Tag: 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:

Why we need a new science of safety

Posted on by janet.crompton

It is often said that our approach to health and safety has gone mad. But the truth is that it needs to go scientific. Managing risk is ultimately linked to questions of engineering and economics. Can something be made safer? How much will that safety cost? Is it worth that cost?

Decisions under uncertainty can be explained using utility, a concept introduced by Swiss mathematician Daniel Bernoulli 300 years ago, to measure the amount of reward received by an individual. But the element of risk will still be there. And where there is risk, there is risk aversion.
Risk aversion itself is a complex phenomenon, as illustrated by psychologist John W. Atkinson’s 1950s experiment, in which five-year-old children played a game of throwing wooden hoops around pegs, with rewards based on successful throws and the varying distances the children chose to stand from the pegs.

The risk-confident stood a challenging but realistic distance away, but the risk averse children fell into two camps. Either they stood so close to the peg that success was almost guaranteed or, more perplexingly, positioned themselves so far away that failure was almost certain. Thus some risk averse children were choosing to increase, not decrease, their chance of failure.

So clearly high aversion to risk can induce some strange effects. These might be unsafe in the real world, as testified by author Robert Kelsey, who said that during his time as a City trader, “bad fear” in the financial world led to either “paralysis… or nonsensical leaps”. Utility theory predicts a similar effect, akin to panic, in a large organisation if the decision maker’s aversion to risk gets too high. At some point it is not possible to distinguish the benefits of implementing a protection system from those of doing nothing at all.

So when it comes to human lives, how much money should we spend on making them safe? Some people prefer not to think about the question, but those responsible for industrial safety or health services do not have that luxury. They have to ask themselves the question: what benefit is conferred when a safety measure “saves” a person’s life?

The answer is that the saved person is simply left to pursue their life as normal, so the actual benefit is the restoration of that person’s future existence. Since we cannot know how long any particular person is going to live, we do the next best thing and use measured historical averages, as published annually by the Office of National Statistics. The gain in life expectancy that the safety measure brings about can be weighed against the cost of that safety measure using the Judgement value, which mediates the balance using risk-aversion.

The Judgement (J) value is the ratio of the actual expenditure to the maximum reasonable expenditure. A J-value of two suggests that twice as much is being spent as is reasonably justified, while a J-value of 0.5 implies that safety spend could be doubled and still be acceptable. It is a ratio that throws some past safety decisions into sharp relief.

For example, a few years ago energy firm BNFL authorised a nuclear clean-up plant with a J-value of over 100, while at roughly the same time the medical quango NICE was asked to review the economic case for three breast cancer drugs found to have J-values of less than 0.05.

Risky business. shutterstock

The Government of the time seemed happy to sanction spending on a plant that might just prevent a cancer, but wanted to think long and hard about helping many women actually suffering from the disease. A new and objective science of safety is clearly needed to provide the level playing field that has so far proved elusive.

Putting a price on life

Current safety methods are based on the “value of a prevented fatality” or VPF. It is the maximum amount of money considered reasonable to pay for a safety measure that will reduce by one the expected number of preventable premature deaths in a large population. In 2010, that value was calculated at £1.65m.

This figure simplistically applies equally to a 20-year-old and a 90-year-old, and is in widespread use in the road, rail, nuclear and chemical industries. Some (myself included) argue that the method used to reach this figure is fundamentally flawed.

In the modern industrial world, however, we are all exposed to dangers at work and at home, on the move and at rest. We need to feel safe, and this comes at a cost. The problems and confusions associated with current methods reinforce the urgent need to develop a new science of safety. Not to do so would be too much of a risk.

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The ConversationThis blog is written by Cabot Institute member Philip Thomas, Professor of Risk Management, University of Bristol.  This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Philip Thomas

Play stops rain: could ‘cloud seeding’ deliver perfect Wimbledon weather?

