CAWR Newsletter

February 2019

Our monthly newsletters are an easy way to keep up-to-date with new developments at our research centre. From successful project bids to upcoming events, our newsletter informs you on how we are 'driving innovative transdisciplinary research on resilient food and water systems.'

Job Vacancy: Associate Professor in Water Quality Science

Click here to find out more about this job vacancy with us.

Closing date: 15th March 2019. ​

Strengthening FAO’s Commitment to Agroecology

Hot of the Virtual Press

This booklet in CAWR's Reclaiming Diversity and Citizenship Series, presents an analysis of the current dynamics, opportunities and challenges of strengthening agroecology through the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. It will be especially useful for organisations, actors and researchers in civil society who are promoting agroecology as an alternative paradigm for food and farming. Find out more about this publication by clicking here.

Agroecology film and publication now available in three languages (EN, ES, FR)

This film (short and long versions available), along with an accompanying publication are now available in three languages (Spanish, French, English). These resources, produced by our AgroecologyNow! group, can be used to raise awareness about the meaning and importance of agroecology and could be used to communicate with your communities, organizations, policy-makers, in classrooms, social movements, etc. Feel free to use them freely and to share them with your networks. Click here to view the film.

Abbey Home Farm visit 

Our MSc students took part in a field trip to Abbey Home Farm near Cirencester. They were shown around by John Newman who has been the Farm Manager since the early 1990s when Organic Conversion began. This farm has a wide range of agricultural enterprises including beef, sheep, dairy, pigs, poultry, cereals and vegetables together with a café, farm shop and residential accommodation. A key aim of the visit by the students was to learn about how the various activities fit together to make the whole system environmentally and financially sustainable.

City of Culture small grants 

Jana Fried and Sergio Ruiz Cayuela were both successful in securing funding towards developing collaborative City of Culture projects

Jana's project is 'To Walk with Water: Young People and Urban River Cultural Values in Spon End, Coventry' led by CAWR, University of Warwick and cultural partner Talking Birds. The aim of the project is to develop a creative and co-produced method of water research with young people to ‘daylight’ their cultural values through urban river storytelling, ‘theatre of place’ and augmented reality. 

Sergio's project is ‘Reclaiming the Coventry Canal’ which is joint effort of CAWR, University of Warwick and The Coventry Peace House and is realised within the frame of the RECOMS project. The aim of the project is to organise a festival in which the local community will reclaim the Coventry Canal while highlighting its historical, environmental and cultural value. The festival will be co-organised among researchers, local organisations and members of the community through a series of workshops. In this process, special efforts will be made to empower traditionally under-represented communities.

Latin America Forum

Professor Sue Charlesworth and Dr Sara Burbi were invited to give talks at the Edinburgh Latin America Forum 4-5 February. Sara opened the forum with an overview of the Sustainable Development Goals and their application to the situations in the countries making up Latin America. She was then moderator for the panel discussing Food Security 

Sue gave a presentation in the Water Security and Sanitation session, focussing on SDG 6, on her Newton Funded project investigating the potential of sustainable drainage systems to reduce breeding sites for the mosquito carrying the zika, dengue and chikungunya viruses in favelas in NE Brazil. She then joined the panel to discuss issues arising from the three talks given in that session (panellists in photos attached). 

Very well organised by undergraduate and post graduate students, this forum gathered together many interesting and eminent academics, diplomats, lawyers and businesses with discussions ranging from drainage, perfume and food flavouring production, beef production and greenhouse gases and issues around migration, crises and inequality. 

RECOMS

RECOMS 2nd Training Event in Coventry and Brussels in February 2019 focused on agroecology and communication and provided the opportunity for 15 Early Stage Researchers to try their drawing, presentation as well as their group work skills and get insight into transdisciplinarity, urban agroecology and food sovereignty on the ground. Read more by clicking here. 

Policy work at AgroecologyNow!

Researchers at CAWR have been involved in a range of collaborative policy work related to agroecology working with farmers and other food producers, social movements and other organisations and networks to advance agroecology at the national and international level. We have created a new section of the AgroecologyNow! webpage as a repository for the videos, pictures and texts from the different events and contributions which may be of interest/use. Click here for more information.

Doctoral College events

This month the Doctoral College held two events;  Three Minute Thesis (3MT) Grand Final, and Postgraduate of the Year event. Moussa Sidibe successfully made it to the final of the 3MT final and presented a very clear, informative and entertaining summary of his PhD work. Ezzine Emeana Merianchris, was nominated to represent CAWR in the PGR of the Year Award.  Both students represented the high quality of CAWR postgraduate research extremely well.

People's Knowledge and Social Change 

Discussing Participatory Research, Learning and Action at the University of Oregon

This workshop discussed how People's Knowledge is mobilised in social and political processes of social change. Colin Anderson discussed the rationale for, - and principles of -, participatory, activist and action research and learning using case studies from the food justice and food sovereignty movements. The slides are available at this link and provide links to case studies, initiatives and publications.

