CAWR Newsletter

December 2021

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.'

The views and opinions expressed in this newsletter are those of the contributors at the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience (CAWR) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Coventry University.

World Vision meeting

London, 2 December 2021

Pauline Lokidor was honoured to be a part of World Vision UK's formal launch of the 'Strong Women Strong World' movement in London yesterday. This movement began in the United States more than five years ago, and the United Kingdom has now joined it. The major objective is to bring together people who want to make the world a better place for women and girls. Advocating for their rights, altering policy, and generating funds for projects aimed primarily at empowering women.

Pauline is currently undertaking a PhD investigating the use of Sustainable Drainage Systems in Kibera informal settlement, Kenya. Her PhD is a GCRF in CAWR and CTPSR.

Click here to read more

Check-a-Sweet-Chestnut

The Check a Sweet Chestnut citizen science project commenced in spring 2021, and aims to empower citizens to help protect sweet chestnut tree health: to identify and record local sweet chestnut trees, inspect the trees’ leaves for signs of galls made by the invasive pest Oriental Chestnut Gall Wasp and report records of this to the plant health authorities.

It’s a project designed by CU and Royal Horticultural Society as part of the EU funded HOMED project (Holistic Management of Emerging Forest Pests and Diseases.)  

So far citizen scientists have registered in 37 counties over England, Wales, Scotland and N Ireland, 150 sweet chestnut trees have been recorded and 10 reports of the presence of Oriental Chestnut Gall Wasp. The project is live until autumn 2022.

If you’d like to join in, perhaps over a winter walk in the holidays, kicking through fallen leaves, find a tape measure and a Sweet Chestnut tree, and register here

New Policy Brief Shifting Funding to Agroecology for People, Climate and Nature

Click here to access a new report on "Shifting Funding to Agroecology for People, Climate and Nature" and learn about the research program on agroecology transformations that underpins the policy brief. Written by Honorary Research Fellow, Colin Anderson, and co-author Janneke Bruil, the new policy brief focuses on shifting funding to support agroecology for social justice and sustainability, on the evidence base for agreocology and on distinguishing agroecology from other approaches. This work builds on the work in the Agroecology Now! group on agroecology transformations and is a part of an ongoing stream of research and action in and beyond CAWR on financing agroecology. Click here to learn more

New Book: Co-Creativity and Engaged Scholarship Transformative Methods in Social Sustainability Research

A new book edited by Alex Franklin, featuring contributions from CAWR’s Luke Owens, Gloria Giambartolomei, Chiara Tornaghi, Jana Fried, Sofia De La Rosa, Sergio Cayuela, and Alex Franklin. The book offers unique overview of transdisciplinary approaches to researching and communicating community environmental practice, it demonstrates how to engage in impactful research realising the full potential of transdisciplinary science. Invaluable reference for researchers working across a range of different institutions and community setting. This book is brought to you in open, free and unlimited access by the RECOMS project, which has received funding from the European Union’s HORIZON 2020 Research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement no. 765389

Click here to find out more 

Podcasts on Agroecology in Movement

A series of podcasts on Agroecology in Movement by a collective of young French agroecologists - Association Sillage.

The first podcast features Professor Michel Pimbert reflecting on social movement struggles to advance transformative agroecologies throughout the world. Click here to listen.

Thriving Hive 2021 summary

What a year for "Thriving Hive"!

In our first stage, funded by the British Beekeepers Association, we investigate links between particulate levels (in air and bee bodies) and bee health and productivity.

This involved developing lab methodology for processing the hive samples (bees, wax, pollen...) provided by 44 partner beekeepers.

Our goals for 2022: understanding the microparticles in these samples (using FTIR + software image analysis), conducting data analysis, and developing our beautiful website! Click here to see more

Thanks to everyone involved in this!

Organic Innovation Days

On 30th November and 1st December, CAWR researchers working on the Organic-PLUS project collaborated with sister project RELACS to deliver TP Organics’ 2021’s Organic Innovation Days, ‘Better inputs for organic farming’. Adrian Evans discussed the outcomes of farmer/consumer citizen juries and the importance of such dialogue, whilst Francis Rayns presented trials done at Ryton in collaboration with 5 Acre Community Farm to find alternatives to peat and plastic. Ulrich Schmutz and Judith Conroy gave overviews of the work of Organic-PLUS, emphasising the need for all parts of the organic sector to work together on a range of alternative inputs and also improved methods. Read more about the event here.

