markreed

[markreed]

A day in the life of my new job

“So, what do you do?”. This sounds like a simple question, but for a highly specialised academic, explaining what you do to your friends and family can be a real challenge. It is a question I am being asked a lot at the moment because I’ve just started a new job at SRUC.

So here goes: I’m a Professor of Rural Entrepreneurship and Director of the Thriving Natural Capital Challenge Centre. “Sorry, can you say that again?”, I hear you ask. My Great Uncle and Aunt messaged me yesterday to say, “AMAZING and totally beyond us!”. An old University friend congratulated me this morning on Facebook, and then wrote, “You're going to have to call me and let me know what that all means!!”

That’s why, when a colleague was asked if I could write a blog about a day in my life, I thought this might be an opportunity to explain my new job, and show people what a day in the life of research Professor looks like in lockdown.

After walking my two youngest children to the school bus at the end of our road with my wife, I started my day with a short walk in the forest behind our house in Aberdeenshire. I’d noticed an interesting paper on Twitter earlier that morning, and read a blog about it while I was walking. It turned out to be so interesting that I sent it to a colleague in Defra who I thought might be able to use it in some of her policy work.

My first task of the day was to comment on a report for a Defra Technical Committee I sit on (it is trying to phase out the use of peat in horticulture, to protect peat bogs and the climate). However, I received a message that a colleague was off work with a bereavement and had only drafted a few notes for his part of a research proposal about “treescapes” that had to be submitted for internal review later in the day. Apparently, I was the only person in the team who knew anything about his work, so I told my colleagues I would do what I could to try and draft something. The Defra report would have to wait (the meeting isn’t till tomorrow).

Sadly, I had made limited progress on the proposal before it was time for my first meeting of the day, which was with a postdoctoral researcher on the largest project I’m currently leading, called Resilient Dairy Landscapes. Between interviewing farmers, she is reviewing schemes that allow businesses to invest in sustainable agriculture making it economically viable for farmers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and lock up carbon dioxide in the soil. We were meeting with two experts to review her work, to see if we can develop a scheme like this for the UK.

Next up was Jane Atterton, Director of the Rural Policy Centre. She was one of a small number of people I spoke to before applying for the job, and she never seems to stop smiling, despite the fact that she had been up late the night before trying to write a report for Scottish Government. I asked her what she had been writing about, and it turned out I’d been doing some similar research, and before we knew it, half our time had disappeared. But as a result of our chat, she had an idea about how she was going to resolve the issue she had got stuck on the night before. We spent the rest of our time working out how we could help others across SRUC work more effectively with policy-makers, and by the end of our hour, we’d started designing a training programme.

We finished our meeting just in time for me to join colleagues from Defra and Natural England and researchers from SRUC, James Hutton Institute and the Universities of Newcastle and Manchester, to kick off a new research project. An hour and a half later, we had long list of actions to kick off our work together. Our Government colleagues need results by the end of March, so we’ll be flying by the seat of our pants on this one, but everyone is brimming with enthusiasm, so I have high hopes!

That gave me half an hour for lunch, but I hadn’t checked my email since the start of the day, and by the time I’d tidied that up, I only had ten minutes to grab something before my next meeting. I was meant to be interviewing the Vice Chancellor for Research at University College London, about the work he is doing to transform their culture and enable their researchers to achieve more real-world impact. The interview was for a paper and book I’m writing on impact culture. However, there was a diary mix up and we had to re-schedule. Instead, I took the time to return to the research proposal for my bereaved colleague.

My last meeting of the day was at 3 pm, with Jane again, and SRUC’s Head of Knowledge Exchange and Innovation, Fiona Burnett. She was interested to know how I could work with her to enable all SRUC’s new challenge centres and the rest of the SRUC community to use their research to make more of a difference. I told her about some work I’m doing with another postdoctoral researcher, Regina Hansda, and two other colleagues, analysing impact strategies from Universities around the world, in which we’ve identified two types of impact strategy. SRUC’s current strategy is primarily about “achieving” impacts, and its ambition and track record on transforming agriculture is one of the things that attracted me to the job. But we all agreed that more might be done on “enabling” impact by building capacity and creating new opportunities for researchers to help others with their work.

That gave me just half an hour to finish off that research proposal, before I had promised to go for a run with my eldest daughter. But my email inbox was swelling once again. So I replied to as many as I could in ten minutes, and sent a holding email to my UN colleagues who had been fielding questions all day from a working group I chaired for them yesterday. I’ll send my own replies and get to my other actions from the working group tomorrow. In the end, my version of the proposal was very far from the quality that my bereaved colleague would have been able to produce, had he been available. But I sent my work to the group with my apologies and best wishes for the internal review. Hopefully it is good enough.

There were still so many other urgent things on my “to do” list, and unanswered emails in my inbox (6,457 to be precise right now). But whatever I had managed to do today would have to be good enough. It was time to be dad now.

It was 4.45 pm but it was already dark outside. As we ran, I listened to my daughter’s stories about her friends and the new one way system at school. I gradually became aware of the stars above us, and envisaged us running, from above: here and now; in this place in Scotland, and this moment of history. And I felt profoundly grateful.

