aspire to a better world both for ourselves and for future generations.

Blog post by Keri McNamara

A local view helps fight the effects of climate change on the ocean

Posted on by janet.crompton

In 2011, a marine heatwave hit the west coast of Australia leading to ten days of above average sea temperatures. The area was already known as an ocean warming “hotspot”, but this particular period was a tipping point, causing dramatic changes to the marine ecosystem. Underwater kelp forests along the coast reduced in density by 43%, with some disappearing entirely.

Kelp Forest. Image: Fastily, CCBYSA3.0

The loss of kelp resulted in an ecological shift, which led to the growth of different kinds of algae as temperate water species were replaced by subtropical and tropical species. Five years later, kelp forest recovery has still not been observed. A few days of extreme heat resulted in apparently irreversible change.

The frequency and intensity of extreme events, like marine heatwaves, are only expected to increase, and their consequences are hard to predict. But while some of these extreme events could be devastating, it isn’t all doom and gloom. Even though human-induced climate change is happening, local steps can be taken to help alleviate the impacts on our marine environments. And by focusing on a localised approach, we could make a positive difference on a global scale.

For example, in Australia, the government of Queensland spent AUS$7m on a 560 square kilometre cattle station in a bid to protect the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Site. This cattle station had been producing as much as 40% of the sediment running into the Normanby River system and ultimately the Great Barrier Reef.

Great Barrier Reef. Image: Wise Hok Wai Lum, CCBYSA 4.0

The very existence of the Great Barrier Reef and its extraordinary biodiversity ultimately depends on the health of the corals. When they are covered by sediment, their ability to photosynthesise is dramatically reduced, resulting in less healthy coral. Unhealthy reefs are less able to deal with predators and other damaging events.

In buying the cattle station the government is able to stem the sediment runoff away from the Great Barrier Reef and provide a healthier environment in which the coral can thrive. This is just one example of scientists using local knowledge successfully to inform ministers to make decisions on the local scale that alleviate the problems faced by marine ecosystems of climate change, over fishing and pollution.

To apply such processes in more places in the world, organising climate information and action must move from a global to a regional scale. Overfishing and pollution can be much more effectively dealt with by focusing on local responses.

The Pacific Islands for example, rely heavily on the tuna fish industry. But they have faced major problems of over fishing and reducing stocks – from both small vessels and industrialised ships from other countries. Only a united front would enable control over stocks and a future for the industry.

So in 1982, a collective of islands focused on the conservation and management of tuna in the pacific set up the Naura agreement. Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Naura, the federated states of Micronesia and Palau, and more recently Tokelau, all signed up to the Vessel Day Scheme for Pacific tuna, which limits the amount of days available for fishing to maintain tuna populations. In the last five years the collective has received global recognition for its sustainable management methods – and an increase in revenue from US$60m to US$360m.

Over in the Caribbean, meanwhile, Antigua has some of the most degraded coral reefs in the region. Overfishing is thought to be a main reason for this as it has reduced the amount of herbivorous fish, resulting in the proliferation of seaweed – a main competitor of the corals.

A sea change

To improve the health of the reef, marine protected areas – and specifically a “no take zone” – were created in 2014 in conjunction with the local fishermen. Within a year, this change in local management led to significant increases in the biomass of target fish species. This allowed herbivore fishes to actively graze on the seaweed biomass, enabling respite and providing recovery time for the corals.

In Fiji, mangrove trees are being planted to combat coastal erosion caused by rising sea levels and increasing storm surges. While a direct benefit to Fiji’s inhabitants against potential harm from the ocean, this action also creates a habitat and a site of refuge for many juvenile marine species that will also be affected by future climate change.

Mangrove trees, Fiji. Image: J.-M. Lebigre, CCBYSA3.0

Lessons can be learned from all of these local strategies which could be replicated in similar environments facing similar problems. But developing these initiatives will depend on our understanding of key organisms and their interactions with each other. These are some of the areas suggested by professors Daniela Schmidt and Philip Boyd, in a commentary on what ocean scientists should consider when informing policymakers.

Small island nations will feel the impact of global changes on the ocean first, so they are leading the way in adaption and mitigation techniques in retaliation to changing climates. With the additional threat of America no longer being a part of the international agreements on global warming, tackling climate change on a local and regional scale may be our only hope.

Article written by Cabot Institute member Leanne Melbourne and originally hosted on The Conversation

After 2016; how to achieve more inclusive food policy?

