9Jun 2020
Positive take-homes from the She Is Still Sustainable Series

Dr Clare Twigger-Ross recently attended two online seminars as part of the She is Still Sustainable series. 

This is what she had to say about it:

“She Is Still Sustainable (SISS) is a growing network of  mid-career women working in or around sustainability. SISS was to have held a workshop on the 27/28th April but instead held two online seminars.  The first session led by Liz Rivers focused on sustaining ourselves, not succumbing to lock down perfectionism and sharing our thoughts on wellbeing in this strange time. It was uplifting and supportive and set me up for the day. The second session on the next day focused on How do we shape a new future?  Hosted by Alina Congreve, Samantha Freelove and Kerry North, with special guest speakers Farhana Yamin, Solitaire Townsend, Susan Buckingham and Zoe Le Grand, this was an interactive session with breakout conversations as well as presentations.  It was inspiring to hear about what these women are thinking about and doing – from Farhana Yamin talking about focusing on the local with the Think and Do Pop Up in Camden – a community space to give people in Camden the chance to come together to develop ideas and projects tackling the climate and ecological crisis through to  Zoe Le Grand’s  list of how Covid might open up spaces for system change.   The input was great and it was a really stimulating session – very positive and proactive thinking about how to push forward the sustainability agenda.  The group was welcoming, supportive and encouraging and I left feeling positive and empowered.  Penny Walker one of She is Still Sustainable’s founders has written a recent blog talking about the sessions and how they made them work virtually, including a She is Still Sustainable selfie!  It made me think about the value of networks and of meeting people outside my own work/home network, it made me realise how much positive action for sustainability is happening and how important it is to keep on pressing for change in whatever ways we can.   I am still hoping to join them in October in person.”

For more information, please contact Clare Twigger-Ross (Technical Director).

Team CEP
26May 2020
Is there a link between mindfulness and sustainability?

Is there a link between mindfulness and sustainability? A new paper explores this…….

Thiermann U, Sheate W (2020), Motivating individuals for social transition: The 2-pathway model and experiential strategies for pro-environmental behaviour and well-being Ecological Economics (in press) (2020)

Is there a link between mindfulness and sustainability?  Well, there is certainly an ever-growing literature in this field trying to explore it. 

Ute Thiermann (a PhD student at Imperial College London) and Bill Sheate (Associate Director, CEP) have just published a theoretical framework for understanding what might be the complex web of relationships between mindfulness and pro-environmental behaviour. In other words, people’s awareness, desires, willingness and ability to act in the present to change the impact they have on the environment.

The literature points to lots of possible links; the challenge is to prove whether being mindful makes people more likely to take pro-environmental action, i.e. to prove causality.  And if so, why?  Is it because of a greater sense of connectedness with nature that comes with mindfulness?  Or does more connectedness with nature enable you to be more mindful? And how might environmental behaviour link with personal well-being and good mental health?

The paper lays the groundwork for testing new experiential strategies in order to understand whether mindfulness programmes might be helpful as potential policy interventions for motivating people to change their behaviour in ways that can reduce impact upon the world’s environment. 

A fruitful area for future research……

You can access the paper here.

For more information, please contact Bill Sheate (Associate Director).

Team CEP
25Feb 2020
CEP delivering EKN training – upcoming course dates

INCORPORATING NATURAL CAPITAL AND ECOSYSTEM SERVICES INTO ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENTS: EXPLORING BEST PRACTICE


UPCOMING DATE FOR THIS COURSE IN 2020:

  • 10:00 am – 04:30 pm, Tuesday 10th March (The Castle at Taunton, Castle Green, Taunton, Somerset, TA1 1NF)

This course, which is now in its forth year, will equip you to inform clients or colleagues on the merits of including the ecosystem services and natural capital concepts in environmental assessment processes. There is now strong interest in what ecosystem services, natural capital and nature-based solutions mean for Environmental Impact Assessment, Strategic Environmental Assessment and Sustainability Appraisal. 

The course is delivered by Dr Bill Sheate and Spela Kolaric of Collingwood Environmental Planning and organised by the Ecosystems Knowledge Network.

Find out more and book at: https://ecosystemsknowledge.net/events/training-environmental-assessment

Team CEP
4Dec 2019
Flagship European State of Environment Report published by the European Environment Agency

CEP have contributed to the newly published SOER 2020 report

SOER+report.jpg

The European Environment Agency (EEA) has published the flagship report on the State of Environment in Europe (SOER 2020).  The report emphasises the sustainability challenges Europe faces and the need for urgent systemic solutions.  As well as providing an overview of key environment and climate trends, the report also reflects on the influence of global trends on Europe’s environment and the key emerging drivers of environmental change.

