22Feb 2016
CEP at Flood and Coast 2016 conference

FLOOD AND COAST 2016

CEP is participating in Flood and Coast 2016: Risk, Resilience and Response in a Changing Climate, a conference which is being held in Telford between 23 – 25 February.

Clare Twigger-Ross is presenting on Developing community resilience to flood risk – the role of flood groups in the session on Working with people and communities at 4 pm on 23rd February.

Paula Or is presenting on How to measure success in building community resilience to flooding – developing frameworks for understanding and evaluating community resilience to flood risk in a UK context in the session on Working with people and communities at 4 pm on 24th February

 

Team CEP
16Feb 2016
CEP providing environmental assessment training for EKN

One-day training courses in environmental assessment and ecosystem services being provided by CEP for the EcosystemS Knowledge Network 

CEP is providing two one-day training courses on Incorporating ecosystem services into environmental assessment in the UK on behalf of the Ecosystems Knowledge Network (EKN). The training days, which count for IEMA CPD, will be run in London (24 May 2016) and Manchester (29 June 2016).

The course is being offered for those who commission or undertake formal environmental assessments of all types in the UK, as well as those who use them, and will cover:

  • Why might the ecosystem service concept be useful in environmental assessment?
  • How can the concept be used in SA, SEA and EIA?
  • How might you use the concept? (theoretically and practically)
  • How is the concept actually being used?
  • Challenges and opportunities (data requirements; legal compliance; guidance).

The trainers will be Dr Bill Sheate (Technical Director, CEP) and Dr Peter Phillips (Senior Consultant, CEP)

Further details and booking are available here. 

Team CEP
2Feb 2016
CEP presenting at SNH marine planning event

CEP’s Peter Phillips presenting at Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) marine planning event

CEP’s Dr Peter Phillips will be presenting at a Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) sharing good-practice event on 12 February 2016 on Dealing with uncertainty in the marine environment – assessing the impact of renewable developments.  The presentation will cover the approach and findings of a Sciencewise-ERC public dialogue project that CEP has been undertaking for Marine Scotland on the social impact of offshore renewables.

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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
16Dec 2015
ICJ judgment in Nicaragua v Costa Rica case

International Court of Justice finds Costa Rica in breach of international obligation to carry out EIA for road along the border with Nicaragua

The judgment was given today (16 December 2015) by the International Court of Justice in the Nicaragua v Costa Rica (Border Road) case.  

Dr William Sheate, Technical Director at CEP,  testified at the ICJ hearing in April this year on behalf of Nicaragua, and provided written evidence on Costa Rica’s failure to meet its obligation under international law to undertake an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) prior to the construction of the road (“Route 1856”) along the San Juan River, the border with Nicaragua.

The Court found in its judgment today that Costa Rica was in breach of its obligation under international law to conduct an EIA prior to the construction of the road, and its claim of an emergency situation which justified an exemption from EIA was dismissed by the Court.  

“THE COURT, …. (6) Unanimously,
Finds that Costa Rica has violated its obligation under general international law by failing to carry out an environmental impact assessment concerning the construction of Route 1856”

Paragraph 229, Judgment 16 December 2015, (see ICJ Press Release for further information)

Team CEP
9Dec 2015
CEP report on Flood risk communications published

CEP report on Flood risk communications published

CEP is pleased to announce that the reports produced as a result of the Flood Risk Communications Public Dialogue Project, led by 3KQ with Osprey Communications, were published today by the Environment Agency. 

This project set out to explore what type of communications can improve public understanding of flood risk and encourage people to take action. It instigated discussions across flood risk authorities and partners about how we can communicate risk in a way that is meaningful and empowering. The findings of this project and insightful feedback from the public will inform the design and delivery of flood risk communications and engagement in the future.

All reports published as part of this project can be found here. As part of the consortium undertaking the project CEP authored the Literature review. 

 

Team CEP