Posted on by janet.crompton

Having spent my British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship researching forms of governance that aspire to achieve that nebulous concept of ‘sustainability’ in relation to certain parts of the global agro-food/fuel system, it seemed fitting that the last event I attend in this capacity should be City University’s annual Food Symposium.  This year’s Symposium enabled Prof. Tim Lang, who is passing the baton of running City’s influential Food Centre to Prof. Corinna Hawkes, and a number of his colleagues, to reflect on the past 25 years of food policy. But it also provided an unprecedented opportunity to 40 audience members from both academia and civil society to imagine a more utopian future – not difficult in our troubled present – to table their vision of ‘How to do food policy better’. We heard from a headteacher, a producer, a proud ‘Colombian peasant’, a farmer’s daughter, a student, the BBC chef of the year, a former advertiser, a community food network coordinator.  We then went on to hear from a panel of those who have been working to enable such diverse voices to be heard both in relation to the research they have been undertaking or the programmes they have been endeavouring to implement.

While my own work has been predominantly focused on issues brought to the fore in international development, it is clear that inequalities and unequal vulnerabilities exist extensively in the global North, as well as the global South.  Although we as researchers recognise the need for a holistic and systemic approach to food and agriculture, this is rarely translated into more holistic food policy.  But we have seen that policies that do not adopt a systemic approach to food and agriculture may instead produce extensive social, cultural and environmental problems related to food and farming across the globe.

There are so many pressing reasons to change our diets, for our own health, and the health of the planet, but we carry on producing and selling food which is bad for us, and pursuing agricultural production on a scale that feeds such consumption.  While this may not be in the same vein as the productionism pursued in the 1970s and 1980s, agricultural production continues to be tenaciously coupled with carbon emissions. And knowledge alone is insufficient to change this food and agriculture system of mass consumption and supermarket driven value chains.

As we heard a number of times, we are not only going through a period of weak food policy, but the intensive agricultural regime is in crisis.  And there is a lack of progressive consensus as to what any kind of food project should be. Given that 40% of EU legislation relates to food and agriculture, this does not bode well for this soon-to-be-Brexiting-less-than-united-kingdom.

While we can indeed celebrate that the need for ‘sustainable consumption’ and ‘sustainable production’ is generally accepted, and that ‘food and nutrition’ is even on the public health agenda, we also have much to fight for.  For many at the Symposium, there was a palpable anger at the policies that have led to growing inequality and hunger in this country.  While there is an evidential link between low income, diet and poor health, there remains an ongoing rhetoric of ‘blame’ and ‘undeserving’. And low income must in turn be linked with other vulnerabilities, such as gender, infancy, maternity, citizenship status (or lack of it).  But as Prof. Liz Dowler aptly summarised, the circumstances in which people are having to live are being ignored by governments whose own policies have caused them to be in this predicament. So with a growing reliance on charity, such as food banks, people are deprived even of any sense of ‘entitlement’ and ‘rights’, even when it comes to food. Whether or not a human being goes hungry or malnourished should never be dependent on deserving, even on citizenship. And governments, rather than charities, must be held accountable.  Nevertheless, there is a fear that Brexit, and a rise in anti migrant feeling, is going to make inequalities harder.

A Symposium on food policy would be remiss, however, if it did not link government policies with a recognition that access to nutritious food is also determined by corporate power.  This needs to take in supermarkets, fast food chains, the catering sector.  And this is indeed where power lies. And that power does not only involve selling much of the wrong kinds of food to people, but also squeezing the power of farmers who, as many argued, need to be central in finding a solution to the crisis of carbon based food production.  Prof. Terry Marsden suggested the need to build alliances between producers and consumers and take out the power of the middle of the value chain. Although at the Symposium it was widely agreed that there needs to be greater inclusivity of those voices who are affected by, but rarely manage to influence, food policy, I would argue that this view is slightly myopic of the wider agrofood system.  This system is indeed driven by wider agri-industrial policies and corporate interests, but ones which have very little to do with food at all.  Such policies explain the EU Renewable Energy Directive mandating the production of biofuel from prime agricultural land.  And such policies are repeated and repeated in country after country, and drive down incentives that farmers might otherwise have to grow nutritious food – our horticulture sector, for instance, is hardly thriving.  So while an annual Symposium on Food Policy is hugely valuable, and indeed this was one of the best conferences I have ever been to (not least for its inclusion of diverse civil society voices amongst academics), I would argue that food policy cannot be considered without a systemic lens cast much more widely than just food.