CEP has provided analytical support to the EEA in their preparation of SOER 2020 through a number of contracts lead and delivered by CEP experts or managed by CEP under the EEA framework on forward looking analysis, sustainability assessments and systemic transitions.  These include projects such as updating the knowledge base on global megatrends; identifying and assessing drivers of change; and analysing critical interactions between environmental SDGs from a European perspective.

For more information please contact CEP’s Owen White.

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“Europe’s environment is at a tipping point. We have a narrow window of opportunity in the next decade to scale up measures to protect nature, lessen the impacts of climate change and radically reduce our consumption of natural resources.”
— Hans Bruyninckx, EEA Executive Director
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“The State of the Environment Report is perfectly timed to give us the added impetus we need as we start a new five-year cycle in the European Commission and as we prepare to present the European Green Deal.”
— Frans Timmermans, Executive Vice President of the European Commission
Team CEP
10Jul 2019
CEP at the XV International Congress of Environmental Psychology 2019

DR CLARE TWIGGER-ROSS (CEP) PRESENTING KEYNOTE PAPER AT THE XV CONGRESO DE PSICOLOGIA AMBIENTAL-PSICAMB 2019 IN TENERIFE.

Dr Clare Twigger-Ross is giving a keynote talk on Tuesday 16th July at the XV Congreso de Psicologia Ambiental-PSCIAMB: Community, resources and sustainability: the challenge of territories. She will be presenting her paper Building resilience capacities of communities to flood risk: reflections on theory and practice in the UK. The paper draws on research that CEP and associates have carried out for Defra and the Environment Agency over the past decade.  

The conference is being held at the University of la Laguna, Tenerife from 16th – 19th July 2019.

For more information please contact Dr Clare Twigger-Ross (Technical Director).

Building resilience capacities of communities to flood risk: reflections on theory and practice in the UK

Summary:

Climate change will increase the frequency, severity and extent of flooding in the UK with the present 1.8 million people living in areas at significant flood risk predicted to rise to 2.6 million under a 2° scenario and to 3.3 million under a 4° scenario (CCRA, 2017). The health and social impacts of floods have been documented over a number of years (e.g. Walker et al, 2005; Tapsell and Tunstall, 2008) with recent robust studies on the effects on mental health (e.g. Public Health England, 2017;Miljevic et al, 2017) showing the impact to be quite considerable.   Given these negative social impacts it becomes even more important to understand how communities and individuals alongside local professionals (e.g. local authorities, emergency services) might be able to improve or develop greater community resilience. Dr Twigger-Ross together with her colleagues at Collingwood Environmental Planning has been working on projects for the UK government and its agencies since 2005 on aspects of flooding and this paper draws on that work within the framework of community resilience.   Community resilience is a way of thinking about resilience to flooding at a local and place based level, understanding that there will be multiple communities and social networks intersecting in a given flood risk area.  In this paper Cutter et al’s (2010) disaster resilience of place is drawn on to locate  community resilience which is defined as a “set of capacities that can be fostered through interventions and policies, which in turn help  build and enhance a community’s ability to respond, recover  from [and adapt] to disasters”(Cutter et al, 2010).   The capacities examined by Twigger-Ross et al, (2015) are institutional resilience capacities, social resilience capacities, community capital, infrastructure resilience capacities and economic resilience capacities and they will be elaborated on within this paper.  Importantly, in order to meet the challenges of climate change the type of resilience will need to focus on the proactive/transformative type of resilience rather than the reactive/defensive type of resilience.   A number of active interventions have been developed in the UK by to improve levels of resilience capacity, through government and charity funding, together with grassroots interventions emergent after a flood and the factors for their success or otherwise will be discussed in relation to the community resilience framework. Further, it is recognised that the concept of resilience is both complex and contested, not just the opposite of vulnerability and the paper will comment on that, specifically in the context of its use by UK government and its agencies.  Finally, the role and impact of “contract” research and the position of researchers within that will be examined through the paper.

Team CEP
21May 2019
CEP delivering EKN training

Incorporating natural capital and ecosystem services into environmental assessments: Exploring best practice

Two dates for this course in 2019:

  • 26th June 2019, Leeds (Coth Hall Court, LS21 2HA).

  • 27th November 2019, Central London (Cotton Centre, SE1 2QG)

This course, which is now in its third year, will equip you to inform clients or colleagues on the merits of including the ecosystem services and natural capital concepts in environmental assessment processes. There is now strong interest in what ecosystem services, natural capital and nature-based solutions mean for Environmental Impact Assessment, Strategic Environmental Assessment and Sustainability Appraisal.  The course is delivered by Dr Bill Sheate and Spela Kolaric of Collingwood Environmental Planning and organised by the Ecosystems Knowledge Network.