Posted on by janet.crompton
Image credit: Carine06, Wikimedia Commons

Wimbledon, 2026. Bright blue skies and a wonderful late afternoon sun lights up the lush green grass of centre court. Out strides the British number one and four-time winner, Andy Henman, to the cheers of the excitable, partisan crowd.

Somewhere nearby, at the headquarters of WeatherMod Inc, a group of technicians are busily checking data, confident that their efforts have worked. They have been in contact with two pilots who have just completed their spray sorties and are returning to land at Heathrow’s new third runway. Thanks to the delivery of 4kg of, in its pure form, a yellowish powder known as Silver Iodide (AgI) into clouds upwind of London, it is now raining over the Salisbury Plain, 100 miles away, and the rain predicted for later in SW19 is now 92% less likely.

This scenario probably sounds a little far-fetched, and not least the bit about the repeatedly successful home-grown tennis player. However, weather modification occurs more often than most people are aware. For example, as I wrote that first paragraph I genuinely didn’t realise that a Weather Modification Incorporated actually already exists in Fargo, North Dakota. They, and other companies like them have sprung up over the past few years promising to manage water for crops, clear fog and even protect wedding days from ill-timed hail.

But two questions need further investigation to consider the likelihood of the above scenario at Wimbledon: can we do it (that is, does it work) and should we do it? Neither, it turns out, are particularly easy to answer.

Changing the weather

In order to make rain several processes need to occur. First, small particles known as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) are required onto which water can condense. Then these droplets need to grow to a size where they precipitate out of the cloud, finally falling where and when required.

In our hypothetical scenario we would therefore need to be able to either control or at least predict accurately the concentration of CCN, the rate at which droplets form, and the evaporation rates within the clouds. We’d also also need to have some handle on the rate and direction in which rain would fall.

Silver iodine dumped into a cloud attracts water, which turns into rain.
Smcnab386 / wiki, CC BY-SA

In reality, cloud seeding with AgI – the current default option – only really tackles the first of these processes, forming the condensation nuclei. Even if clouds are seeded, it is still a matter of debate as to whether they actually create much additional rain. While companies claim success, some scientists are more wary. Although other seeding agents (and methodologies) exist, it is worth noting that, in the case of AgI, the nature of the clouds into which the particles are injected will govern the outcome.

Seeding works best in clouds which have a pre-existing mixture of water droplets and ice, as this type of nucleation requires ice-crystals to form. Following the production of CCN we’d then need to be able to predict, through computer modelling, how small droplets will form into rain and eventually fall.

One of the major drawbacks of cloud seeding is a lack of proof that it works: given weather forecasting remains imperfect, how would you know what would have happened without intervention? The second part of the question is arguably even harder to approach. What are the ethics of removing water from one part of the world, even on a small scale, and moving it somewhere else? Is this “messing with nature” or “playing God”? Water is, after all, the most precious commodity on Earth.

Let’s assume for now that it is possible to alter local weather patterns and to prevent or cause rain. This could be used for both good and evil, and the potential for abuse is worth considering. While manipulating the weather as a weapon is now explicitly outlawed by the UN’s ENMOD treaty, there have been efforts to alter the outcome of conflict using cloud seeding.

‘Operation Popeye’: the US used cloud-seeding to extend the monsoon season during the Vietnam war, causing delays on the waterlogged Ho Chi Minh Trail.
manhhai, CC BY

Deliberate and accidental effects from commercial activity also seem possible. That dreamy, rain-free wedding ordered up by an anxious billionaire could easily ruin a school sports day in a nearby town.

The question of attribution is possibly the most challenging. Without any alternative outcomes to analyse, how can you really know what are the impacts from your actions. Some even say, quite incorrectly, that cloud seeding experiments caused floods, such as those that killed 35 people in the English village of Lynmouth in 1952. Expert opinion leans strongly against that idea being correct. Nonetheless, conspiracy theories persist. If, in our hypothetical Wimbledon scenario, bits of Wiltshire flooded, who would foot the bill?

