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Research conducted by John Turnpenny shaped the recommendations of the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (EAC). In 2010, the EAC addressed the need to embed sustainable development across government policy-making. This followed the closure of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCEP) and the end of funding for the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC). The EAC determined to change how it engaged with experts, while reaffirming and expanding its role in the overall scrutiny of government sustainability policy. Turnpenny's findings formed the basis of two of the thirteen headline recommendations in the EAC's 2011 report Embedding Sustainable Development Across Government. In addition his suggestions helped influence significant changes in the way that the EAC operates, and contributed to its wider impact among other policy actors.
Science has guided national dryland policy in Africa through approaches that have omitted local knowledge, and has informed international policy through implementation of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), previously developed by a Roster of Experts. Our national and district-level research in Botswana has identified routes to increase community involvement in degradation monitoring, and our strategies have been rolled out nationally via agricultural extension workers, allowing knowledge to inform farming practices and land policy. Our analysis of the wider international context has led us to propose new science-to-policy pathways that have allowed the UNCCD to draw more effectively upon both local and scientific evidence.
Effective, equitable natural resource management poses increasingly complex challenges for policymakers and local communities in the context of climate change, population growth and potentially conflicting agendas on biodiversity conservation, livelihoods and economic growth. Leicester research on socio-ecological, culturally appropriate approaches to environmental governance and sustainability has been integral to:
A theme within Professor David Mosse's anthropological research focuses on the relationship between policy, practice and effects in international development. His field-based ethnographic research challenges assumptions about policy implementation and the nature of success and failure in aid programming. His novel approach to questions of policy analysis and policy change has been widely influential on thinking among policymakers and practitioners across a range of organisations, sectors and countries. It has enhanced the capacity for adaptive self-critical understanding of the aid process among practitioners and aid organisations, while also demonstrating the importance of researcher-practitioner engagement in improving the delivery of aid and development programmes.
The Countryside and Community Research Institute (CCRI) has undertaken research providing a sustained contribution to understanding beneficiary-focused EU and UK rural development (RD) policies. This used novel, context-sensitive and mixed-method evaluation techniques to capture complex, systemic impacts and diagnose causal linkages between design and delivery, and policy performance. In so doing it has generated direct impacts in improved RD policy making and evaluation. The research has influenced restructuring in EU policy frameworks for RD and changed England's upland policy. By increasing policymakers' understanding of farm-level behaviours and responses to agri-environmental policy goals, CCRI's research has stimulated better-communicated and integrated advisory approaches.
University of Glasgow research into public sector governance has influenced planning and investment in major transport and infrastructure projects. Transport Scotland's Strategic Transport Projects Review was the first nationwide, multi-modal, evidence based review of Scotland's transport system; as a member of the Board, Professor Iain Docherty contributed to its recommendations, adopted by the Scottish Government in December 2008. His research also shaped the Commission for Integrated Transport's negotiations with the Westminster Government on the White Paper which underpinned the Planning Bill 2008 and subsequent Planning Act 2009; informed the Cabinet Office's 2009 Urban Transport strategy and recommendations; and influenced 2012 investment planning discussions by Edinburgh City Council.
Research needs to engage with global environmental challenges more effectively. How to achieve this has been the focus of studies by academics at Newcastle with their expertise recognised in the appointment in 2003 of Philip Lowe and Jeremy Phillipson to lead the £26million Rural Economy and Land Use Programme (Relu), funded by three Research Councils, the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and the Scottish Government. The Directorship allowed Lowe and Phillipson to experiment with innovative processes for the conduct of research in 94 projects funded under the programme, in particular through instigating ideas of interdisciplinarity and co-production, and to develop techniques for assessing the efficacy of such methods. The insights gained from this effort have had significant and widespread impact on science policy and on organisations responses to environmental challenges such as government departments and agencies (DEFRA, Scottish Office and Food Standards Agency, for example), PLCs (including Wessex Water and M&S), environmental Trusts and more.
This case study is built upon the successful fusion of Spatial Planning with the Ecosystem Approach, translating complex theory into operational outputs for public and stakeholder engagement, which improve policy processes and outcomes across built and natural environments and fringe interfaces. `RUFopoly' and `EATME tree' are co-produced outputs, maximising engagement in learning spaces within game and web-portal formats respectively. For example, the Welsh Government has used both tools to design emerging policy frameworks (testimonial1). The novel research model employed builds research teams that integrate academic, policy and practice participants within a collective journey of (re)-discovery maximising reflective practice and social learning.
The UK's decision to introduce voluntary modulation led directly from research conducted at Newcastle University between 1993 and 2008 which demonstrated conclusively that broadening the scope of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) subsidies beyond supporting agricultural production through `modulation' would greatly benefit the environment and rural economies. The success of modulation in the UK then led to compulsory modulation being introduced throughout the European Union (EU). Up to 2013 modulation has generated outstanding impacts by providing more than €10 billion of new funding for environmental management and rural development across the EU.
Trade and finance are the lifeblood of the global economy. Research conducted within the International Political Economy (IPE) cluster has tracked changes in how trade and finance are governed. This case study demonstrates the impact of the IPE cluster on a range of beneficiaries including national governments, international organisations and non-governmental organisations. Via the £4.3M ESRC-funded Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation (CSGR), members of the IPE cluster have influenced national economic policies, shaped policy debates on international regulatory regimes and informed the attempts of non-state actors to raise ethical standards in transnational corporate practices.