Society & Environment research projects
Members of the Society & Environment research group are currently engaged in the following research projects.
The list below may also include a small number of archived projects. In due course, these will be listed separately.
- Addressing Biodiversity Loss: Lessons from Climate Change
- Biodiversity loss is a problem of global significance with serious implications for human wellbeing, compromising our ability to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Despite this, and despite the wealth of scientific evidence on the scale of the problem, biodiversity loss does not receive commensurate attention at national and international levels. To address this issue, we have conducted a series of interviews with key players from across a range of sectors who are involved in discussions about climate change and biodiversity conservation. From these interviews, we have derived a set of 35 statements, which cover many of the important issues that are central to these discussions. This survey is an attempt to find out what people feel about these statements.
- Appraisal, Policy Learning and Sustainability: Towards a New Agenda
- This study explored different conceptions of the role of appraisal (the ex ante assessment of the environmental or sustainability impacts of projects, plans, programmes and policies), with particular emphasis on ways in which such practices may help to modify the beliefs, values and behaviour of individuals and organisations over time. These questions are of considerable importance at a time when rapid development of policy and practice (including implementation of the European Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive from July 2004) coincides with a range of important new theoretical insights into the nature of appraisal and its role in the political process.
- Climate change and lawn growth
- Work has recently been completed on a project with the Director of the University Botanic Gardens, Professor John Parker, on the survival of lawns in drought which involved not only the biotic and soil hydrochemical responses but also the psychological attachment to the lawn which actually explains management actions. The main finding was that virtually regardless of the treatment given to a lawn, it will recover from drought with little or no discernible damage. Additionally, leaving grass cuttings on the lawn from spring through to late summer appears to be of benefit by speeding its recovery from drought.
- Cultural constructions of nature
- This area of research is concerned with the recent move from the purely scientific inputs to environmental management to an understanding of the deeper psychological motivations that are involved in terms of attitudes and values in environmental management (‘psychobiogeography’).
- Environmental management and nature conservation in agriculture catchments
- Since the early 1980's long-term research has been undertaken at Slapton Ley, Devon with several co-workers, research assistants and postgraduates, mostly involving work on solutes, especially nitrate. The most recent development is work on management decisions based on the role of scientific data and the deeper assumptions about nature. Allied to this project is work on the motivations for the formulation and adoption of agri-environmental schemes in Jersey, as well as work of an on nature conservation on farmland in Cambridgeshire.
- Knowledge and Power: Exploring the Science/Society Interface in the Urban Environment Context
- A series of seminars explored conceptions of the social and political world that have underpinned major research programmes on urban environments and regeneration (such as NERC's URGENT and EPSRC's Sustainable Cities initiatives). It also gave critical consideration to the concepts of evidence-based policy and interdisciplinarity.
- Social Laboratories: Engaging with public dimensions of nanobiotechnology
- This project explores the public dimensions of research in nanobiotechnology with the aim of understanding the relationships between science policy, public engagement and nanobiotechnology research in the UK.
- The role and influence of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution
- This is an ongoing project to analyse the role and influence of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, a standing advisory body created by the Wilson Government in 1970. This work contributes to theories of environmental policy and politics, and helps to develop a theory of policy advice. It also documents the history of a unique institution.