It’s certainly possible in theory to prevent rain in one place by using cloud seeding to induce it in another, upwind. But there are huge challenges and the jury is still out about whether such efforts really work.

There are some very good causes, such as inducing rainfall in Sub-Saharan Africa during drought, where I would sanction intervention. For something as frivolous as a sporting event I feel differently. Just last weekend I played cricket for four hours in unrelenting drizzle (thanks Skip). While not a massively enjoyable experience it was at least familiar, and is part of the essence of both cricket and tennis. There’s some comfort in that.

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The Conversation

This blog is by Matthew Watson, Reader in Natural Hazards at the University of Bristol.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Matthew Watson

Sharing routine statistics must continue post-Brexit when tackling health and climate change

Posted on by janet.crompton

Post-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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It has been argued that one of the EU’s major contributions has been its legislation regarding environmental protection. Some of these bear directly on human health (for example, concerning air pollution levels). Looking forwards, moves to adapt and mitigate the effects of climate change may be greatly facilitated by sharing data on emerging trends across Europe.

An excellent example is provided by analysis carried out on “excess winter deaths” across Europe. Every country in the world displays seasonal patterns of mortality whereby more deaths occur in winter than at other times of year. However the extent of this excess varies between countries even within Europe. Intuitively one might have expected the excess to be greater in countries where winter temperatures are more extreme, yet this is not so. Healy (2003) used data from 14 European countries to demonstrate that in 1988-97, the relative Excess Winter Deaths Index (EWDI) was greatest for Portugal, where the mean winter temperature was highest. Conversely Finland with the lowest mean winter temperature showed the lowest EWDI. Data on mortality were available from the United Nations Statistics Databank and the World Bank, as well as some macro-economic indicators, but Healy also availed himself of the European Community Household Panel survey on socioeconomic indicators and housing conditions. This revealed that high EWDI was associated with lower expenditure on public health per head of population, as well as income poverty, inequality, deprivation, and fuel poverty. Furthermore, several indicators of residential thermal standards appeared to carry influence, whereby countries where houses had better insulation experienced lower EWDI.

A similar study was reported in 2014 by Fowler et al, partly as an update of Healy’s work, this time on 31 countries across Europe for the years 2002-11. The same geographic pattern still seemed to be present, with southern European countries faring worse in terms of winter deaths. However a few countries such as Greece, Spain and Ireland demonstrated a reduction in their EWDI. It is possible that Healy’s study had highlighted the need for improvement in those countries. All 27 countries who by that time were members of the European Union were included in analysis, and use was made of the Eurostat database.

In view of the projected increases in global temperature in coming decades, it might be hoped that the problem of excess deaths in winter will gradually disappear from Europe. Yet the greater susceptibility of warmer European countries to winter deaths compared with colder countries suggests such an assumption may be mistaken. It will be important for carefully collected routine data to be analysed, to investigate any changes in the patterns previously seen in Europe.

My colleagues and I were led to consider whether relatively low temperatures were more threatening to older people than absolute temperature level, and whether this might hold for individuals, as well as at a national level as highlighted by Healy’s and Fowler et al’s studies. We carried out analyses of two European cohort studies, of around 10,000 people aged 60 or over, followed over 10 years. Using daily temperature data for the localities of where these participants lived, we investigated weather patterns experienced by those who suffered major heart attacks and strokes. There was some evidence that cold spells (cold in relation to the month of the year) increased people’s risk over a 3-4 day period. We hope to replicate this finding in other datasets.

Reflecting on the data used by Healy and Fowler et al, it is noticeable that most (though not all) came from EU countries. Some of the data in Healy’s study was held by the United Nations or World Bank. Yet the Eurostat database was a major contributor to these enlightening analyses. Eurostat was established as long ago as 1953, initially to meet the requirements of the Coal and Steel Community. Over the years its task has broadened, and when accessed on 29 June 2016 displayed detailed comparative data on many domains including aspects of health.