Blog post by Dr Elizabeth Fortin, Senior Research Associate, School of Law, and PolicyBristol Coordinator

The Sarstoon-Temash National Park, Belize: Whose land, whose development?

Posted on by janet.crompton

 

View of the Temash River, Toledo, Belize

This October I spent time with the Sarstoon-Temash Institute for Indigenous Management (SATIIM), an NGO which integrates forest conservation with indigenous community development, the only one of its kind in Belize.

The organisation is located in Belize’s southernmost district of Toledo, reachable by a bumpy six hour bus ride from the country’s northern hub, Belize City. Government roadside adverts dot the route advising youngsters to ‘Stay Out of Crime’, and Belizeans to ‘Protect the Cayes and the Mangroves: your social security benefits’. Belize City is beset by gang violence, but high-end eco-tourism is booming in the north around the country’s cayes, beaches, and pristine conservation areas. Over 26% of Belize’s land and territorial waters have been designated as protected areas which play a crucial part in tourism, a major contributor to the economy as its second largest industry, and fuelling growth in many other sectors. The ads tail off by the time we reach Toledo, a safer but poorer district. From here to the River Sarstoon, the border with Guatemala, lie dense wetlands, forest and mangroves, and some of the country’s poorest communities, including many Q’eqchi Maya and Garifuna indigenous peoples.

Over four weeks I spent time here in SATIIM’s office, in the villages they work with, and in the forest, learning about their work and recording the voices of community members. On a visit to the sleepy Q’eqchi Mayan village of Crique Sarco Andres Bo, an active member of SATIIM, explained how the organisation began. Belize has been praised for its pioneering approach to conservation, using a series of legislative acts for protecting areas since gaining independence in 1981. But when it ringfenced a wetlands and forest area in order to create the Sarstoon-Temash National Park in 1994, the government ignored the collective land tenure of many Maya and Garifuna communities in the area, neglecting to consult or even inform them. Villages are largely forest dependent, employing milpa farming, a form of slash and burn subsistence agriculture – but using forest resources such as materials for house building, farming, hunting and fishing on part of their ancestral lands was now outlawed. “We can’t do hunting, we can’t do fishing, we can’t take out logs in there, we can’t have plantations there. But that is land we used, part of Crique Sarco….the vines and sticks which we used to build houses and posts are in those areas,” Andres explained.


Community conservation

In order to try to maintain influence in the area, and recognising that conserving the forest would have a beneficial impact on the surrounding areas’ ecosystems and resources, six villages came together to form SATIIM. The organisation then formed a successful partnership with the Belize Government to monitor the park under a co-management agreement using community led patrols. The community led element is key: SATIIM’s aims are to integrate environmental protection, human rights and development, and their work challenges any notion of conservation which promote reforestation at the expense of or exclusive from the forest communities whose livelihoods depend on it. “If you want to have effective development and effective conservation, the communities must be involved in the development of any plan that affects their livelihood,” explains SATIIM’s Director Froyla Tzalam.

Froyla and the SATIIM office team

Oil and development?

However in radical opposition to the NGO’s approach and in contradiction to the park’s protected status, the government decided to relax its ban on extractive activities and grant oil exploration permits to Texas-based corporation US Capital Energy, who began to cut paths and build exploratory oil drills, wreaking havoc on the forest’s ecosystems. They constructed a major drill site in a low-lying and extremely wet area, where any spills would quickly impact surrounding wildlife and waterways. I learnt more about the site on joining a community forest patrol in the following weeks, which is described in the second-part of this blog series.

The incident brought to the fore tensions between national development, local community interests, and land tenure rights. While environmental protection strategies have been used to bolster the success of the tourism industry and economic development in other areas of Belize, the government had clearly decided to pursue a different strategy in the impoverished and underinvested Toledo District, with Prime Minister Dean Barrow stating that US Capital be allowed to “Drill at Will” in the STNP.