[markreed]

I’ve signed this open letter to protect the rights of researchers to a fair, transparent hearing when accused of misconduct

I’ve added my name to the letter below, despite not being comfortable with everything it contains, on the basis that there need to be procedures for fairly and transparently dealing with allegations like these. The sort of witch hunts that are now possible through the Internet are a risk to us all if we do not defend the right to a fair hearing of the evidence, whatever the truth turns out to be…

Read the open letter by Marc Olivia

Email Marc to become a signatory to the letter

For the full background:

Read the open letter concerning scientific misconduct in the European Soil Science community by early career researchers, including a list of the websites that published the original accusations that prompted the letter

Read the latest email from Artemi Cerda, against whom the allegations were made, which includes links to three other responses to the letter from members of the soil science community:

From: Artemio Cerda Gmail <artemiocerda@gmail.com> Date: Tuesday, 6 June 2017 at 23:17 Subject: A letter against false accusations. You can reach Marc Oliva in oliva_marc@yahoo.com to sign the letter.

Dear colleague,

Some colleagues took the initiative to reply the group of young scientists that were using false information to damage the SSS division of the EGU and the colleagues that built a dream during a decade.

The team that make the SSS successful was enthusiastic and young. Some of them did not have a job for years, but still they keep working for the group and the scientific community. I did not see any of the signees during the years that SSS was small and need the effort of everybody.Now, some “other young scientists” want to put some doubts on the work done and on the awards were fairly given to the best candidates by independent committees (unique at the EGU where the young scientists awards are only decided by the President of the Division…. except in SSS division where Artemi Cerdà changed this presidential system to a committee system following the Medal awards of the EGU. I  already replied to the accusations and you probably received. But now, an independent scientist took action. Marc Oliva wrote a letter and I am asking to write your name and support the initiativeYou can reach Marc Oliva in

oliva_marc@yahoo.com

to sign the letter.

This letter is the fourth one written down by different scientists to reply the inconsistent accusations we received as members of the EGU and SSS division:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3Ow3OGyZKLrdkxkdm9neE9Ua1E/view

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BzgrIV0K0-unMEttc0gzTTlVN2s

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=forums&srcid=MDk3NjE0NjA3NTM0Mzc2MjA0NjYBMTE0NjkyOTI3NTQyMzI5ODMyODABaWlpSWp1TGxCQUFKATAuMQEBdjI

I fully support this initiative of Marc Oliva. In my opinion the complains of the “young scientists” or “the authors” or “signees” as they call themselves is  the riot of the privileged, the ones that have the privilege to have funding, to have strong research groups and financial support, and as you can see in the list, from the richest countries in Europe, the ones with well stablished scientific funding.  I already explained my position in a letter and this is why I suggest that you will read the letter attached and if you support the ideas you can contact Marc Oliva in oliva_marc@yahoo.com to sign the letter and add your name to the list.I already did and I am feeling proud to support the ones that worked hard for the scientific community for years, the ones that developed new scientific sessions at the EGU, the ones that each year were present, the ones that developed webpages, blogs, townhall meetings, courses (many of them), and also organized networking dinners to make the EGU an enjoyable place to visit every year.And I must say that also I am signing the letter against the ones that did nothing for the soil science in Europe and now they judge the work of others. Against the ones that never organized a scientific session, a course, a townhall meeting …. and accuse to the ones that successfully did year after year. The ones that claim for an award and they never were nominated. To be nominated you need to be trusted by your colleagues.This is the riot of the privileged against the enthusiastic and hard worker researchers

And I wish to stop this in the benefit of the soil science and the EGU, and also to give justice to the ones that built the SSS with their daily workI wish, I hope, you will sign the letter

Professor Artemi Cerdà 


Departament de Geografia. Universitat de València. Blasco Ibàñez, 28, 46010-Valencia. Spain

artemio.cerda@uv.es

/

http://www.uv.es/~acerda/

www.soilerosion.eu

http://www.soilerosion.eu/miembros/artemi-cerda

[markreed]

My introduction to the first BCU Knowledge ExCHANGE Research Centre away day last week

[markreed]

Why I've voted for Scottish Independence

As an environmental researcher who studies knowledge exchange, I love living in Scotland and working with the Scottish Government. I didn’t vote for the “greenest Government ever” but rather than feeling ashamed of some of the priorities that have surfaced south of the border since that statement was made, I am genuinely impressed with the integrated approach to environmental policy that’s being taken in the Scottish Government’s Land Use Strategy. They are now piloting an approach that genuinely engages with local communities about competing priorities for land, and integrating local preferences with scientific evidence to enable Scotland to adapt effectively and fairly to climate change. 

I love how easy it is to identify the relevant science advisors and meet up to discuss relevant research, or set up a lunchtime seminar to present your research findings. I was recently commissioned by Scottish Government to evaluate the impact of the research they fund, and I believe that the Scottish Government’s new Centres of Expertise are one of the best examples knowledge exchange anywhere in the world. If someone in the policy community needs evidence, they make a “call down request” and the Centre (which includes academics from Universities as well as the Scottish Government’s Main Research Providers) circulates the questions to the relevant experts, and where necessary does the research and provides the evidence in a set period of time. There’s effectively a hotline between key experts from the academic community and those who need to use research in the policy community. I tweeted Environment Minister, MSP Paul Wheelhouse, last week to see if he’d be able to address a conference I’m helping organise, and he tweeted back the next day that he’s trying to change his diary to join us. In contrast, it took me almost two years to work out who was responsible for a set of guidelines I wanted to inform in UK Government. Although I now have a great working relationship with the relevant team in Defra, I was passed from team to team in Defra and DECC with no-one knowing who was actually responsible for what seemed like an eternity. I’m under no illusion that any policy is ever truly “evidence-based”. Policy decisions are just that; political decisions. But in Scotland, I have found credible evidence that environmental policy decisions are at least informed by rigorous evidence, and they very often are in fact evidence-based.