It would be deeply disappointing as well as surprising if the UK were in future to withhold such valuable information, or conversely if such pan-European data were to become unavailable to UK-based researchers. This would seem unlikely, as Eurostat seems to draw upon data from EFTA nations as well as the EU, and advertises its data as freely available. It behoves the UK research community to continue to use these valuable data in a collaborative way with EU-based partners, and also to encourage continuing provision of UK data so that our EU-colleagues (both academics and policymakers) may benefit from this common enterprise.

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This blog is by Professor Richard Morris, from the University of Bristol’s School of Social and Community Medicine.  Richard’s research focuses around statistics applied to epidemiology, primary care and public health research.

Brexit, trust and the future of global environmental governance

Posted on by janet.crompton

Post-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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Is Brexit the canary in the mine for global environmental governance? 

Britain’s vote to leave the European Union has troubling implications for global environmental governance. Water pollution, air pollution, and climate change have no regard for political borders. The world needs supranational political institutions to facilitate a coordinated response to these challenges. The EU is a relatively effective supranational institution for progressive environmental governance. EU nations have enjoyed major improvements in recent decades in areas like air quality, bathing water quality, nature preservation, and acid rain. The EU is one of the most constructive voices in global climate governance.

The decision to leave is therefore likely to present some setbacks with regard to regional environmental governance. But more importantly it signals broad disenchantment with supranational political institutions more generally. People resent and distrust them as distant and undemocratic. And it’s not just the British public that feels this way. The impulse to withdraw and disengage is increasingly evident across Europe and the USA.

This trend is all the more worrying when we look at the profile of the average Leave voter. A recent YouGov survey of British voters found that Leave supporters are deeply distrustful of just about everyone. They don’t much trust academics—as Vote Leave’s Michael Gove put it, “people in this country have had enough of experts.” Nor do they trust the opinions of think tanks, economists, or international organisations like the UN. Just 8 percent trust British politicians. By contrast, a majority of Remain voters generally trust academics, economists, business leaders, and international organisations. (Neither group trusts journalists or, perhaps more positively, celebrities.) But, as we now know, voters for Remain are in the minority.

This ‘trust deficit’ is at the root of the post-factual politics that seems to have taken hold across much of the Western world.

Without trust in ‘experts’ such as environmental scientists we will not be able to build an informed consensus about the nature of the problems we face, let alone go about solving them. Without trust in politicians we will not be willing to accept difficult decisions with short-term costs but long-term benefits, including for younger and future generations. Without trust in supranational institutions, such as the EU and UN, we will not be able to coordinate our efforts in addressing many of the greatest threats to human welfare, all of which are supranational in nature. 

There has been much commentary about the generational divide in the Brexit vote, perhaps offering some hope for the future. Younger people supported Remain by a wide margin indicating a willingness to remain engaged with Europe. But younger generations turned out in much smaller numbers and low youth turnout is consistent with the evidence that millennials are less politically engaged than previous generations. They are also less trusting. (See evidence of mistrustful millennials here and here).

In short, young people appear to be more open to international cooperation, but disinclined to engage with domestic politics. In the worst case scenario, this could be a recipe for divisive politics in which motivated minorities on both sides of the political spectrum seize the centrist vacuum to promote their worldviews through formal political institutions.

What then does the future hold? The cacophony of narratives of next-steps is almost unprecedented in British history. No one appears to have a clear plan with an emergent consensus. But there is one potential ray of hope in this political drama. If young people—and millennials in particular—are shocked into engaging more actively and passionately with formal political institutions, the Brexit vote might well turnout not to be the canary in the mine so much as an important moment of political awakening.

Let us hope this is the case. For the future of environmental governance is ultimately in the hands of our worldly but politically disengaged youth.