“Are you telling us that we may spend decades protecting an area which over night can be turned into an extractive zone?” Froyla Tzalam

Concerned about the environmental impacts and effect on the villages’ livelihoods, SATIIM decided to fight back. In 2006 they filed a case against the government at the Supreme Court on the basis of its own environmental policy, as no environmental impact assessment has been conducted prior to the explorations. The court ruled against the government, triggering a string of cases in which the communities built the case for their land rights. Rulings from the Supreme Court and the Caribbean Court of Justice have subsequently stated that the government and US Capital Energy acted without the ‘Free, Prior, Informed Consent’ (FPI) of the Mayan and Garifuna communities, a principle defined by the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and recognised in international law. FPI recognises indigenous people and forest communities’ rights to consent to projects in lands that they customarily own, occupy or use. Court cases up to 2016 have reaffirmed tenure rights of the Maya and Garifuna communities in southern Belize, that their traditional land rights constitute property equal in legitimacy to any other form of property under Belizean law. In addition the Supreme Court has ordered the government to conduct work on the communities’ land boundaries and  is ‘supervising’ its implementation.


Choosing development

The arrival of the oil company brought villages into conflict. Some labelled SATIIM as ‘anti-development’ for challenging US Capital. But Juan Choc, Village Leader of Crique Sarco tells me that since promises of job offers with US Capital haven’t materialised, more and more villagers are coming to realise that oil extraction may not be the type of development they need. The few short term jobs that appeared during oil exploration offered poor working conditions and were poorly paid. Better paid roles were reserved for staff with special skills brought in from Mexico. Orange and green paint, US Capital colours, coats the village schools around the exploration site. However the schools remain government funded, and the paint jobs seem little more than a branding exercise. Tangible benefits from the oil company have been few and far between.

Crique Sarco Village School

Community land tenure

SATIIM will now be working on georeferencing their ancestral land boundaries in order to get more solid legal recognition, and focusing on land rights awareness and environmental education. For the moment the low global oil price has meant that the impetus from US Capital has been lost and the drill site sits empty. But as the government has extended their permits to Feb 2017 in spite of court rulings, further drilling remains a possibility. Even once their land is demarcated communities will still have to decide whether they are for oil extraction or against it. SATIIM has been working on a program of environmental education so that communities are able to make more informed decisions about the benefits and risks involved. For Froyla the communities are now more informed, empowered and more ready to fight for what happens in their land: “It is clear when I attend the community meetings now that the villagers have a different vision of development for themselves. So that’s what gives me hope”.

Rachel Simon is a former part-time Environmental Policy MSc student, graduating in 2016. During her time at university Rachel was part of the Fossil Free Bristol University group. Following the completion of her MSc Rachel spent time with an indigenous conservation organisation in Belize, recording voices of land rights activists for the Latin American Bureau’s [http://lab.org.uk/] forthcoming book, Voices of Latin America.

The second blog in this series is available here.

Brexit: can research light the way?

Posted on by janet.crompton

What could Brexit mean for UK science? What impact will it have on UK fisheries? Could Brexit be bad news for emissions reductions? These were just some questions discussed at a Parliamentary conference last week, organised by the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST), the Commons Library and Parliament’s Universities Outreach team.

MPs researchers, Parliamentary staff and academic researchers from across the country came together to consider some of the key policy areas affected by the UK’s decision to leave the EU.

Why does academic research matter to Parliament?

Given the unchartered waters that Parliament is facing as the UK prepares to withdraw from the EU, it is more important than ever that Parliamentary scrutiny and debate is informed by robust and reliable evidence.

Academic research is expected to meet rigorous standards of quality, independence and transparency. Although it is far from being the only source of evidence relevant to Parliament, it has vital role to play in the effective scrutiny of Government.

“Academics can help ensure that we get the best possible outcome for the British public through describing the state of knowledge, setting out comparative knowledge (whether in different territories or over time), and evaluating what’s happening as it plays out” said Penny Young, House of Commons Librarian, in her keynote speech.

Last week’s meeting showcased relevant UK academic research as well as giving participants the opportunity to hear the perspectives and concerns of different groups. With over 100 participants, the organisers made the wise decision to split us up into smaller groups to discuss specific policy areas.  This worked rather well, although most people would have liked to be in several groups at once!

What does the future hold for UK research?

In the session on science and research funding a mix of early career researchers and more seasoned academics set out their top issues. The discussion quickly moved beyond research funding. All the researchers agreed free movement of researchers between the UK, other parts of the EU, and beyond the EU, was a top priority.  Several researchers were concerned that the UK research community would become more isolated as a result of Brexit, making it more difficult to recruit and retain the best academic staff.

The group also discussed what kind of data we needed to gauge the impact of Brexit on UK research.  One researcher argued that if we wait until we have “hard data” – such as statistics on citations, publications and collaborations, it might be too late for decision-makers to intervene in any meaningful way.

