Professor Philip Lowe Newcastle University Director of UK Research Councils’

1. Researching Environment - Society Relations Professor Philip Lowe Newcastle University Director of UK Research Councils’ Rural Economy and Land Use Programme

2. Structure • Scientific Challenge of Sustainable Development • Social Science and the Environment • The Importance of Interdisciplinary Research (e.g. Rural Economy and Land Use Programme) • Examples of Upcoming Programmes

3. Scientific Challenge of Sustainable Development • Sustainable development: • implies integration of economic, social and environmental objectives in public and private behaviour • Unsustainable development: • fostered by fragmented thinking and blinkered disciplinary perspectives • Sustainable development: • requires integrated solutions (socio-technical and socio-ecological adaptations) Demands a key role for the social sciences alongside the environmental sciences and technology

4. Social Sciences and the Environment • UK has long track record of bringing social sciences – the human dimension - to the heart of debates on the environment • ESRC Global Environmental Change Programme 1990s - Attitudes and behaviour - Business and environment - Policy and institutions - Sustainability and resource management • Particular advances from research included: - Fiscal policies and development of environmental taxes - Scientific approaches to environmental valuation - Insights into public understandings and responses to risk and uncertainty - Sources of social vulnerability to climate change

5. UK Principles of Sustainable Development Living Within Environmental Limits Ensuring a Strong, Healthy and Just Society Achieving a Sustainable Economy Using Sound Science Responsibly Promoting Good Governance

6. The Environment and International Development Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability (STEPS Centre) http://www.steps-centre.org/

7. Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility • Overarching themes: • The socio-environmental impacts of business • Sustainable consumption and production • Responsible management • Examples of research: • Developing local and regional Sustainability Indicators • Ecological footprinting of major events • New decision tools for improving the sustainability of business activity http://www.brass.cf.ac.uk/ Business Relationships, Accountability, Sustainability and Society (BRASS)

8. Importance of Interdisciplinary Research • Social science increasingly called upon to address solutions to environmental challenges Calls for: • Interdisciplinarity across social and natural sciences • More socially accountable science

9. Interdisciplinary Research • Rural Economy and Land Use Programme (RELU) Key public challenges include: • Restoring trust in food chains • Promoting robust rural economies • Sustaining agriculture in a liberalised economy • Tackling animal disease in a socially acceptable manner • Mitigating threats from climate change and invasive species • Reducing stress on water catchments http://www.relu.ac.uk/

10. Interdisciplinary Research (RELU) Socio-Technical Innovation • Barriers to alternative pest management strategies • Political science, entomology, microbiology, economics Reframing Science • Management of animal and plant diseases • Economics, microbiology, veterinary medicine, epidemiology, plant pathology, science studies Spatiality of Changing Land Use • The effects of scale in organic agriculture • Human geography, sociology, economics, development studies, environmental informatics and modelling, hydrology, civil/water engineering

11. Upcoming Programmes (LWEC) • Living with Environmental Change • Predicting what will happen and where impacts will be • Examining the provision of ‘ecosystem services’ • Finding ways to use limited resources sustainably http://www.nerc.ac.uk/research/programmes/lwec/

12. Living With Environmental Change (LWEC) Over the next ten years the programme will: • connect natural, engineering, social, medical and cultural researchers with policy makers, business, the public and other key stakeholders • focus on the regional and local impacts of environmental change from seasons to decades • provide decision-makers with best information to manage environmental change and protect vital ecosystem services

13. Upcoming Programmes (ESPA) Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation • Improve ecosystem management policies • Loss of services from ecosystems reduces wellbeing • International focus http://www.nerc.ac.uk/research/programmes/espa/

14. Anglo-Chinese Collaborations Examples: • Sino-European Dragon Programme • Ecosystems Services for Poverty Alleviation (ESPA): China Regional Analysis and Research Strategy • Living With Environmental Change (LWEC): seeking a partnership with China

15. Conclusions • Sustainable development calls for new ways of doing science • Understanding complex environment-society relations demands interdisciplinary research combining social and natural sciences • Such interdisciplinarity promises more integrated, more socially accountable and more applicable solutions • Global environmental change demands effective scientific collaboration not just across disciplines but across nations too