Of course, much research evidence is highly uncertain, and politicians of all colours through history have played on uncertainty to justify policy inaction. I think this is not too dissimilar to the way that the “no” campaign are amplifying uncertainty around the issue of currency union. Personally, I believe that there are more uncertainties associated with voting "yes", but I think there are a large number of certainties associated with voting "no" that as an academic I would very much like to avoid. Principle among these is the strong likelihood that the UK will leave the EU if the Conservatives were to win another term and offer an in/out referendum. Academic colleagues of mine in Switzerland were complacent about their recent referendum on quotas for immigration from other EU countries, never thinking the campaign to restrict movement would win. They were immediately barred from all future EU research funding. The arguments made by the national conservative Swiss People's Party were remarkably similar to those being made in England by the UK Independence Party for leaving the EU. I believe that voting "no" to Scottish Independence is a far greater risk to research funding than giving power to the Scottish Government to remain in Europe. 

I have to confess that I’ve not quite worked out yet what the implications will be for me personally, living in Scotland and working in England, but I’m content to give that headache to my accountant. I’d rather not be distracted by niggles like this from the bigger issues, given how big those issues are. For me, this is about making democracy work. Given how politically distinctive Scotland is compared to the rest of the UK, I believe that there is a compelling argument for the full powers of self-Government. I think it is hard for many academics to make their views known on this issue, given how important it is for those of us who work closely with Government to be politically neutral. But for me, this isn’t a political issue. Independence is about democracy delivering political power to whoever the electorate votes for.

Mark Reed is a Professor of Interdisciplinary Environmental Research at Birmingham City University and Research Manager for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s UK Peatland Programme. This article is written in a purely personal capacity and does not necessarily reflect the views of BCU or IUCN. For more information, visit www.markreed.webeden.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @lecmsr.

For more stories like this, visit Academics for Yes.

[markreed]

I’m sitting on a crowded train speeding north, on my way home from the biggest day of my career. Embarassingly I’m having to wipe tears from my face, I’m so overwhelmed by the emotion that is suddenly hitting me, now I’m by myself and it is sinking in, that we actually did it. For anyone who’s followed my blogs at Sustainable Learning, you’ll know that I’m not averse to a bit of emotion, but this is still really embarrassing.

Yesterday, I introduced the UK Peatland Code to delegates at the IUCN Peatland Programme’s Investing in Peatlands conference in York, after which the Environment Minister, Richard Benyon, formally launched the pilot phase of the Code’s operation, to a packed audience of NGOs, businesses, peatland researchers, practitioners and members of the policy community.

Standing on the platform, before I got on this train, I thought back to the day 12 years ago, when I took a toilet break while preparing a lecture for my PhD supervisor’s climate change class, and was suddenly struck by an idea that ended up changing the course of my career. It was the simple realisation that most UK peatlands are agricultural land, and so anything that increased carbon storage in peatlands could count towards Kyoto targets under the newly negotiated Article 3.4, and so have a value on international carbon markets. We published the idea in a paper that appeared the following year, and I found myself on a path that eventually led to yesterday’s launch. Its probably not a particularly original idea - I suspect many other people had exactly the same idea around the same time, because it was pretty obvious really. But for me personally, it was my Eureka moment. I still vividly remember stopping at the top of the stairs in the then School of the Environment at the University of Leeds with the smell of the toilets leaking through the doors as the idea occurred to me. 

It has been an increadible personaly journey from the entrance to the School toilets to the national stage; from the unconfident PhD student (I actually had a panic attack during the lecture I was preparing that day and got heckled by one of the students) to being able to deliver my ideas with conviction and passion. Like many of my academic friends, I don’t feel worthy of the “expert” label, and if people treat me as an expert, I can’t help feeling like I must be some kind of fake. But for the first time yesterday, I felt like I had something that was genuinely worth listenning to, that I had earned the right to talk about.

  A shakey start

The journey had a very shaky start, and we very nearly had a fatal crash on the first bend. After an unsuccessful proposal to the Natural Environment Reserach Council (NERC) led by a colleague, I managed to pull together a concept note for a RELU Scoping Study while collecting data for my PhD in the Kalahari. When I got home, I managed to persuade my friend Klaus Hubacek to take on the role of Principal Investigator, as I wasn’t eligible to play this role as a PhD student. With Klaus, I pulled together a team, based primarily on who I was friends with and liked working with at the time (there were a few of us with some relevant expertise as well!). To our suprise, RELU took a punt on us, and gave us the Scoping Study to explore our ideas and come up with a full proposal. 

The first step was to interview people with an interest in uplands in the Peak District National Park. This was made possible by Moors for the Future, who had contacted me, after reading an article in the Guardian about our research paper that made the link between peatland management and carbon markets. The next step was to run a focus group with a selection of the people I’d interviewed. 

We’d budgeted for a professional facilitator, but when I called her up to say we’d got the funding, she informed me that £450 was her day rate, not the cost of the job, and we couldn’t afford her. Klaus came up with a plan B - his friend, an American living in Austria, facilitated workshops all the time. If we could pay for him to come to a conference in the UK, he would run the workshop for us. It seemed like a great plan, until unannounced and unplanned, our facilitator decided to start the workshop by giving a technical presentation about his engineering research on Austrian canals - I could see the gamekeepers, hill farmers and agency staff shifting uneasily in their seats, wondering if they’d come to the wrong event, and looking increasingly affronted at what they were being subjected to. We finally started the workshop, and to my concern (and increasingly horror), the facilitator just stood there looking wise and nodding while everyone argued with each other. All the old, rehersed arguments came out, and became increasingly heated, and there was no intervention from the faciltator. Break time came and went, and still he stood, nodding sagely, saying nothing. At this point, humble PhD student though I was at the time, I decided it was time to intervene, and I told everyone it was time for a break. I immediately asked the facilitator what was going on, and he confessed that he couldn’t understand a word that was being said, because everyone was speaking in such thick Yorkshire accents! 