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This blog is written by University of Bristol Cabot Institute members Dr Sean Fox (Political Economy of Development & Urban Geography) and Dr Malcolm Fairbrother (Global Policy and Politics), both from the School of Geographical Sciences.

Sean Fox

Read other blogs in the Brexit series:

Calling all Bristol environmental postgrads: Join the Cabot Institute Press Gang!

Posted on by janet.crompton

When my friend told me she was off to a Cabot Institute Press Gang meeting, I tagged along on a bit of a whim to find out what it was all about. After realising what important work the Cabot Institute was doing I decided to get involved as a Press Gang member, and have since attended lots of events and written around 18 articles for the blog.  Now I’m writing this post to encourage other graduate students and staff members to join the Press Gang, have your say and develop your science communication skills!

What does it entail?

Being a member of the Press Gang means different things to different people. You can spend as much or as little time as you like performing the main activities of blogging about Cabot-themed news and writing press releases about newly published research from members of the Institute. Blogging is probably the most popular past time of Press Gang members – pick a subject in the news or a recent event or talk you’ve attended and tell the world why it’s important. There are occasional meetings to get together with the rest of the team and talk about potentially interesting subjects or events coming up – usually over coffee and cake!

Events

As followers of this blog will know, the Cabot Institute holds a myriad of events throughout the year covering subject matters relevant to the six Cabot research communities; Global change, natural hazards, low carbon energy, water, food security, and future cities and communities. As a member of the Press Gang, you will often be offered a front row seat to world class events to help with Cabot’s promotion. I’ve attended lectures by popular climate change communicators John Cook and Professor Michael E. Mann, Guardian blogger George Monbiot, Professor Dame Julia Slingo (Met Office), and my favourite science correspondent, Alok Jha!

The Press Gang are privileged to attend special events too; last autumn we visited At-Bristol’s 3D Planetarium to watch ‘Blue Marvel’, a show which examined the solar system and incorporated University of Bristol research to explain what makes Earth so special.

Training

I became a Press Gang member to get more experience in science writing and to try my hand at communicating a range of different kinds of research. As a Press Gang member you can sign up for the excellent training provided by the Cabot Institute and the University of Bristol Press Office. Learning how to communicate complex topics clearly is a critical skill for any researcher, and you will probably find learning how effectively use social media, how to blog or even how to write a press release incredibly useful methods for promoting your own work in the future!

What has the Press Gang done for me?

I’ve really enjoyed writing for the Cabot Institute, and it’s shown me that I’d like to explore a career in science communication/publishing in the future. The work I’ve done for Cabot enabled me to build the skills I’ll need, as well as a portfolio of work, from which I have already benefited. In my free time, I work as a freelance science writer and editor, and I’m a New Media Fellow promoting plant science with the Global Plant Council. I also spent a month as an intern with the plant science journal New Phytologist, and won a student scholarship to attend and write about the UK Conference for Science Journalists in 2014. In each of these roles, my experience as a Press Gang member helped me both to land the job and to clearly communicate scientific principles to the general public.

I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to all of the Cabot Institute team, but especially to Amanda Woodman-Hardy, the Cabot Institute Coordinator and leader of the Press Gang. She works extremely hard to coordinate the training and opportunities that you will receive as a Press Gang member, and I am very grateful for all the advice and encouragement she has given me over the years!

So what are you waiting for? E-mail the Cabot Institute to find out more about joining the Press Gang today!
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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Sarah Jose, School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol.

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:

Cassava virus: Journey from the lab to the field – Settling in to Ugandan life

Posted on by janet.crompton

Katherine Tomlinson from the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Bristol Cabot Institute, is spending three months in Uganda looking at the cassava brown streak virus. This virus dramatically reduces available food for local people and Katherine will be finding out how research on this plant is translating between the lab and the field.  Follow this blog series for regular updates.

I arrived late on Thursday night and spent the weekend getting acquainted with the hustle and bustle of Kampala life. I visited the impressive Gadafi mosque, cathedral, and food markets, which are full of just about every fruit and vegetable you could imagine.