Tune into the AgroecologyNow! Seminar

What is needed to make the transition transformation for more sustainable and just food systems? In this seminar, the AgroecologyNow! group at CAWR will present a framework they have developed for understanding and enabling agroecology transitions-transformations. This material is being developed into a book that will be published in the coming year. For more information click here.

Successful Doctoral funding 

CAWR researchers have been successful in securing three fully funded studentships  which will commence in 2019.

Jonathan Eden will be the Director of Studies for 'Climate change and global wildfire activity: developing a framework for event attribution and future risk assessment'.

Luke Owen will be the Director of Studies for 'Crisis, transformation and collaborative practice: agroecology and the co-creation of territorial food systems'.

Craig Lashford will be the Director of Studies for 'Understanding the role of catchment-scale tree planting on creating resilience to pluvial flooding: case study of the River Arrow, Warwickshire'.

If you are interested in any of these opportunities, then please keep an eye on the Coventry University studentship webpage for more information. 

Studentships available for May 2019

To find out more about the deadlines or apply for any of our studentships please visit this website.

Water Gathering in the City of Venice

Eriberto Eulisse (left) coordinator, Global Network of Water Museums presenting; Flora Gathorne-Hardy (centre) and Ben Parry (right)

In December 2018, Flora Gathorne-Hardy represented Touchstones and CAWR at a special gathering on water convened by Clive Adams of the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World (CCANW) at Ca' Foscari University of Venice. The discussion was a fruitful exchange between the Global Network of Water Museums (WAMU-Net) and organisations involved in the field of arts and ecology. Other representatives at the meeting included CCANW Associate Artist Elizabeth Ogilvie; curators Sue Spaid and Andrea Lerda; Ben Parry from Bath Spa University; gallerist Caroline Wiseman; Tse-Hui Teh from University of Central London; and Irene Hediger, Head of International Art-Science Residency Exchange at Zurich University of the Arts. Watch this space for emerging developments!

Articles in the media 

Agroecology as a Pathway Towards Food Sovereignty in Ethiopian Forest Communities

This guest article at www.agroecologynow.com by Million Belay unpacks his reflections on a participatory mapping process that he facilitated for expanding agroecological practices in the forest community of Nono Sele. Million is network coordinator at the African Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA). Click here to read more.

Displacement pushing ryots to the brink: scientist

Michel Pimbert's interview on the fate of small and family farmers was published in The Hindu. Click here to view the article. 

Projects awarded 

Wild Rice Culture and Indigenous Food Sovereignty in North America

Funder: Horizon 2020 (Marie Curie individual fellowship)

PI: Michel Pimbert  |  Value: £337,400.64  |  Duration: 36 months from August 2019

Extension and advice to reduce pesticide pollution in waters discharging to the Great Barrier Reef

Funder: Great Barrier Reef Foundation

CAWR representative: Michael Warne | Value: £659,000  |  Duration: 24 months from July 2019

Beyond Ecosystem Services: Brokering Agrobiodiversity Management Enterprises in Europe and Internationally

Funder: Horizon 2020 (Marie Curie individual fellowship)

PI: Julia Wright  | Value: £224,933.76 | Duration 24 months from September 2019 

Conference attendance 

Michael Warne has been invited by The Paddock to Reef  (P2R) Science Forum to give a presentation on his work on 'Pesticide Selection Support Tool' in Mackay.

Ramón González-Méndez attended the Spectrometry for Security Applications– First International Workshop, in Dornbirn, where he gave an invited talk on his work on “Evolution and Developments of Proton Transfer Reaction-Mass Spectrometry for Security Applications” and presented a poster (Ion mobility studies on the negative ion-molecule chemistry of pentachloroethane).

The Contribution of Organic Agriculture to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

On 26 February 2019 Ulrich Schmutz and Priscilla Claeys  attended a workshop in Brussels on the Contribution of Organic Agriculture to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) It was hosted by the European Commission, DG for International Cooperation and Development (DG DEVCO), and based on the initiative of FiBL, Switzerland and their EU office.

Organic-PLUS’s team member Stephane Bellon, INRA France, gave critical input into the discussion, reflecting on the research results of long-term farming system comparisons (organic versus conventional) in Kenya, India, Bolivia, Ghana and Uganda. A major part of the discussion was on the modelling research to radically change food and farming systems based on a recent Nature paper by FiBL: Muller et al. “Strategies for feeding the world more sustainably with organic agriculture”.

Scaling-up agroecology from an FAO (Carolina Starr) and EU parliament (Maria Heubuch, MEP) perspective was another focus. One conclusion was that 100% organic can easily feed the world in a 2050 ‘peak population’ scenario and contribute more to the SDG then current systems, however besides major social and political changes there are still multiple research needs, e.g. to get to the full yield potential in organic systems; or contribute to the worlds fuel and fibre (conventional cotton attracts 16% of all insecticides globally on an area of only 2.4%) needs in a bio-economy with full recycling nutrients coming from human urine and manure.

