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Climate change will have a profound impact on built environment performance over the next 50 years. More severe flooding and overheating will lead to more obsolete buildings and premature mortality across the UK and Europe. The research team explored the issues surrounding adaptation of the built environment to climate change, and developed a new model of built asset management that integrates adaptation decision making into the building life cycle. The model is being used by facilities managers and surveyors to produce long term asset management plans, and by central and local government policy makers to inform and develop adaptation strategies.
Meeting rapidly rising food demands at least cost to biodiversity is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity. Since 2005, research in the Department of Zoology has demonstrated that measures to reconcile biodiversity and agricultural production are sometimes best focused on spatial separation (land sparing) rather than integration (land sharing).This work has had a significant impact on policy debate, and has informed policy decisions relating to management of the agri-environment at both national and international levels. Policy statements on increasing food production at least cost to nature now make explicit the potential role that land sparing may have, and place greater emphasis on the need for clear scientific evidence of costs and benefits of different approaches.
African Wild Dogs (Lycaon pictus; referred to as `AWDs' hereafter for brevity) have been classed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) for 22 years. Large, well-managed captive breeding programmes provide a safety net to restore wild populations. However, the management of the AWD population has been difficult owing to an incomplete family record of captive AWDs, which risks introducing genetic disorders caused by inbreeding. A genetically informed management plan developed by University of Glasgow researchers has provided a genetic measure of diversity and establishes a genetically informed pedigree, which is used in the European Endangered Species Programme for African Wild Dogs. This has introduced a more informed means to manage the captive AWD population, to maintain the genetic diversity of the species across the European zoo network (roughly half the world's captive AWD population), with 53 zoos in 16 European countries (and Israel) currently participating.
A body of research on agricultural geography, with a strong regional focus on the Welsh Marches (the English counties bordering Wales), has led to changes in conservation policy and practice relating to rare breeds, primarily at the national level but also internationally; it has shaped farming policy at the regional level, particularly in Herefordshire, specifically leading to increased diversification in the farming sector across the county; and it has stimulated policy debate around the place of farming in society.
Research at the University of Exeter on the links between the Amazon rainforest and climate change has influenced international climate policy, has directly assisted Brazilian environmental policymakers, and has received international media coverage. The underpinning research spans the vulnerability of the rainforest to anthropogenic climate change and the mechanisms behind the Amazonian droughts of 2005 and 2010. Impact has been achieved by stimulating public debate through the media, by contribution to science-into-policy documents produced by the World Bank and for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and by direct face-to-face interaction with UK and Brazilian policymakers.
A research partnership between Edge Hill University and Sefton Metropolitan Borough Council developed innovative methods of identifying gaps in knowledge and understanding about sedimentary coastal dynamics and investigating practitioner needs. The partnership enabled the dissemination of scientific information to audiences across the wider community. The partnership provided a framework which enabled and enhanced integrated coastal zone management (ICZM). Within this framework coastal zone managers were supported in the development of adaptation and mitigation strategies, taking account of both long and short term environmental change. Policy and management decisions are now based upon sound scientific evidence wherever possible, ascertained by research where time allows, with significant scientific, social and policy benefits. Practice elsewhere on the UK's Irish sea coast, and elsewhere in the EU, has been influenced.
The Arctic is undergoing faster rates of climate change than most other regions of the world, with major global consequences. Since the 1990s, Professor Callaghan and co-workers at Sheffield have been at the forefront of determining climate change impacts on Arctic ecosystems. This research has directly led to, and fed into, invited authorship and major co-ordination roles in the authoritative international synthesis reports on climate change impacts commissioned by the Arctic Council and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Through these reports our findings have been widely communicated to international policymakers, the media and society. Callaghan and colleagues have provided policy advice directly to ministers, ambassadors, climate negotiators, and other leaders through face-to-face meetings and presentations, and influenced policy debates at regional to international levels. They have actively engaged in knowledge- exchange activities with Arctic indigenous societies, which are improving those societies' strategies for adaptation to climate change. Through public lectures, the media and authorship of a commissioned textbook, the Sheffield research findings have increased public understanding and influenced the A-level Geography curriculum.
Palaeoenvironmental research in the Ica Valley of Peru's southern coast is revealing how agriculture acted with climate change to trigger major social upheaval in the past. This history is informing and educating people and policy-makers in the present, thereby sustaining sympathetic land use for the future. Specific impacts include a Defra-funded project on Peruvian biodiversity by the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew (RBG), the implementation of Peruvian decrees regarding education and forest conservation, and the establishment of forest-management agreements with major landowners.
Protecting London from the threat of flooding is of prime importance to the nation. Work in the Unit on regional sea-level rise and on the effect of storm surges was used in the Environment Agency's Thames Estuary 2100 (TE2100) plan to assess potential change in risk. The Unit's work estimated a very unlikely maximum rise in sea level of 2.7m by 2100, considerably lower than the previous worst-case scenario of 4.2m. It confirmed that 90 centimetres was the figure that should be used for developing the plan. TE2100 concluded that a second Thames Barrier (estimated cost £10-20 billion at today's prices) would not be needed not by 2030, but may be needed by 2070. Our results have been used to define procedures for the monitoring of regional sea and Thames water levels over the next few decades, and to review decision-making procedures to ensure that the risk of flooding in London is kept within acceptable levels, while avoiding unnecessary costs
Exceptional rainfall in June 2007 lead to widespread flood damage in the UK; Hull was particularly badly affected with 8600 houses and 1300 businesses flooded, the closure of schools and cancellation of many events. At the instigation of the City Council, Hull University geographers produced two influential reports that explained how and why the flooding happened and what might be done to improve flood readiness for the future.
The reports had impact at a national scale. They fed into the findings of the House of Commons Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (published 7 May 2008) and the Pitt Report (a Government Independent Review, published 25 June 2008), which were both tasked with addressing the summer 2007 floods. Significant elements of `The Flood and Water Management Act' (2010), which was enacted subsequently, were informed by our research.
The reports also impacted at the regional scale. Their findings were adopted by Hull City Council, the Environment Agency and Yorkshire Water. Therefore, our research also shaped several practical strategies to improve flood prevention policies and minimise danger, damage, distress and expense in future floods.