Economic Impact of Brexit: New Models Needed

Researchers participating in the session on “trade relations and economic impact” highlighted that research on the economic impact of Brexit tends to focus on trade.  New models are needed that take trade into account, along with other relevant factors such as investment, migration and regulation. Participants also felt that more data on the local effects of trade deals would be useful to policymakers, but there are very few studies looking at such effects because of the many uncertainties involved.

Environment, agriculture and fisheries: ‘Cod Wars’?

What would the loss of subsidies under the Common Agricultural Policy mean for UK agriculture? Participants highlighted that areas such as horticulture and fisheries in particular could end up struggling with workforce retention. On a brighter note, one researcher thought there could be some financial gain for UK fisheries if the UK took back its Economic Exclusion Zone (EEZ), but warned of possible future “Cod Wars” if countries clashed over fishing rights.

Immigration: how many EU nationals live in the UK?

Participants in the immigration discussion group highlighted that we do not have reliable figures for how many EU nationals live in the UK. According to some estimates the figure is around 3 million, but this is based on survey data. More reliable data is needed to make informed policy decisions. Participants also highlighted that while most of the discussion around border control focuses on people, movement of goods across borders was also vitally important.

Energy and climate: who will drive emissions reductions targets?

The energy and climate group considered the impact of Brexit across Europe as a whole. The UK has been a strong driver for ambitious emissions reduction targets for the EU. Would other nations continue to drive such targets? Participants also speculated over whether UK would remain part of the European Emissions Trading Scheme and stay involved with some of the EU’s internal energy market regulatory bodies after Brexit.

Foreign and security policy

Participants covered a huge range of topics from UK-Irish relations to the future of NATO and drug trafficking and border control. The importance of learning lessons from history was a key theme in the session, whether it related to the future of NATO or to major treaty negotiations more generally.

What next…

These conversations were not based entirely on research evidence, not least because it there are simply too many uncertainties for research to answer all our questions on the impact of Brexit. In the end our discussions were based around a mix of anecdote, opinion, and ‘hard’ evidence. Overall it was a very enriching experience and we came away with lots of new contacts and ideas.

Many of the researchers said that they’d had relatively few opportunities to feed into policy discussions with parliament and government and that there needed to be many more meetings like this one!

This article was written for The House of Commons Library Blog Second Reading by Chandy Nath, acting Director of the POST and Cressida Auckland, a POST fellow.

Picture credit: Brexit Scrabble, by Jeff Djevdet; Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC by 2.0)

Independent verification of the UK’s greenhouse gas report: holding the Government to account

Posted on by janet.crompton
In the early hours of October 15th, negotiators from over 170 countries finalised a legally binding accord, designed to counter the effects of climate change by way of phasing down emissions of Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). These gases, introduced to replace the ozone-depleting CFCs and HCFCs for which the original Montreal Protocol was drafted, are typically used as coolants in air-conditioning systems. Unfortunately, like their predecessors, they are potent greenhouse gases, whose climate forcing effect per molecule is often many thousands of times greater than carbon dioxide. 
The Kigali deal, named after the Rwandan city in which it was struck, is a compromise between rich countries, whose phase-out plan will begin as early as 2019, and poorer nations, for many of whom the relief of air-conditioning has only just become available. India, for instance, will not make its first 10% emissions cut until 2032.

Delegates celebrate the finalisation of the Kigali deal. Credit: COP 22

When the deal was finally completed, there was much celebration and relief. Against the ironic drone of several large air-conditioning units, brought in to maintain a comfortable temperature on a stifling Rwandan night, US Secretary of State John Kerry labelled the deal ‘a monumental step forward’.

However, as with the much lauded Paris Agreement, the success of this landmark piece of legislation will rely heavily on accountability. Each nation reports its greenhouse gas emissions, including HFCs, to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It is from these reports that a nation’s progress in cutting emissions can be assessed.
Here at the University of Bristol’s Atmospheric Chemistry Research Group (ACRG), we use atmospheric measurements of these greenhouse gases, in combination with an atmospheric transport model, to independently estimate emissions. Recently, we have used such an approach to estimate emissions of HFC-134a, the most abundant HFC in the global atmosphere. Observations of this gas were taken from the Mace Head Observatory, which can be found on the rugged West Coast of Ireland.
When we compared our emission estimates with those the UK government reported to the UNFCCC, a significant discrepancy was observed; between 1995 and 2012, the UNFCCC numbers are consistently double those derived independently.