On Friday, I met with my internship supervisor, Dr. Titus Alicai who is the leader of the Root Crops Research Programme at the National Crops Resources Research Institute (NaCRRI); he filled me on some of the exciting activities I’ll be taking part in, including visits to cassava field sites.

I was picked up and taken to NaCRRI in Namulonge on Sunday, stopping off at markets along the way to pick up my food supplies. I am lucky to have Everline looking after me; she’s helping me to settle into Ugandan life. NaCRRI is absolutely beautiful, it’s full of crops including cassava, sweet potato, mango, pineapple, banana, and there are even vervet monkeys running around.

National Crops Resources Research Institute, Uganda… where I’ll be spending the next three months!

At the start of the week , I was given a tour of the institute including the labs where they analyse cassava tubers for nutritional and chemical content; a vital part of the process in developing crops which not only offer maximum disease resistance, and yield but also taste good.

I then visited the molecular biology labs, where they analyse crop samples for the presence of Cassava brown streak disease viruses. This was very familiar with similar equipment to our lab at the University of Bristol. The lab manager discussed the challenges of obtaining all the expensive reagents required and how this affects their work. Other challenges include intermittent power supply, which means they need a stack of battery packs to back up the -80 freezers and PCR machines. I am looking forward to spending some time here, to learn more about the similarities and differences between molecular work in the UK and Uganda.

On Wednesday, I went to the field with some University internship students, who were scoring cassava plants for Cassava brown streak disease and Cassava mosaic disease symptoms. After their training these students will be able to advise farmers about the diseases in their local areas. It was also my chance to see symptoms in the field, where infected leaves showed a distinctive yellowing pattern.

Inspecting cassava plants for disease symptoms with University internship students

I spoke to one student who has a small farm and has experienced Cassava brown streak disease first hand. He mentioned that the disease is very common in his area, and here even tolerant cassava varieties become infected and their tubers ruined.

Characteristic Cassava brown streak disease symptoms on cassava leaves

Today I am meeting with the communications team, to find out about the projects I will be involved with, including an outreach programme with farmers surrounding the NaCRRI site to encourage them to use crop breeds developed by the institute, which offer higher disease resistance.

That’s it for now I’ll be writing another update next week so watch this space! In the meantime if you have any questions please get in touch via Twitter: @KatieTomlinson4.

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This blog has been written by University of Bristol Cabot Institute member Katie Tomlinson from the School of Biological Sciences.  Katie’s area of research is to generate and exploit an improved understanding of cassava brown streak disease (CBSD) to ensure sustainable cassava production in Africa.  This blog has been reposted with kind permission from Katie’s blog Cassava Virus.
Katie Tomlinson

More from this blog series:  

Getting ready to go… cassava virus hunting!

Posted on by janet.crompton

Katherine Tomlinson from the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Bristol Cabot Institute, is spending three months in Uganda looking at the cassava brown streak virus. This virus dramatically reduces available food for local people and Katherine will be finding out how research on this plant is translating between the lab and the field.  Follow this blog series for regular updates.

It’s just three days until I set off on my trip to Uganda, where I’ll complete an internship with the National Crops Resources Research Institute in Namulonge. I’ll be working for three months with their Communications team to learn how research is translated between the lab and the field.  I am currently a BBSRC South West DTP PhD student at the University of Bristol, researching how cassava brown streak disease viruses spoil cassava tubers and dramatically reduce available food for local people.

Image above shows Katherine inspecting cassava plants for cassava brown streak disease symptoms in the School of Biological Sciences GroDome.