Plan B was to run some exercises with the group that didn’t involve discussion, so we got people writing and prioritising ideas in a quite basic Multi-Criteria Evaluation. I had vetted everyone we’d invited and we’d taken a long time working out who to invite. However, there was a group of game keepers at the end of the table, who had come with their colleagues un-invited. This group were taking a long time to complete the task so I went to help them. Apparently they all understood what they were meant to do, but they still weren’t doing it. I went over it with them again - they definately understood, but they were just sitting there. By this time, all eyes were on the end of the table and I asked them what was wrong - why weren’t they doing the task? And to my utmost humilation and shame, one of them admited in front of the whole group that they were illiterate. I went bright red and was speechless - at that point, I really wanted the ground to swallow me up. I was mortified by what I’d just done. Eventually I announced that we would be taking an early lunch break! 

At lunch, it rapidly became clear that there was no plan B that didn’t involve either reading, writing or discussion, so I ended up facilitating discussion while our facilitator took the notes. We got to the end of the afternoon, and just when I thought we’d somehow managed to survive the day alive, our facilitator announced that everyone would take it in turns to say what they’d thought of the day, and whether they’d be prepared to collaborate with us on the full proposal. At that point I gave up and thought, “that’s it - the project is dead - its all over”. And sure enough, everyone in turn told us that they’d hated the workshop and told us never to do this to them ever again. However, every single person told us they were willing to give us another chance. During those interviews, I had gained sufficient rapport and trust, that they were willing to overlook the terrible events of that day, and give the team another chance. 

Then came the task of writing the full proposal. We had till 5 pm the day before the deadline to get it finished, to make the last post - we just had to write the reference list and it would be finished, until one of our colleagues who not contributed until then, suddenly decided to do her edits, and rather than uploading a new version, deleted the almost finsished version before replacing it with the old version that she’d based her edits on. A mad dash ensued, in which one colleague held my bike by the front door, while another stuffed the last copy of the proposal into an envelope and into my bag, before I jumped on my bike and raced to the post office, jumping two red lights to make it with two minutes to spare! Then we waited. Everyone else we knew who had applied got their responses and were successful, but we didn’t get anything. Weeks after we’d heard about our colleagues successes we went to the pub as a team to commiserate - obviously we were among the projects that would be informed they’d been unsuccessful. We’d just about come to terms with our failure when Klaus visited his School mailbox, which he usually did once a month or so, and disovered that there was a letter waiting there from RELU, saying we’d been funded. He had assumed they would have emailed him! We then discovered that we had very little time left to respond to the reviewer comments, but we managed to pull together a response very quickly and sent it off with renewed hope! And sure enough, we were successful!

  Our journey into policy

This however was only the beginning of our journey into the mysterious world of environmental policy. We had been advised that the landowning community were likely to be highly skeptical of our work, and that it would be crucial to get them on our side early on if we were to have any chance of success. So our first task in the Scoping Study was to interview the key opinion leaders in the landowning community. We thought long and hard, and decided that I should be the one to do the interview because I had a British accent, and I dug out a hideous V-neck sweater my mother had given me years ago to wear for the occassion. It was hot in the office where I was doing the interview, so I took my sweater off, only putting it back on to go out of the office, through the open plan area where everyone was remarkably smiley when they saw me. I dissected the interview with Klaus and another colleauge in a crowded cafe over lunch, before going our separate ways. It was only when I got home that my wife asked me why I was wearing my V-neck back-to-front! 

The meeting was a success and doors started openning in the landowning community - I put it down to the V-neck jumper! But the unintended consequence of this success was that the conservation community immediately viewed us with suspicion because we were working with the landowners. It took another two years before I felt we were really able to collaborate effectively with English Nature (now Natural England) and others. The local Defra officers were very friendly, but making links to national policy teams proved extremely challenging. I called various people and visited Defra in London, asking how we could adapt our research to meet their needs, but no-one knew us and I don’t think they had any reason to trust that would actually deliver anything that would be of much use. We made a bit of a break-through when we submitted a response to a consultation on the Heather and Grass Burning Code, based on our interviews, but then the person with whom we’d formed a relationship retired, and we were back to square one. There was one person in Defra who’s job remit covered the area we were working with, and I met with her on a number of occassions, but no matter how much evidence we brought, more evidence was needed to make the case for actually acting on anything we’d done. The risk averse character of this particular individual meant that for the first three years of our research, we made very little inroads into national policy. 

The breakthrough came when Philip Lowe, Director of RELU, persuaded me to do a RELU placement with Defra. Through RELU’s enquiries, I was allocated to a team of economists working towards the 2011 Natural Environment White Paper. Suddenly I discovered that there was real appetite for the ideas emerging from our research within Defra. There were probably a few factors that contributed towards this appetite. Partly I had the highly trusted RELU brand behind me, and many of the team had heard us presenting at RELU conferences, so they were primed to listen. Partly, I was in a different sort of position on placement and was viewed more as an “insider”. And partly I think it was down to the personality of the people in that team, who were far less risk averse when it came to the science, and were prepared to accept the evidence as it stood and act where there was concensus, allowing the science to continue developing in parallel to policy development. I then applied for a series of Defra R&D projects and was successful (I’m not saying that there’s any link between my placement and this success obviously), which meant that I was able to continue working with this team in Defra for much longer, on a paid basis. And of course, Defra was keen to listen to the lessons emerging from the work they had funded. 