The Mace Head observatory is ideally positioned to intercept air mass from the UK and Europe. Credit – University of Bristol

Via collaboration with DECC (Department of Energy and Climate Change), the government body that was previously responsible for the construction of the UKs annual emissions report, we were granted access to the model used to estimate HFC-134a emissions. Analysis of this model uncovered a number of assumptions made about the UK’s HFC markets, which in practice did not add up. Our work has led to a reassessment of the HFC-134a inventory by the government, and a subsequent lowering of the reported emission totals in the 2016 report.

In the wake of the Kigali and Paris agreements, both of which will require accurate reporting of emissions, our work is amongst the first examples of how independent verification can directly influence inventory totals. However, this study represents just the tip of the iceberg. Across the Kyoto ‘basket’ of gases determined to have an adverse effect on climate, inconsistencies between reporting methods are common place. A more concerted effort is therefore required to harmonise inventory reports with independent studies.
In countries such as the UK, where networks capable of measuring these gases already exist, the focus will be on improving the accuracy and reducing the uncertainty of our emission estimates; a step which will likely involve the addition of new sites, new instrumentation and significant investment.
Perhaps more importantly, these methods of independent verification must now be extended to regions where such infrastructure does not currently exist. Emissions from many of these countries are anticipated to rise sharply in the coming years, but are poorly monitored.
In July, researchers from the ACRG returned from Northern India, after two months studying greenhouse gas emissions from the FAAM research aircraft.

The Atmospheric Research Aircraft from the Facility for
Airborne Atmospheric Measurements (FAAM), established by NERC and the Met Office as a facility for the
UK atmospheric science community. Credit – FAAM

The utilisation of different data platforms is likely to play an essential role in enhancing the global network of greenhouse gas observations. It is the responsibility of the research community to ensure continued growth of the measurement network, and improve the availability of independent emission estimates required to verify the success (or otherwise) of climate legislation.



This blog was written for the Policy Bristol Blog by Dan Say, PhD student, Atmospheric Chemistry
Research Group, School of Chemistry, University of Bristol.

Get connected, stay connected

Posted on by janet.crompton

So after a couple months of experiencing the life of being a science policy advisor at the Royal Society, on my RCUK policy internship, I thought it was time to update you on what I’ve thinking about as I come to the end of my internship.

Getting the right people involved…

An essential start to policy advice is to gain a grounding in the areas you are working in, without this, advice would be uninformed, unrepresentative and simply wasting time. So in huge areas such as climate science, the environment and energy, how do you find the right research, how do you find the right people to talk to?

Imagine a stadium full of people at the start of a football match. You need to walk in and find out who is thinking what. Where do you start?

Literature streams

If every one of those people is a research article, it will be impossible to look at all of them. Start with groups and target particular areas that may be relevant, beginning with more general reading but deepen as time allows. None of this should be new to anybody, but it is important to realise that there will be literature you will not be able to find, those people not on the stands in the stadium, but in the tunnels surrounding it. For this reason, and that peoples’ views and research perspectives change with time, like a crowd throughout the game, it is worth following literature streams as much as possible.

Consultations

Consultations can take a variety of forms (email, online survey, postal, formal interview, informal meeting), and the form needs to match the type or group of people you are trying to consult. Don’t try to consult rural areas if rural broadband is problematic for example. But consultations can be so useful for getting current information on research areas and other pieces of work that might be on-going or planned for the future. Often, many of us can be guilty of staying within our known networks, contacts and work areas, but by consulting widely and being aware of those silos is important to get a better understanding of how interconnected problems fit together.

Image credit: Wikimania2009 Beatrice Murch [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) or CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

 

Trends

Amongst all of this, it is always worth taking time out of intense research to think about trends. The timing of policy advice is essential and trends make up a significant part of seeing where opportunities are. It is almost impossible to gain all information one needs from quantitative consultations.

Invaluable information can be gained from formal and informal interviews, good relationship building with the right mix of people, and an open and aware mindset.

It is interesting that often having the ‘right connections’ is seen as an unscientific, unrepresentative and privileged stance. Yet it may be that we sometimes forget how important maintaining and building relationships are in postgraduate research. Post PhD, maintaining good relationships and building positive working environments are key factors for developing your own research projects, or for the wider work place in any and every field. So… take some time to think about who you are talking to, and who you should perhaps talk with next to develop ideas or make new links.

