28Jan 2016
CEP’s Owen White presenting at University of Westminster conference

Image: ‘University of Westminster‘ by Matt Brown on Flickr (CC by 2.0)

Design After Planning – Examining the Shift from Epistemology to Topology

Owen White will be giving a presentation and participating in a panel discussion at a conference at the University of Westminster on 5th February 2016.

The conference will ‘explore the possibility of going beyond the limitations of liberal-modernist policy-making and urban planning, and the implications of doing so, if we start thinking of governance at different scales as a process of design’. Owen will be presenting the emerging results and lessons from the ongoing project CEP are delivering for the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment: to develop and test a methodology to help European member states explore and understand the implications of global megatrends for the environment and for policy at the national level. 

Owen’s presentation will focus on the approach adopted in developing the methodology and the outcomes to date, in particular: method proposals, balancing effectiveness and robustness with acceptability and usability; communicating complexity and uncertainty over diverging geographical and temporal scales; and the utility for decision making and policy planning and assessment at national level. Owen will also be part of a panel titled ‘new topologies of planning’.

Tickets for this event are available from this link.

Team CEP
26Jan 2016
CEP commissioned to evaluate Flood Awareness & Engagement in Wales

Image: Menai Bridge, North Wales by Stuart Madden (CC by 2.0)

CEP COMMISSIONED TO EVALUATE FLOOD AWARENESS AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT IN WALES

CEP has been commissioned by Natural Resources Wales (NRW), an agency of the Welsh Government, to undertake an independent review of the ‘Flood Awareness Wales Community Engagement Programme’ from 2010 to date.

The main objectives of the review are:

  1. To assess the effectiveness of NRW’s approaches to date, specifically in relation to the current model of operation.
  2.  To provide evidence and recommendations that draw on local, national and international best practice, to inform future practice in increasing community flood resilience across Wales.

CEP’s Clare Twigger-Ross is the project director. 

Team CEP
22Jan 2016
CEP leading session at Health & Social Benefits of Nature Workshop

HEALTH & SOCIAL BENEFITS OF NATURE AND BIODIVERSITY PROTECTION WORKSHOP

As part of the consortium undertaking a study for the European Commission, led by IEEP,  CEP will participate in a workshop dedicated to understanding the health and social benefits of nature and biodiversity protection.

The two-day workshop will explore the latest scientific evidence and practical real world examples of how nature and biodiversity can help improving public health and social cohesion. The event will bring together the health, social and environmental communities from research, policy and practice. This workshop will  include high-level representatives from the WHO, European Commission, Parliament and Council, country, regional and city level actors as well as think tanks, NGOs and academia. The participants will develop collectively a roadmap to exploit the synergies and interdependence between public health, society and nature.

The workshop is hosted by the Committee of the Regions and will take place in Brussels on 27 and 28 of January 2016. Attendance is by invitation only.

Clare Twigger-Ross representing the CEP project team will be leading the session on the 27th January “Social Benefits: social inclusion, sense of place, engagement and employment”. She will be giving a short overview and then chairing a number of case studies.  She is also facilitating a session on the role of civil society in facilitating links between nature, health, wellbeing and social cohesion.

 

Team CEP
20Jan 2016
CEP Report on the Nature Improvement Areas initiative published

Defra publishes CEP’s final report on the monitoring and evaluation of the Nature Improvement Areas initiative

CEP’s final report on the monitoring and evaluation of the Nature Improvement Areas (NIA)[1]   initiative has now been published by Defra. The report can be found here.

The three year NIA Monitoring and Evaluation Phase 2 project was commissioned by Defra, in collaboration with Natural England, in February 2013. The project gathered evidence and assessed the progress and achievements of the NIAs over the government grant funded period, as well as learning from the NIA initiative to inform future integrated natural environment initiatives. 

In addition to undertaking the annual evaluations and an overall final evaluation of the outcomes of the individual NIAs and the programme as a whole, other innovative aspects of the project included:

  • Experimental research to test and increase understanding of approaches to assess the difference the NIAs made over and above what would have happened anyway (the counterfactual).  The report on this work is included as Annex 1 to the final report.
  • Developing the monitoring and evaluation framework and indicators, including relating to habitat connectivity, ecosystem services and social and economic and well-being benefits.
  • Completed additional research into the monitoring and evaluation of social, economic and well-being benefits in the NIAs, working with the NIA partnerships to develop related case studies.  This work is reported in Annex 3 (case studies) and Annex 4 (lessons learned from the assessment of social and economic outcomes and impacts).
  • Developing and managing an online reporting tool for the NIAs to record their monitoring data.
  • Facilitating knowledge exchange with and between the NIAs.
  • A scoping study, using lessons learned from the NIAs and the counterfactual work, to design the monitoring and evaluation of the Countryside Stewardship facilitation fund (CSFF).

For further information please contact Owen White (Principal Consultant), Project Manager for the NIA evaluation project.

 

Footnote

[1] The establishment of the NIAs was announced in the Natural Environment White Paper and contributed to England’s strategy for wildlife and ecosystem services – Biodiversity 2020.  The NIAs were designed to enable local partnerships to develop and implement a shared vision for their natural environment and to demonstrate how a ‘step change’ in nature conservation might be delivered at a landscape-scale, enhancing ecosystem services including social and economic objectives. Following a national competition 12 selected NIAs were awarded a share of £7.5 million government funding for a three year period from April 2012 to March 2015. 

 

Team CEP
8Jan 2016
CEP report on community flood resilience published

Image:‘Water over river rocks‘ by Rob Barber on Flickr (CC by 2.00)

 

Defra publishes CEP’s report on Flood Resilience Community Pathfinder

CEP’s Final Report of the evaluation of Defra’s Flood Resilience Community Pathfinder (FRCP) scheme in England has now been published.  The report and further information about both the Pathfinder Scheme and the evaluation can be found here.

The FRCP scheme consisted of thirteen partnership projects across England, involving local governments and other organisations such as voluntary sector groups, Environment Agency etc.   The pathfinder scheme was designed to enable and stimulate communities at significant or greater risk[1] of flooding to work in partnership with these kinds of organisation to develop innovative local solutions that:

  • Enhanced flood risk management and awareness in ways which quantifiably improved the community’s overall resilience to flooding.
  • Demonstrably improved the community’s financial resilience in relation to flooding.
  • Delivered sustained improvements with the potential to be applied in other areas.

The evaluation was carried out over the entire pathfinder period and reported on the progress made by the individual projects and on the results and impacts of the scheme, identifying lessons for building community resilience in the future.

The evaluation built on Cutter et al.’s (2010) model for categorising community resilience capacities/resources and discussed the pathfinder project interventions in terms of the five resilience categories: social, institutional, infrastructure, economic and community capital.


[1] Based on flood risk categories used in the UK National Flood Risk Assessment, significant risk equates to a one in 75 chance of flooding from rivers or the sea in any given year.

Team CEP