In parallel with this, I had become involved in the IUCN’s UK Peatland Programme, who’s goal was to acheive the restoration of damaged peat bogs across the UK. Clifton Bain, the Director, already had high level policy contacts in Westminster and across the devolved administrations, but he didn’t have contacts at the level where things were actually done, so I was able to introduce him to my civil service contacts in Defra. In this way, decision-makers within Government were getting high level messages about actions they could take to protect peatlands at the same time as being reassured from their teams within the civil service that these ideas had an evidence base and coud actually be put into practice in policy terms. 

For years, one of the key sticking points preventing any kind of policy action was the seemingly contradictory evidence coming out of the research community. Different researchers were communicating their findings to Government and the media seperately, presenting findings from different sites over different time-scales and creating a confusing and apparently contradictory picture. For me, the pivotal thing that made it possible for the policy community to act, was the IUCN Commission of Inquiry on Peatlands. This reported in 2011 and was underpinned by a series of technical reviews of all the evidence currently available, led by leading figures in the peatland research community. This was supported by a series of conferences bringing together the peatland research, policy and practice community. This process made it possible for the research community to agree where there were areas of concensus, and where there was disagreement and uncertainty (where more research was needed). The concensus was that done properly, in the right locations and when the benefits are considered over the long-term, peatland restoration represents a net climate benefit, that can also enhance water quality and wildlife. Questions still remained about exactly how big the benefit was likely to be under different circumstances, and how to cost-effectively measure the climate benefits in a market system. But rather than waiting till everything became crystal clear and delaying action for years, Defra was prepared to act on key areas of concensus and initiate the process of developing the checks and measures that could govern a credible market for peatland restoration. 

Two years later, with funding from NERC’s Valuing Nature Network to develop the route map and from Defra to actually develop the Code, we now have a draft Peatland Code. Talking to Defra colleagues over beer after the launch last night, I was told that this was a great example of “open policy-making”. I had never heard of this phrase before, but apparently it is the idea that Government isn’t the only source of policy, and that often Government is better placed to facilitate groups of experts sitting outside Government to formulate policy with them, in their areas of expertise. As an estate owner with sporting interests himself, the Minister takes a personal interest in peatland management, and apparently decided to throw out the majority of the carefully crafted words supplied by his team, and come up with his own speech. It was littered with examples from his own experience working with peatland restoration projects, and what seemed to me to be a genuine enthusiasm for what we’ve been doing. In his talk, he wasn’t concerned with the details of how the Code worked, seemingly prepared to trust the work of his team, who in turn had trusted us to develop much of the detail with them overseeing what we did, and giving us access to the policy expertise we needed. It made me realise just how much of our joint success was based on trust. I had forgotten just how hard it had been to build that trust in those early days, and how close we had been to loosing it, right at the outset. And as a result, yesterday’s launch felt equally owned by us all. One of our colleagues from Defra was moving to a new department, but chose to set his leaving date after the conference, so he could see the work he’d done with us come to fruition - he wanted this work to be viewed as his legacy. For me, that was the ultimate expression of trust - we had worked so closely on developing the Code, that this was as much his legacy as it was mine, or anyone else’s.

Looking around the room as I spoke yesterday, there was a significant proportion of the audience who I knew had helped us a various points in our journey. It was an amazing feeling to know that what we had acheived was so genuinely a group acheivement. There is no way that what I had brought to the table was sufficient to get us anywhere near our goal, but each of the other protagonists in this story only had part of the answer and couldn’t get there by themselves either. So often, that’s where the story ends - and its all a bit dissapointing. I think the crucial difference in this case was that all the key people held one core value in common: mutual respect. This is rare between disciplines, but even more rare between academia and the policy and practitioner communities. But in this case, we have been blessed by some rare characters who have been prepared to look beyond labels and assumptions, and trust each other enough to work together as equals. If anyone had told me as I paused to think outside the toilets in Leeds all those years ago, where that thought would take me, I think I might just have peed my pants.

Disclaimer: this is my personal story from my own perspective, in parts misted by the clouds of time - I apologise if I have remembered any parts of this story wrong, and don’t mean to cause offense to anyone who is mentioned. Please send your comments so I can publish them below if you’d like to retell any part of this story from your own perspective!

[markreed]

It’s not what you know, it’s who you know: expanding your network to expand your impact

A number of recent studies have shown that the more collaborators you have, the greater the impact your research is likely to have. Publications from large interdisciplinary teams who work in multiple institutions are more likely to be used by other researchers in their work, than single-authored, mono-disciplinary papers from teams based within a single institution [1, 2, 3]. Since officially becoming a “jack of all trades” when I finished my interdisciplinary PhD in 2005, I’ve found myself bringing together these sorts of teams to address questions about the natural environment. My interest in working across disciplinary boundaries was motivated by a desire to work on real world challenges (that don’t happen to fit neatly into disciplinary boxes). And to tackle these challenges I’ve increasingly found myself going beyond academia and collaborating with policy analysts, agency staff and land managers, all working together as equals, to ensure that the research that we do together, really does make a difference. In my experience at least, those studies are right: the wider the range of people I’ve collaborated with, the greater the impact we’ve had. And I’m now casting the net even further, with my move to Birmingham City University.