During the last month or so I have been exposed to many of these challenges at the Royal Society. I have found It surprising how many links there are to my own world under the canopy of a PhD and I am looking forward to taking some of those thoughts back with me. Tell you more next time…

(Views in this blog post are my own and do not represent those of the Royal Society.)
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This blog is by Cabot Institute member Henry Webber, PhD student in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, studying the interactions between precision agriculture and archaeology.

Other blogs in this series:

Brexit: A climactic decision?

Posted on by janet.crompton

In the lead up to the Brexit vote, we are posting some blogs from our Cabot Institute members outlining their thoughts on Brexit and potential implications for environmental research, environmental law and the environment.  
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With barely a week to go to the Referendum, the Environment has singularly failed to make itself an issue in the BREXIT debate. Yet it is impossible to explore any aspect of environmental law in the UK without encountering European Law.  It is therefore no surprise that environmental lawyers and environmental groups have been queuing up to express concerns about the implications of BREXIT – Margherita Piericcini’s Cabot Institute blog on the impact on wildlife and habitats is an example.

So why has the environment not become a key issue?  I attended the All-Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group’s event ‘A Climactic Decision: Brexit’s impact on the UK’s climate and environment’ at the Houses of Parliament earlier this month in the hope of finding out why.

Chaired by Mark Mardell, Mary Creagh MP Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee and Professor Michael Grubb (UCL) spoke for remaining. Roger Helmer MEP UKIP European Parliament Industry, Research and Energy Committee  and Lee Upcroft spoke for exit on the topic of Staying in the EU is the best way to protect the UK’s climate and environment.

The first problem that was manifest is that those strongly engaged in climate change and the environment more generally, are convinced of the role of the EU: in the opening vote at the debate all but one person in the audience were voting remain. Equally for those voting leave, climate change may not be a concern to them: Professor Michael Grubb speaking in the debate referred to the ‘twin horns’ of climate change and EU membership to argue that remaining in the EU and climate change action have much in common. Both require an acceptance of expert evidence, acceptance of uncertainty and a willingness to work collaboratively across cultures, surrendering some individual independence in the wider good.

The environment is the one place where BREXIT campaigners do not argue that most things from Brussels are awful. Put simply the environmental case for remaining is that just about all of the environmental law that benefits the UK stems from the EU.  Few countries or regional groupings in the world have the sort of comprehensive environmental laws the EU has, or has had them so long.

The BREXIT speakers in the debate sought to argue that the sorts of environmental action that the EU has adopted were ‘in the air globally’ and the UK would probably have done it anyway.  If that is so, the remain speakers countered, why has the UK ended up in the European Courts so often for not implementing EU environmental law ? All too often when the EU has agreed new laws to protect the environment the UK has had to be taken to the European Court of Justice to secure compliance – for example when the Bathing Waters Directive was adopted, the UK Initially registered fewer bathing beaches than Luxembourg (don’t dive for a map it is landlocked, but it registered each cove round its lakes). It took the European Court of Justice to sort that one, and bring the UK into compliance. The same with urban waste water (sewage) where it took the European Court to force the UK to stop discharging untreated sewage into the sea. And the list goes on. So this does not look as if  the UK ‘would have introduced all these environmental laws anyway’.

The second BREXIT argument was that as the UK leads the EU on climate change, it does not need the EU.  Climate change and pollution do not respect EU borders, so we need global action not regional action, Remain speakers countered by arguing that it is easier to convince 27 other states of our concerns, and then take joint action. Once the EU takes action it has a strong voice on the global stage. Outside the EU the UK would be but one voice in nearly 200 states, a much harder task to convince 200 than just 27. Michael Grubb put it bluntly – the UK has more influence to achieve action on climate change in than out.

A third argument was about free trade. Here the BREXIT speakers argued that the UK would be free to create whatever environmental rules it wanted on its own or in multilateral partnerships of its choice and to scrap those (unspecified) that count as unacceptable burdens.  But as an expert from the floor who had been involved in UK / USA trade negotiations explained, in his experience the UK alone makes little progress in getting decent terms from the USA, until the EU as a whole throws its weight behind the negotiations. When asked about the impact of World Trade Organisation obligations on this argument, BREXIT speakers claimed nobody had raised this with them before. Put simply, the nostalgic world of a UK free to create whatever rules it wants does not exist, in or out of the EU. The WTO Treaty obligations mean states cannot unilaterally impose what can be seen as trade barriers by setting national rules, without ending up in the WTO courts. Only regional treaty commitments protect environmental rules in restraint of free trade from the WTO court. The EU is the strongest example of that sort of trade treaty.

