Focus on CAWR December 2017

Focus on CAWR December 2017 Issue 3

The Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience (CAWR) is driving innovative, transdisciplinary research on the understanding and development of resilient food and water systems internationally.

This research develops and integrates new knowledge in social, agroecological, hydrological and environmental processes, as well as the pivotal role that communities play in developing resilience.

Objectives Project

BOND: Bringing Organisations and Network Development to Higher Levels in the Farming Sector in Europe Funder: European Commission H2020 Duration: 2017 - 2020

CAWR Researchers

Dr. Angela Hilmi , Dr. Julia Wright, Professor Moya Kneafsey, Dr. Alex Franklin, Csilla Kiss, Dr. Sara Burbi and Julia Stew

CU-CAWR is leading an EU H2020-RUR-1 CSA project , 74208- BOND, with a budget of €2,890,691.25, starting 1 November 2017 for a duration of 36 months.

The aim of this project is to reach higher levels of organisation and networking, and develop a healthier, and more productive and harmonious farming sector in Europe for the long term. This will be achieved through (i) drawing up solutions from case studies and success stories and building bonding capital within farmer and land manager groups, ensuring cohesiveness and trust among people; (ii) enabling different organizations to come closer together, building bridging capital to form larger networks; and (iii) building linking capital, developing ties with entities with different interests and powers, to reach a stronger position in decision-making.

Locations

Countries of the European Union and countries in Central and Eastern Europe, a total of 34 countries.

Work Package 2: Learn

Work Package 1: See

Work Package 3: Tell

2. Enable organizations to come closer, building bridging capital to form larger networks, help overcome attitudes and constraints that impede collective action;

Impact

BOND acknowledges the fundamental role farmers and land managers play in the environmental and economic sustainability of the farming sector in Europe, as well as the importance of the way they organise, on Europe’s foods and landscapes.

Our monthly newsletters are an easy way to keep up-to-date with new developments at our research centre. Sign up to find out more about our successful project bids to upcoming events by emailing CAWROffice@coventry.ac.uk

3. Build linking capital, developing ties with entities with different interests and powers, including government, donors, academia, private sector, to reach a stronger position in decision-making; 4. Engage multi actors and policy makers throughout these processes.

BOND’s approach relies on 3 pillars: SEE-learning from success (mobilisation, study tours), LEARN-overcoming constraints (selfanalysis, capacity building), TELL-affirming a position in the policy BOND contributes to unleash, strengthen, and organise, the great landscape (gaming interface, best practice in regulation, lab potential for collective action and networking of individuals, groups experiment), and on involving the youth, women and men (designing and entities of farmers and land managers, focusing on countries a road map for the future), with training sessions and meeting events with lower organisation levels, with a view to creating strong, at every step of the project (interregional forum, national workshops, dynamic and effective organizations that have a voice and a place in regional policy roundtables, youth forum). policy design.

BOND’s legacy will be a menu a la carte of practical processes, More specifically, BOND investigates and addresses the constraints user-friendly, with methods and tools to guide end-users when they and disincentives, and reaches a higher level of participation of decide to engage and benefit from the synergies of working with farmers as follows: others. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant 1. Draw up solutions and build bonding capital within groups, agreement No 774208. ensuring cohesiveness and trust among people;

Objectives Project

RECOMS - Building Resourceful and Resilient Communities Through Adaptive and Transformative Environmental Practice Funder: European Commission H2020 Duration: 2018 - 2022

CAWR Researchers

Dr. Alex Franklin, Prof. Moya Kneafsey, Prof. Michel Pimbert, Dr. Chiara Tornaghi

Locations

Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Finland and England

Impact

CAWR recently secured a €3.9million Marie Sklodowska Curie H2020 Innovative Training Network, on ‘Resourceful and Resilient Community Environmental Practice’ (RECOMS).

Involving a consortium of eleven public, private and third sector institutions from six EU countries, RECOMS will deliver an advanced programme of research and training to a cohort of fifteen Early Stage Researchers. It will investigate and upskill researchers in the role of community environmental initiatives and collaborative forms of natural resource management as a means to achieving adaptive and transformative change at a local level.

This will include, for example, the contribution of such initiatives to tackling protracted societal challenges (e.g. social deprivation, environmental degradation, health and wellbeing) and nurturing the potential of stakeholders and vulnerable groupings to develop greater local autonomy through resourceful environmental practice.

A core feature of the RECOMS programme - both with respect to informing the design and delivery of all the training, as well as enabling and maximising opportunities for knowledge exchange through research and associated outputs - will be the incorporation of a broad range of visual and creative research methods and modes of communication.