One of the big attractions for me about coming to work at Birmingham City University is its focus on doing excellent teaching and research that is all about helping local communities, and delivering benefits for wider society, both in the UK and internationally. Equally for me, this move is about working with an interdisciplinary team of people who are going places, that I really want to be a part of. When I decided to start looking for a new job, I decided not to look at any job adverts because I wanted to work with people I already knew I enjoyed working with. So a sent a couple of emails and tweeted that I was in the market for a new job, and in the space of a month, I had a choice of four great jobs.  

I can honestly say that I’ve never been happier than I am now, working in the Centre for Environment and Society Research at the Birmingham School for the Built Environment. Partly this is because I’m part of an interdisciplinary team of people who share with me the same fundamental approach to research and teaching. Partly, I am now discovering, it is because this team spirit is part of a wider institutional culture where people value BCU for its friendliness. I’ve been bowled over by the positive, “can do” attitude of everyone I’ve come into contact with so far, which has supported me to submit four research proposals to the Government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs during my first three weeks in the job. With this attitude, and all the new collaborators I’ll be working with over the coming months, all I can say is: watch out students; watch out world!

Watch a home-made video I made about my thoughts on building successful interdisciplinary teams: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhhNtzjMY4g

Visit my website at: www.markreed.webeden.co.uk

  References:

Redon R, Ishikawa S, Fitch KR, et al. (2006) Global variation in copy number in the human genome. Nature 444: 444–454.

Jones BF, Wuchty S, Uzzi B (2008) Multi-university research teams: shifting impact, geography, and stratification in science. Science 322: 1259–1262

Bordons M, Gómez I, Fernández MT, Zulueta MA, Méndez A (1996) Local, domestic and international scientific collaboration in biomedical research. Scientometrics 37: 279–295

[markreed]

Speech for RELU debate on protecting our countryside

Speaking for: protecting our countryside can save the Earth

My argument is two-fold. First, that there are a number of things we can do to protect our countryside that really do have global consequences. And second, whether or not you accept that this is possible or efficient, it is simply the right thing to do.

So what can we do to protect our countryside that might have global consequences?

In the Sustainable Uplands project, we’ve shown how protecting the carbon stored in Britain’s peat soils can help fight against global climate change. These soils are our biggest carbon store – more than is in all the forests of France and Germany combined – and if it ends up in the atmosphere, there’s a possibility that it could create a positive feedback, creating runaway climate change. But there are simple things we can do to manage our peatlands more sustainably, and to restore damaged peatlands so they can take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and lock it up as new peat where it can’t do the global climate any harm

Restoring our peatlands can also help protect important species like dunlin and golden plover. I would argue that by protecting species that occur nowhere else in the world, your local actions really make a global contribution. You might argue that there are more species under threat in the world’s rainforests than in British uplands, but I’d challenge you to argue that their species are more important than ours. Every species that goes extinct is a tragedy, and we can do our bit to protect those on our doorstep

You may think that whatever we can do on this tiny island will always pale into insignificance in the face of the huge environmental challenges we face globally. You could also argue that action in other countries would be far more cost effective than tackling challenges closer to home. And you might be right.

But for me, at the end of the day, this comes down to what we each hold dear and believe is right. Scientists don’t tend to “do” feelings, but I believe that what defines us as humans (and makes us so successful) is our ability to empathise – put ourselves in other people’s shoes. It is our ability to empathise that enables us to form strong social units; to co-operate. As anyone who has loved a pet will know, empathy can extend to non-humans too, and if we put our minds to it, even to future generations. And so empathy dictates that even if our actions may appear insignificant, even if they don’t work, we owe it to our fellow humans to try; to do what we can. And if we were to all do what we could to protect our local countryside, whether here or in the Amazon, we know that we could achieve something truly great.

True, it may be possible to save more species and carbon for less money by protecting Indonesian peatlands from palm oil plantations. But I believe that we have a moral responsibility to protect what’s left of our own countryside before telling others to protect what they’ve got. It is us in the developed world who have caused many of the global environmental problems we face today because of the way we developed historically, often at the expense of our countryside. We benefitted economically, and now I believe that we rich nations have a moral imperative to do what we can to fix the problems we created. We support development in the global south as long as it doesn’t harm the environment, while saying we can’t allow anything to stand in the way of our own development because we’re in the midst of an economic crisis. We want developing countries to halt deforestation, but our agricultural land is far too valuable to plant trees on. We want people and wildlife to co-exist in the global south, but aren’t prepared to re-introduce predators that might maul our lambs...

When I was doing my PhD in the Kalahari, I met a man who proudly told me how many lions he had killed – he told me their technique: they would drive after the lion in their 4x4 till the lion was too exhausted to run any further, and then they would approach it as it lay in the grass, and shoot it at close range. To my Western ears, this was horrific. But my reaction was incomprehensible to the lion hunter – these animals were killing their calves, in some cases even their children. Why on earth would you want to protect the lions rather than your children and your livelihood?  

It all boils down to your values at the end of the day - what’s important to you. It’s not just about what nature is worth to us (billions of pounds if you believe the National Ecosystem Assessment), or we can get from nature if we protect what we’ve got – clean drinking water, a stable climate, a tingle down the spine when you unzip your tent and see the sun rising over the hill you’re about to climb. It’s about what we value in life. It’s about who we are. And it’s about acting on that, no matter how small and insignificant you think your actions may be. Protecting our countryside can save the Earth. It can also save our humanity. 