Cassava plants produce carbohydrate rich root tubers and are a staple food crop for approximately 200 million people in sub-Saharan Africa. After rice and maize, cassava is the third most important source of carbohydrates in the tropics. Unfortunately, cassava is prone to viral infections, including cassava brown streak disease (CBSD), which can render entire tubers inedible. CBSD outbreaks are currently impacting on the food security of millions of cassava farmers in east Africa; it appears to be spreading westward, threatening food security in many countries.
Spoiled cassava tubers due to cassava brown streak disease (photo credit: Dr. E. Kanju, IITA).
Working the lab, I regularly infect plants with CBSD viruses to study how they replicate, move and prevent plant defence responses. However, in the field there is a much more complex interplay of different viral strains, cassava varieties, white fly population dynamics and environmental conditions which all contribute towards the disease. It’s vitally important that information about all of these contributory factors is shared between scientists and farmers to help control the disease and inform future research.I’m looking forward to assisting with field trials where different cassava varieties are being tested for resistance and meeting the farmers who face the challenges of controlling the disease. I hope to learn how information is shared and distributed and get some research ideas for when I return. I’ll be blogging my experiences on my personal blog and for the Cabot Institute blog.

NaCRRI is in Namulonge, in the Wakiso district of Uganda (photo credit: Slomox, Wikimedia).

Preparation, preparation, preparation…

At the moment, there are a lot of ‘to do’s; making sure I’ve had all the necessary vaccinations, packed factor 50 sun cream, mosquito net, DET and a massive first aid kit! It seems a little over the top at the moment but should stand me in good stead for the adventure ahead…
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This blog has been written by University of Bristol Cabot Institute member Katie Tomlinson from the School of Biological Sciences.  Katie’s area of research is to generate and exploit an improved understanding of cassava brown streak disease (CBSD) to ensure sustainable cassava production in Africa.  This blog has been reposted with kind permission from Katie’s blog Cassava Virus.

 

Katie Tomlinson

More from this blog series:  

Kyoto-Bristol-Heidelberg workshop: Novel frontiers in botany

Posted on by janet.crompton

Botany is an ancient field of science and often has an (incorrect!) reputation for being outdated. The recent plant sciences workshop ‘Novel Frontiers in Botany’ shook off that image by bringing together researchers from Kyoto University, Heidelberg University and the University of Bristol to discuss their cutting edge research and form exciting new collaborations.

The workshop, held in March at Kyoto University, was part of an ongoing strategic partnership between the three Universities and their botanic gardens. It built on previous plant science meetings of the partner institutions, which have already led to ongoing international research collaborations. The plant biology research interests of the three universities, whilst overlapping, incorporate different techniques and ideas, so by working together we can synergistically accelerate plant sciences research across the partnership.

Student-led success

One of the highlights of the meeting was its student-led focus. A team of graduate student organisers, led by PhD student Yumiko Sakai, Kyoto University, designed a programme of primarily short (15 minute) talks given by graduate students and post-docs, which was key to ensuring a wide range of subject areas could be included, from molecules to ecosystems, cell biology to phylogenetics.

I think the student-led aspect encouraged more discussion too; instead of a complete story presented by professors, the speakers typically presented unfinished work, which meant attendees of the workshop gave feedback and suggested potential future directions. Graduate students and post-docs perform most of the experiments that underpin academic research, as well as being the future of plant science research, so it was great to learn new techniques and ideas from each other, as well as building our professional networks and the international research profiles of the three universities. Daily poster sessions and a number of excursions certainly helped to get the group communicating, although I’m not sure how much science was discussed at our trip to a local karaoke bar!

Several potential new collaborations have already come out of the workshop, which highlights its success. PhD student organiser Yumiko Sakai summed up the meeting, “Making new friends in our research field was a wonderful experience! Developing this student-led workshop will unite the young people that undertake frontier research”.

This meeting was supported by funding from the Kyoto University’s Supporting Program for Interaction-based Initiative Team Studies (SPIRITS) and from the University of Bristol’s Lady Emily Smyth Agricultural Research Station (LESARS).

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Sarah Jose, Biological Sciences, University of Bristol.

 

Sarah Jose
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