RECOMS will be delivered in accordance with the principles of transdisciplinary collaboration and open science. Creative and innovative communication and dissemination activities will be designed in a range of different formats and media (including a specific emphasis on visual outputs) to create awareness, stimulate transformative environmental thinking and drive knowledge exchange amongst public, private and third sector actors, and also civil society more widely. The knowledge and actions generated through RECOMS will be of value to a wide range of target groups, including specialist

Objectives Project

Power to Change: Developing a social impact toolkit for agroecology Funder: Power To Change Duration: 2017-2017

CAWR Researchers

Dr. Luke Owen, Professor Moya Kneafsey, Paola Guzman, Dr. Lopa Saxena

Locations England

This project builds on the work funded by the Just Growth programme during 2015-16.

The aims of the current project are to assess the social impact of small-scale agroecological businesses and food producing enterprises in the UK. The Project has 3 objectives: 1. To trial/pilot the social impact toolkit that CAWR have developed with RFT as part of the Just Growth project (2015-16). The toolkit will be trialled by up to 5 organisations, with CAWR leading and overseeing the trial.

2. To hold a dissemination event (November 2017) to share the results of the toolkit piloting (that will take place throughout the summer of 2017) and learning with the wider agroecological farming community 3. To write an options paper setting out how best the toolkit could be shared and used by other organisations who wish to better understand their social impact and performance.

practitioners, community groups, third sector organisations and interest groups, government officials and other public sector stakeholders.

Impact

Agroecological farming practice is based on the idea that an individual farm should be viewed and managed as an ecosystem in its own right. That means all the activities and interactions on the farm and between the farm and its environment (both social and environmental) must be in balance. Food produced agroecologically has multiple social and environmental impacts. There is however little data available publicly to evidence these impacts.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under The Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 765389 For updates on the project and current recruitment opportunities see: http://www.coventry.ac.uk/research/researchdirectories/current-projects/2017/recoms/

Phil of Sacred Earth, Sussex, introduces us to his pigs

Moya learning about Plotgate CSA, located near Glastonbury, with head grower Amy

The CAWR toolkit hopes to address that by creating a template for measuring impact that is specifically designed to capture the multiple impacts of these enterprises. By developing the toolkit in close collaboration with actual food enterprises it aims to be easy for enterprises to use whilst creating an important evidence base for social investors and policy makers. The hope is that over time more and more enterprises will use it as a way of monitoring and improving what they do and that a growing database will build the case for the importance of agroecology in creating a food system in which the three pillars of sustainability (economy, environment and society) are in balance.

For updates on the project: http://www.coventry.ac.uk/research/researchdirectories/current-projects/2017/power-to-change/

Luke getting friendly with a woolly resident at Plotgate Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), Somerset

Overall aim To evaluate the water quality performance of two different designs of pervious pavement.

Project

Water quality performance of permeable pavements Funder: Formpave and Coventry University Duration: 2016-17

CAWR Researchers Sue Charlesworth, Steve Coupe

Location

The SuDS lab, Coventry UK

Focus on PHD Project

Quantifying the response of macroinvertebrates to gradients of fine sediment pollution

Objectives To simulate the deposition of urban contaminants such as oils and metals from transport processes onto the surface of pervious pavements.

To apply artificial rainfall onto the pavement surface to mobilise the contaminants and flow through the pavement structure.

To measure the level of contaminant retention in the pavement depending upon the design. This design difference is primarily the presence or absence of a geotextile filter fabric to remove particles and chemicals.

Funder: Studentship from CAWR Duration: 2015-2018

Applied oil deposited on the surface of a permeable pavement in the SUDS lab

Researcher

Morwenna Mckenzie

Location England

To assess the levels of biological treatment, of the organic contaminants such as oils, in each design.

Erosion, transportation and deposition of fine sediment (organic and inorganic particles <2mm in diameter) are fundamental processes in the hydrogeomorphic cycle and river systems require a constant supply in order to function. However, excessive fine sediment delivery can cause serious deleterious effects to aquatic ecosystems and is one of the leading causes for failure to meet Good Ecological Status as set out by the EU Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC).

It is important that we employ monitoring methods to be able to tackle this problem, however, fine sediment is very difficult to measure. There are many different methods that each measure something slightly different, and therefore all tell you about a different part

of the problem. The common practice now is to look at the organisms that live within a river bed (specifically macroinvertebrates) to infer the level of pollution present; a process known as biomonitoring.

There are three main aims of this project; â&#x20AC;˘ Review the processes controlling fine sediment accumulation in gravel bed rivers and the response of macroinvertebrates â&#x20AC;˘ Evaluate methods for measuring fine sediment in rivers â&#x20AC;˘ Test the response of macroinvertebrates to different measurements of fine sediment pollution I conducted a national scale study at 21 different sites across England. At each site I took samples of the aquatic invertebrates, fine sediment and other environmental variables.