Find out more and book at: https://ecosystemsknowledge.net/events/training-environmental-assessment

Team CEP
11Apr 2019
CEP and Brussels-based MILIEU renew their commitment to collaborate

CEP AND MILIEU RENEW THEIR COMMITMENT TO COLLABORATE THROUGH SIGNING A MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING

CEP and Milieu – a multi-disciplinary consultancy based in Brussels specialising in providing high quality legal and policy services primarily for public sector clients – have been collaborating for more than 14 years.  In acknowledgement of our longstanding working relationship and successful collaborations, we are delighted to announce that we have renewed our Memorandum of Understanding which covers our mutual commitment to collaborate where appropriate in the provision of environmental consultancy services and to share expertise, knowledge and resources.

CEP and Milieu have been working together since 2005.  During this period we have jointly delivered some exciting, innovative and influential projects for both the European Commission and the European Environment Agency (EEA).  This work includes projects related to: policy evaluation and impact assessment; SEA; state of the environment reporting; environmental futures assessment; climate proofing policy; water management; science-policy interface; and environmental governance.

Ric Eales, CEP’s Managing Director, commented:

“We enjoy excellent relationships with many partners in the UK and across Europe, but our relationship with Milieu has been particularly rewarding and successful over the last 14 years.  Over this time we have worked together on numerous projects particularly for European institutions and the success of these collaborations is to a great extent down to our shared culture and commitment to delivering quality services to our clients.  We look forward to our relationship with Milieu continuing to grow and strengthen in the years to come”.

This agreement highlights CEP’s continuing commitment to service our European institution clients, such as the European Commission and European Environment Agency (EEA).  Our ongoing work for European institutions includes projects on important topics, such as urban sustainability, emerging environmental risks and foresight, improving access to environmental information and justice, and the effectiveness and implementation of environmental regulations.

 

For more information contacts Ric Eales (Managing Director) r.eales@cep.co.uk

Team CEP
7Mar 2019
CEP-led consortium to deliver new EEA project on transitions governance

CEP-led consortium has been awarded a new EEA project to develop a report on governance and policy for sustainability transitions

A new project has been awarded under the CEP-led framework service contract for the European Environment Agency (EEA) which provides assistance on forward looking analysis, sustainability assessments and systemic transitions.

This project, led by the Sustainable Consumption Institute at the University of Manchester, will further develop and finalise a report on the implications of research into sustainability transitions and transformations for European policy and governance. This project continues work previously completed under an earlier project. CEP has a role in this project to review the report for quality purposes, overall coherence, and to ensure accessibility for the target audience.

For more information please contact CEP’s Owen White, the overall Framework Contract Manager, or Dr Bill Sheate, the Framework Contract Director.

Team CEP
19Dec 2018
CEP-led Consortium delivers second set of European Environment Agency contracts

CEP-LED CONSORTIUM SUCCESSFULLY DELIVERS SECOND SET OF CONTRACTS UNDER EUROPEAN ENVIRONMENT AGENCY FRAMEWORK CONTRACT

CEP is pleased to announce the successful completion of the second set of five contracts awarded during 2018 under the CEP-led framework service contract for the European Environment Agency (EEA) which provides assistance to the consolidation and update of the knowledge base on global megatrends and resource nexus in support of SOER 2020 (the European Environment State and Outlook Report) [1].

The five most recent projects have again had the overarching objective of supporting the framing and content of SOER 2020 by building on the first set of seven contracts to further consolidate the evidence and knowledge base across a range of topics as well as providing new analysis.  

Three projects have directly followed-on from contracts delivered under the first set:

·         The first [2], led by CEP on ‘Drivers of Change’, involved the development and implementation of an analytical framework for identifying and analysing the implications of drivers of change on consumption and production systems in Europe.  This contract built on our previous work on global megatrends and the resource nexus. 

·         The second follow-on contract has supported EEA in the development of the knowledge-base and reporting related to sustainability transitions.  As part of this contract CEP coordinated research and reporting into the empirical description of food, energy and mobility systems in Europe. 

 ·         The third follow-on project, led by CEP, was on urban sustainability and continued our previous work developing a new framework for urban sustainability assessment and supporting the EEA in running related stakeholder events. 