[markreed]

Best practice Payments for Ecosystem Services: what can the UK learn from existing international guidelines?

http://homepages.see.leeds.ac.uk/~lecmsr/GlobalPESguidelines.htm

[markreed]

Closing Plenary for ACES 2011 Conservation Conflicts conference

I would like to spend 5 minutes reflecting with you on what I’ve heard from the various presentations and discussions that have taken place over the last few days, and use two pieces of work from our artists in residence to think about key lessons that have emerged for me personally from this conference, and to answer some of the questions Steve pose at the outset, questions about: • The role of science and evidence • The role of academics • How to expose underlying causes of conflict and deal with them • Top-down versus bottom up approaches • And how can we link academics and stakeholders to improve trust and tackle conflicts For those of us who saw Huw Warren’s performance at the Lemon Tree on Monday night, you will remember Huw saying that the exact reason for the structure he used in the piece that arose from my conversation with him was now lost in the mists of time. I wondered if it might be worth trying to remember that conversation, to explore what his composition might be able to tell us about conservation conflicts? Our conversation started at the river in the valley that Helen Denerly’s studio is built in. For years, a heron had visited that particular spot in the river, and Helen sculpted an iron arch over the place where it stood with a tone poem about the heron, by the Orkadian George Mackay Brown, inscribed in runes along its edge. On one side of the river was improved pasture, on the other side, rough grazing, turning to moor and forest. The arch was located at the intersection between a whole series of different land uses, and with the river, seemed to connect them all together. I wondered to Huw if it might be possible to capture through music, this intersection of uses and the layers of differing values that lead to so many different benefits and to so many conflicts. I had no idea how that might be possible through music, but felt there was something structural about this layering of uses and meanings, which he might perhaps be able to use? So in the piece that Huw wrote, there is a tonal arch that repeats, at its core – small arches that go up and down, each slightly different, all building into one great over-arching tonal ark that forms through the whole piece. As I was listening to him play, I found myself standing by the river with him again. I could see the light reflecting from the river on the underside of Helen’s arch, creating a thousand overlapping arches dancing within arches – my eye was tracing the arch itself from one side of the river to the other, and I was slowly becoming aware of the ark of sky over my head. An arch is a self-supporting structure, but as we all know, if you take out any single stone, the whole structure collapses. Of course, this is very much like the self-supporting structures that exist in the natural world, and the structures within structures that occur naturally all around us – populations of species, co-existing within habitats, which in turn are part of a wider ecosystem. Take out any stone and the whole structure collapses. But what I as a conservationist might see as an assemblage of species and habitats, my wife is likely to see as a spectacular view (I have a nasty habit of missing the view for looking at the roadside plants); my children are more likely to see it as a place to collect what they call “beasties” (insects to the rest of us); the farmer is going to see what we’re looking at as their livelihood. Perhaps my children’s children will have a far greater appreciation of the carbon locked up in the vegetation and soil that makes up this landscape – especially if they are grappling with the consequences of letting that carbon return to the atmosphere. We all see a slightly different arch when we look at this landscape: each of these arches is a human, cultural construct – even conservation itself. And each of these constructions can, under certain circumstances, be vulnerable to collapse. So do we try and build our conservation arch stronger, replacing stones with solid iron, as Helen did? Or do we stop and look harder, and notice the many other arches we had previously overlooked – and perhaps go further, and spend some time sitting under one of those arches, reading the runes, absorbing what it is to be a farmer, to be a child of our children? And this brings me to the key thing I’ve learned from this conference: empathy. If you remember nothing else about what I’ve said, remember this one word: empathy. Empathy is simply being able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. My dictionary defines it as the power of being able to enter someone else’s personality and imaginatively experience his or her experiences. For me, Helen Denerly’s sculptural work is as clear a demonstration as could be possible, that we are all capable of empathising with non-humans too. Only by experiencing what it is to be each of the animals she sculpts could it be possible to capture their essence with such power. I believe empathy is a skill we all need as conservationists, and it is something we can learn and always get better at. But for many of us, this is a fundamental challenge though: to practice empathy we have to accept that we might not always be right; that whether we agree with the basis of their arguments or not, other people have different and often deeply cherished perspectives; we need to learn how to respect these as valid opinions, so we can truly engage with and learn from each other, whether we are learning from other academics from different disciplines or from members of the policy and practice community. This means accepting that there may not be one objective truth that we can reveal through science, but that there are multiple, competing ways of explaining the world and our place in it. The sooner we can accept this more messy, multi-layered way of looking at the world, the sooner I believe we will be able to start really doing research hand-in-hand with the people who depend on the species and habitats we are trying to protect. This will mean compromise, but I believe in the long-run, it will also mean that we can achieve goals that we all share, far more effectively and with far less conflict.

[markreed]

What is confidence?

Confidence is knowing who you are, where you’re going, and why you’re going there. It isn’t bluster and bluff. If confidence is about knowing who you are, it is about having an honest estimation of your abilities (both strengths and weaknesses) – and that is the definition of humility. So real confidence is borne of humility, not pride. A lack of “loud confidence” is in fact a great strength, if this belies a far more powerful “quiet confidence”.