A stream containing a high concentration of suspended fine sediment

A pervious pavement with a geotextile below the pavement surface for filtering of contaminants Impact

Permeable pavements (PPS) are often the most appropriate sustainable drainage (SuDS) device for highly urbanised areas and can be used for parking areas, low speed roads and landscaped areas. Filter fabrics are used in some permeable pavement designs to trap urban contaminants such as the hydrocarbons and metals from vehicles.

Trapped contaminants that are biodegradable such as oil fractions are subject to treatment by naturally occurring microbes that live below the surface of the pavement. These properties of have been tested at Coventry University since at least 1997 and work is ongoing to test the most effective pavement design from a water treatment point of view.

Design guidance e.g. the UK SuDs manual allows for the deployment of a filter fabric

or geotextile, a few centimetres below the surface of the pavement. Not all PPS include a geotextile, and it was a priority of the partner to explore the environmental impact for watercourses, of the decision to include or exclude the geotextile material.

Results showed that the inclusion of the geotextile improved the retention of sediment in the pavement rather than being released in effluent. Longer retention in the pavement results in more treatment of organics, and as many contaminants such as urban metals are associated with the retained sediments, it is expected that the final results of the study will demonstrate differences between the retention and treatment capabilities of the two PPS designs.

Pervious pavement with no geotextile filter fabric

Impact

The overall impact of the project will be to further our understanding of the effects of fine sediment on macroinvertebrates. The project outcomes, through working closely with the Environment Agency, will help improve national biomonitoring practices so we can help clean up our rivers!

A mayfly (Ephemera danica) collected from a stream bed, a common indicator of river pollution Kicknetting; a standard procedure for collecting macroinvertebrates that live within the stream bed

Selected CAWR Publications Franklin, A., & Schuurman, N. (2017). Aging animal bodies: horse retirement yards as relational spaces of liminality, dwelling and negotiation. Social & Cultural Geography, 1-20 Coupe, S. J., Nnadi, E. O., Mbanaso, F. U., & Newman, A. P. (2017). An assessment of the potential use of compost filled plastic void forming units to serve as vents on historic landfills and related sites. Environmental Science and Pollution Research, 1-9 Kneafsey, M., Venn, L., & Bos, E. (2017). Consuming Rural Connections: Tracing Leeks Back to Their Roots. In T. Marsden, M. Miele, V. Higgins, H. Bjørkhaug, & M. Truninger (Eds.), Transforming the Rural: Global Processes and Local Futures (pp. 221-243). (Research in Rural Sociology and Development; Vol. 24). Emerald Group Publishing Limited Brodie, J., Baird, M., Waterhouse, J., Mongin, M., Skerratt, J., Robillot, C., ... Warne, M. (2017). Development of basinspecific ecologically relevant water quality targets for the Great Barrier Reef. Townsville, Australia: Centre for Tropical Water and Aquatic Ecosystem Research Novoa, A., Dehnen-Schmutz, K., Fried, J., & Vimercati, G. (2017). Does public awareness increase support for invasive species management? Promising evidence across taxa and landscape types. Biological Invasions England, J., & Wilkes, M. A. (2017). Does river restoration work? Taxonomic and functional trajectories at two restoration schemes. The Science of the total environment Vaarst, M., Escudero, A. G., Chappell, M. J., Brinkley, C., Nijbroek, R., Arraes, N. A., ... & Halberg, N. (2017). Exploring the concept of agroecological food systems in a city-region context. Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, 1-26 Matti, B., Dahlke, H. E., Dieppois, B., Lawler, D. M., & Lyon, S. W. Flood seasonality across ScandinaviaÂ&#x2039;Evidence of a shifting hydrograph?. Hydrological Processes Hossain, M. S., Pogue, S. J., Trenchard, L., Van Oudenhoven, A. P. E., Washbourne, C-L., Muiruri, E. W., ... Resende, F. (2017). Identifying future research directions for biodiversity, ecosystem services and sustainability: perspectives from early-career researchers. International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology, 1-13 Rousseau, Y. Y., Van De Wiel, M., & Biron, P. M. (2017). Simulating bank erosion over an extended natural sinuous river reach using a universal slope stability algorithm coupled with a morphodynamic model. Geomorphology, 295, 690-704

Contact us

For enquiries regarding the Centre, our work or courses please contact: Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience Coventry University, Ryton Gardens, Wolston Lane, Ryton-on-Dunsmore, Coventry CV8 3LG. United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0) 24 77 651 679 Email: cawroffice@coventry.ac.uk Website: www.coventry.ac.uk/cawr Facebook: /CovUniCAWR/ Twitter: @CoventryCAWR