In addition, two specific contracts represented new areas of work.  One identified and characterised critical interactions between environmental SDGs from a European perspective.  CEP provided expert advice on methodology development and developed a report on the implications of the key project findings for EU research, policy and governance.  The other, led by CEP, supported the development of an EEA report, planned for publication in 2019, on the linkages between the environment and quality of life in EEA member countries.  CEP’s contribution to the report focuses on environmental health across Europe, environmental risks to health and the environmental benefits to health and well-being.

All the projects were completed between May and December 2018 and have helped EEA by providing critical inputs, often to tight timescales, to support the drafting of SOER 2020, as well as developing new knowledge and reporting on environmental challenges for Europe from a systems and transitions perspective.

For more information please contact CEP’s Owen White, the overall Framework Contract Manager, or Dr Bill Sheate, the Framework Contract Director.

 

[1] Awarded in May 2017, CEP has now overseen the preparation and delivery of a total of twelve projects awarded under the framework contract to date.  CEP has led the delivery of seven of the twelve projects delivered so far, including overall project management, technical lead on research tasks, and preparing reporting to summarise findings to provide maximum support to the EEA in relation to SOER 2020.  CEP’s work on these projects has involved collaboration with a diverse range of partners including universities and research institutions, consultancies, national environmental agencies and European networks of experts (such as the Eionet network of foresight experts).

[2] Assistance to the development of the report ‘Drivers of change and their implications on the European environment – A systems-based overview’ and to the extension of the analysis of European policies through the resource nexus lens

Team CEP
26Oct 2018
Why are Cities Good for Sustainability?

Why are Cities Good for Sustainability?

Blog post by Rolands Sadauskis

Is this the new “age of the City”? Millions of people are moving to cities every week[1] and the growing numbers of megacities (with populations of over 10 million) have the capacity to rival nation states in power and influence.  The importance of the city to achieve sustainability outcomes is increasing by the day.  

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In the urban curriculum cities are viewed as a double edged sword. They epitomise the social, economic and technological achievements of modern day societies. For policy makers, having people in a concentrated space can increase the effectiveness and efficiency of policy implementation, whereas urban citizens enjoy the benefits of more accessible education, health and work opportunities than their rural counterparts. However, there is a down side – cities generate the majority of the global carbon emissions[2] and consume the majority of energy resources[3]. Pollution and mobility challenges, social inequality, inadequate housing, and exposure to climate change impacts (e.g. floods, sea level rise, tropical cyclones etc.) are among many pressing issues that urban populations are facing globally.

Urban governance is a critical part of any urban sustainability solution that seeks to address these challenges. Urban policies are highly interdependent on each other. In this context, it is crucial to identify suitable governance arrangements to take these interdependencies and possible trade-offs into account. Further, cities are also profoundly connected to their suburban and rural hinterland and so their policies and activities can have a wide-ranging impact, especially on resource demand (consumption) and waste management.

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In recent decades, numerous cities have actively taken the path towards sustainability and increasingly are acknowledging the efforts required to achieve their ambition by being part of international organisations committed to sustainable development (e.g. c40, ICLEI etc[4].). These cities have been implementing international standards and often applying and moving beyond existing national standards. A good example is the international response to climate change where cities are actively taking the lead in climate action and inspire deeper commitments from national governments and each other, in support of the 2015 Paris Agreement. More recently a new initiative is bringing together mayors from global cities to develop a collective message and engage in a G20 dialogue process with an urban perspective on key sustainability issues. The inaugural Urban 20 Mayors Summit (October 2018) will be the first ever international summit for cities with such a focus on global sustainability issues.

There are numerous benefits from cities taking the required actions and embracing sustainability. A global effort by cities would likely contribute significantly towards the achievement of various global agendas including the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris climate agreement. It would also bring many social, economic and environmental benefits both in cities and their hinterland. 

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Achieving sustainability outcomes (such as highlighted in UN SDGs) requires a collective effort from all levels of policy making. In these efforts cities must and can be part of sustainable solutions on pressing global issues. Existing global trends in their increasing political influence and willingness to take the initiative in addressing the pressing needs of their citizens strongly suggest that cities provide a good platform for enhancing sustainability. Consequently, one should not question the importance of cities in achieving sustainability outcomes, but rather ask – do cities get the power they need to bring about the change required to address them?

by Rolands Sadauskis, Senior Consultant, CEP, 26 October 2018

[1] https://graylinegroup.com/urbanization-catalyst-overview/

[2] https://www.c40.org/why_cities

[3] https://unhabitat.org/urban-themes/energy/

[4] C40 is a network of the world’s megacities committed to addressing climate change, https://www.c40.org/; ICLEI is the leading global network of 1,500+ cities, towns and regions committed to building a sustainable future, https://www.iclei.org/. 

Team CEP