When it came to energy, the BREXIT argument was that EU membership had kept energy prices high,  particularly through VAT and the Combustion Plant Directive closing our coal fired power stations. Yet energy prices across the rest of the EU are 40% below the UK, because of their longstanding commitment to renewables, and Germany in particular continues to use coal by investing in compliant technology.  UK government decisions were identified as the problem. The harmonisation of the energy market will produce £500m a year energy cost savings to the UK by 2020 – quite apart from energy security and the capacity for us to export surplus energy.  The EU’s global muscle has led to reductions in the cost of renewables technical – solar power costs have fallen by 30% as a result for example.

So, after two hours of debate, the remain speakers felt the gains from the EU should be retained, the BREXIT debaters felt that all the good things that have come from the EU would have come anyway, and that there is a world outside of the EU in which the UK will be free to have whatever environmental protections it wants, in a nostalgic world of free nation states. The WTO will have something to say about that – or perhaps the UK will simply scrap so much of its environmental protections in pursuit of deregulation and free trade that we will not trouble the WTO.

You can download a summary of this discussion on the APPCCG website.

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Chris Willmore, Senior Academic Fellow in Environmental Law at the University of Bristol.  Chris is also the University lead academic for Technology Enhanced Learning and currently leads the University Green Academy team which is developing education for sustainable development across the University curriculum.

Read other blogs in the Brexit series:

From the depths of a PhD to the heights of the Royal Society: my first month…

Posted on by janet.crompton
The Royal Society

Back in autumn 2015 I applied for an RCUK Policy Internship. At first I was hesitant. Would it mean time lost in data collection for my PhD? Would I fall behind? And would it actually be useful for me beyond the PhD?

Well, the internship is only three months long, and due to it being RCUK-funded I get an extra three months added onto my PhD deadline. So no time lost!  Another thing that swayed me was the opportunity to broaden my horizons and gain lots of skills that I wouldn’t  have had the opportunity to gain while slogging away at the PhD.

Coming from an AHRC-funded PhD, I had the choice of internships with a whole host of organisations including the British Museum, British Library, the Society of Biology, Government Office for Science (GO-Science) and the Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology (POST). With my interests in archaeology (geophysics, soil science, geochemistry), agriculture, new technologies, the environment, and the role of strong independent science advice, I decided to go for the Royal Society, the UK’s national science academy.

At the beginning of March 2016 I arrived at Carlton House Terrace, London, to dig deeper into what strong science policy advice actually is, and how the Royal Society’s Science Policy Centre provides it.

What I’ve learnt

Science policy advice is about communicating new and existing science to decision makers. Decision makers often lack technical expertise or awareness in some of the areas they cover, thus it’s crucial that they can access good advice from the people closer to the research. Decision making and policy advice also both have a crucial time component which can make or break whether advice is well received and useful, or wasted and forgotten. The challenge is to provide excellent and authoritative advice in a flexible and timely manner amongst an ocean of other competing priorities and other advisors trying to do the same thing.

The Royal Society’s Science Policy Centre is a key player in providing strong independent advice, drawn from experts in all areas of science. Experts come from not only the 1645 Fellows and Foreign members of the Society, but also from all relevant fields of research in academia and industry.

In my first month here I’ve experienced a fast-paced and engaging workplace, with a mix of great people  from a whole variety of different backgrounds. Unlike the PhD, work here has to cover huge topic areas such as energy, environment and climate change. These topics are immensely unwieldy but it’s essential that you  can get up to speed on current and future issues as well as the past dynamics of these topic areas to be able to understand the science and policy demands.

The other interesting side to this work is understanding the wider landscape of these topic areas. It’s not just about considering how academic research can be communicated to decision makers, but also how research feeds into a much wider process that policy needs to cover. How will decisions made affect the private sectors? How do policies impact people and the environment through space and time? Crucially how ‘successful’ are policies and what will policies of the future look like?

Stay tuned

It is an exciting time and so far shaping up to be a great experience! I will be writing a post for each month spent at the Society so look forward to more on horizon scanning techniques, prioritisation, and values within science!

(Views in this blog post are my own and do not represent those of the Royal Society.)
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This blog is by Cabot Institute member Henry Webber, from the School of Arts at the University of Bristol.  His research focusses on the integration of archaeology and precision farming.
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