[markreed]

Tips for Dealing with Interpersonal Conflict

Face it as soon as possible - don't hide from it. There is a very small chance it will simply go away, and a very significant chance it will grow bigger and more intractable with every day you hide from it

Have a conversation about "what happened" but taking pains to avoid apportioning blame. Focus on the future rather than the past, trying to understand enough (and no more) to be able to deal with what happened

Recognise there are always many sides to any story - they probably feel just the same as you do, and there's a good chance they're just as upset with you as you are with them. Therefore seek out what role you played in the conflict - what did you do that made things worse? How could you have done things differently and do things differently in future? This isn't about "taking the blame" - it gets you off the attack, them off the defensive and you both onto a constructive discussion of how you might both do things differently in future

Make your goal to find a constructive way forward that works for you both, not getting an apology

If you have been wronged, focus on "I feel" rather than "you did". How you feel is incontestable, avoids blame and stops people becoming defensive. Find out how they feel and why they feel that way - get beneath the anger

Try and get to the heart of the conflict - the majority of conflicts are about something completely different to what's really at stake. The same argument will resurface in different guises again and again until you resolve the underlying issue. Don't be afraid to ask "what's this really all about" or probe in more subtle ways. Sometimes the person you are in conflict with isn't aware if the underlying reason for the conflict themselves - it may be something buried very deep. That shouldn't stop you trying to read between the lines. If you think you know what's really going on, it may or may not be appropriate to talk about this, depending on how buried it is, and how well you know each other. But you should always act on this, rather than the thing on the surface that's triggered the conflict.

[markreed]

The danger of a single story

Notes for talk at launch of Centre for Sustainable International Development, 14th September 2010

  I’d like to start with a personal anecdote if I may. Last night I was reading the story of Noah’s ark to my 3 year old daughter before she went to sleep:

·         I always knew that the rainbow was about a promise, but all the stories I had when I was young were full of animal pictures, going in two-by-two – perhaps it was the environmental researcher in me at an early age, but I always read it as a story primarily about the value and diversity of life

·         But the re-telling of the story I read to my daughter only had one page with animals on it – it was a story all about relationships and trust – relationships of mistrust between people in a broken society, the relationship of trust and interdependence that grew over 40 days and 40 nights between Noah, his family and the animals, and Noah’s relationship with God.

·         I guess every translation of the Bible must bring out different nuances, and with every re-telling in Sunday schools and books, people use Noah to tell their own stories in their own unique ways, for their own purposes...

  For me, this is very much like science – good research is like a good book:

·         It is about telling stories that provide people with new insights into the world around them

·         That change the way they view themselves, and the people and world around them

·         That ultimately lead to new ways of doing things

  But there is never one single narrative – one way of telling the story:

·         Some researchers like to simplify complexity as much as they can, so that they can say things that are as black and white as possible – or at least probabilities that something will be black or white

·         Some researchers enjoy telling stories in shades of grey about complex relationships – stories that can be told in many different ways by different people – but that are still based on the best available evidence

·         This may be as much about listening to stories from non-academics as it is about listening to stories from different academic disciplines

o   People who have developed expertise through years of experience actually doing stuff on the ground

o   Their “know-how” compared to the “know-why” we generate as academics.

This is important because much of what we do in environmental sustainability research is about telling stories about the future:

·         Visions of a better future and

·         Nightmare scenarios that we hope will never come to pass, but that we need to be prepared for

  But how do we know what it is that we’re preparing for?

·         For many researchers, it is about predicting the future using models, with ever greater precision

·         The problem is that given the enormous complexity of socio-ecological systems, many of these predictions will turn out to be very precisely …wrong

·         In contrast, Alan Kay suggests that “the best way to predict the future is to invent it”

  Much of the work I’ve been involved with has been about using model outputs alongside the hopes and fears of ordinary people to construct “scenarios” that tell us many different stories about what the future might plausibly hold:

·         And then thinking about how we might be able to adapt – protecting people’s livelihoods, and the environment upon which they depend

·         And I think we need to think with ever increasing sophistication about how different stories might unfold together

o   How the different narratives might weave together to create completely new stories that we hadn’t previously thought of

o   And how we can develop bundles of adaptation options that are complementary and can be used together, because that’s how people in the real world respond to change.

  Of course, the work of the Aberdeen Centre for Environmental Sustainability goes much further than this:

·         Exploring the underlying mechanisms of change

·         And thinking more broadly about how these different drivers of change might affect the resources we all depend upon from the environment

·         Increasingly, we believe these are challenges that are all about enabling people to work more effectively together to govern the environment and adapt to environmental change.

  ACES looks forward to working closely with the Centre for Sustainable International Development:

·         And I hope that today marks the beginning of an international dialogue

·         Which leads to the creation of a whole library of stories

o   Stories we construct and tell together

o   Stories that give us new insights into the world around us

o   Stories that help make the world a better place – just like Noah hoped he would find when he stepped off the ark onto dry land.

  Inspired by a TED talk by Chimamanda Adichie about the danger of a single story: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg

[markreed]

The links between learning, knowledge exchange, participation & interdisciplinarity

Some thoughts on the links between learning, knowledge exchange, participation and interdisciplinarity:

Learning generates individual knowledge, which may inform the way we each behave

Social learning generates collective understanding, which has the potential to facilitate social change

Knowledge exchange is the process of learning from each other - the result depends on what is actually learned, rather than what is taught

Knowledge is not a gift that is always easily given - it is a gift that needs to be actively taken, unwrapped, understood and used

Stakeholder & public participation enables more of us to engage in active learning to exchange existing knowledge and generate new knowledge together, from the individual to societal scale 

Working with stakeholders we can access know-how. Researchers can give us the know-why. We also need know-when and know-who to communicate and generate knowledge with the right people in the place at the right time

Social learning is about the breadth of learning. Many have focused on the depth e.g. Triple loop learning. But we also need to consider learning potential - being connected to a diverse knowledge network that can give us targeted knowledge when & where we need it

Interdisciplinarity is when individuals from different disciplines learn from each other, exchanging old knowledge and working together to generate new knowledge that combines insights from more than one discipline

Learning, knowledge exchange, participation & interdisciplinarity - let's bring them together to build a knowledge culture for the future.