The Blueprint Alliance 

The Blueprint Alliance brings together people who are dedicated to the design and creation of regenerative human settlements.Creating abundant landscapes which provide the ecosystem services which both support people’s lives and to heal the land on which they live.

One of the main objectives of the Alliance is to support living demonstration sites in which a range of regenerative systems and technologies are integrated within a holistic design. Blueprint is an alliance of individuals from regenerative design businesses and charitable organisations aligned with the principles of ecological and regenerative design as a strategy for overcoming some of the most pressing and challenging humanitarian issues of our time.

The Blueprint 200 (BP200) Project The design of BP200 will show how the land can be transformed by harvesting both wastewater and rainwater and using them to create living soil, renewable resources, sustenance, potable water and beneficial satisfying livelihoods. Please click here to see the video.

Jay Abrahams, one of our PhD students core member of the group and makes his expertise available to projects that other members of the group are engaged with. If you are interested in finding out more please visit the website by clicking here.

Seminars

AgroecologyNow! Agroecological Transitions-Transformations for A more Just and Sustainable Food System

AgroecologyNow! Group at CAWR

7th March 2019   11:30-12:30

Live streamed via Facebook and recorded for our YouTube channel

Click here to book your place

Water security and climate change in sub-saharan Africa

Declan Conway

19th March 2019  11:30-12:30

Recorded for our YouTube channel

Click here to book your place

Climate change impact on farming systems in the South Atlantic – Implications for the sheep wool sector

Rodrigo Olave

21st March 2019    11:30-12:30

Recorded for our YouTube channel

Click here to book your place

The politics of self-organisation and the social production of space in urban community gardens

Christopher Yap

28th March 2019     11:30-12:30

Live streamed via Facebook and recorded for our YouTube Channel

Click here to book your place

Diverse perspectives on urban agriculture in the US, South Africa and Mozambique

CAWR kicked off the new year with a seminar from Anne C. Bellows, a Professor of Food Studies and Director of the Graduate Food Studies Programs at Syracuse University in the United States. Anne presented her collaborative work conducted with Carolin Mees (Adjunct Professor, Parsons School of Design, The New School, New York City) on urban gardening in the South Bronx, New York City, analyzed through a human rights framework approach.

In the second part of the seminar, Nicole Paganini and Anja Schelchen presented early findings from the project ‘UFISAMO – Urban Agriculture for Food Security and Income Generation in South Africa and Mozambique’, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (through the Federal Office for Agriculture and Food). Nicole and Anja are PhD students at the University of Hohenheim and Research Fellows at the Centre for Rural Development (SLE), Humboldt University, Berlin.

To watch this seminar, please visit our YouTube channel by clicking here. 

Previous seminars

On the 10th January 2019, Dr Chloe MacLaren, who completed her PhD at CAWR in 2018, gave a seminar about her PhD research on “Exploring the ecological intensification of weed management in South African cropping systems”. Her presentation took us from vineyards to experimental long-term data and cover-crop experiments to a future vision for further integration of weed control methods based on ecological principles. We also heard about Chloe’s new job at Rothamsted Research that will take her back to Africa, and we hope to hear about what she will find out there in the future. The seminar was very well attended and anyone who missed it can still see Chloe’s seminar by clicking here.

Dr Omar Ramzy presented on 17th January which highlighted the importance of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) which has evolved as one of the most significant tools to combat natural resource scarcity and protect the environment. In Heliopolis University and in Sekem schools they are practicing ESD by blending the ESD principles with biodynamic and Waldorf education impulses. Recently, they focused on providing ESD training programs to refugee teachers in Egypt. You can view Omar's seminar by clicking here. 

He also attended the successful PRP of PhD researcher Linda Kabaira from Zimbabwe as an external supervisor. Linda’s supervisory team  had a fruitful discussion on the biodynamic and permaculture research conducted at Sekem in Egypt and in Zimbabwe.

Apply to join us on our MSc in September 2019! 

Click here to find out more about the course and how to apply. 

Publications 

Armiero, M., Andritsos, T., Barca, S., Brás, R., Cauyela, S. R., Dedeoğlu, Ç., ... & Greyl, L. (2019). Toxic Bios: Toxic Autobiographies—A Public Environmental Humanities Project. Environmental Justice.

Brem-Wilson, J. (2019) Legitimating global governance: publicisation, affectedness, and the Committee on World Food Security. Third World Thematics: A TWQ Journal, 1–21.

González-Méndez, R. & Mayhew, C.A. (2019) Applications of Direct Injection Soft Chemical Ionisation-Mass Spectrometry for the Detection of Pre-blast Smokeless Powder Organic Additives. Journal of The American Society for Mass Spectrometry. 1-10.

McAllister, G., & Wright, J. (2019) Agroecology as a Practice-Based Tool for Peacebuilding in Fragile Environments? Three Stories from Rural Zimbabwe. Sustainability, 11(3), 790.