Gaza Foodways: Towards Resilient Women-led Urban Agroecological Food Systems in Gaza City and Khan Yunis.

We are delighted to announce CAWR’s new project with partners in Palestine entitled Gaza Foodways: Towards Resilient Women-led Urban Agroecological Food Systems funded by Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) from November 2021-2024. In this project we ask: what do food system innovations look like when they respond to the needs of, and are led by, women in Gaza?

The project aims to support a shift towards women-led agricultural research, practice and policy formulation for a just transition to diversified low-carbon urban farming systems and food sovereignty. As transdisciplinary research the project engages primarily with women producers and processors to articulate and frame their challenges, bringing them together with women researchers to stimulate knowledge co-creation for solution-building that amplifies their collective voices and results in a series of user-led innovations for urban agroecology. Working with and across Gazan universities, the project will promote participatory action research practice and strengthen capacity and skills for gender-transformative transdisciplinary curricula, developing a professional urban agroecology diploma. And it will establish supportive intersectorial actor-networks mobilised around policy changes that connect up and strengthen policies for urban agroecology and food sovereignty in Gaza.

For more information on this collaboration between CAWR, the Palestinian Hydrology Group (PHG), the Gaza Urban and Peri-urban Agriculture Platform (GUPAP), the University College for Applied Research (UCAS), and CAWR, then do contact Dr. Georgina McAllister.

Click here to read more.

AGROMIX

An eventful autumn for the H2020 project AGROMIX, coordinated by Dr Sara Burbi, packed with conferences and networking events to strengthen collaboration and cooperation across countries and stakeholders.

September started off with the 3rd Co-Design Pilots workshop tackling systems design and synergies, which took place in Wädenswil, Switzerland and saw pilot representatives and farmers joining in to discuss their needs and priorities to transition to climate resilient systems. The focus of the workshop was also to identify practical solutions and approaches for the co-design pilots to work on.

AGROMIX then participated in the congress Landscape2021, online (Berlin), co-chairing a session on cross-scale systems: “Mixing crops, livestock and trees in farms and landscapes for people and planet”, with colleagues from the H2020 project MIXED.

Then on November 8th-9th AGROMIX project partners participated in the first annual meeting (online) to celebrate the completion of the first year of activities and discuss plans for the next year. Shortly after, on November 10th, partners from the projects MIXED and STARGATE joined AGROMIX in co-chairing the webinar titled: “Resilience in agricultural landscapes: Dealing with complexity in a changing climate”. Participants discussed aspects of resilience from different points of view, environmental, socio-economic, and political, as well as the methodologies and approaches we can use, e.g. climate modelling, participatory approaches, ethnography.

In the second half of November, AGROMIX has participated in 4 additional events.

On November 17th-19th, AGROMIX partners participated in the Agroecology Forum organised by project partner Agroecology Europe. The event took place in Barcelona, Spain, as well as online, and brought together participants from diverse backgrounds, converging around the need to promote agroecological principles in food systems and societies, not only considering the practices of food production, but engaging and working towards a transition to just food systems.

On November 18th, AGROMIX coordinator was invited to a networking event organised by the Animal Task Force (ATF) and the European Feed Manufacturers Federation (FEFAC), the 11th Animal Task Force Seminar, online (Brussels). The event saw contributions from several European projects focusing on livestock and sustainability from a conventional point of view, as well as agroecological approaches such as the one adopted in AGROMIX and the work carried out by Agroecology Europe, represented by its secretary general, Dr. Alain Peeters.

A week later, on November 23rd-24th, AGROMIX was once again chairing a workshop, this time at the EUKI Conference 2021: Fit for Climate Action, online (Berlin). The event was organised to facilitate the exchange between European Climate Initiative (EUKI) project implementers as well as representatives of the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, the EU Commission, the EUKI Secretariat, and local policy makers across Europe. Representatives of ongoing and completed EUKI projects were invited to participate in and contribute to the discussion on what the pathway to a climate-neutral Europe could look like. AGROMIX partners chaired the workshop “Improved communications for climate mitigation practices in agriculture” and contributed to the discussion about participatory approaches to research and the importance of giving a voice to farmers and producers, allowing them to showcase their work and reach wider audiences.

AGROMIX’s research assistant Rosemary Venn attended the EIP AGRI event “Turning forest innovation into practice” on 24th-25th November, online, with representatives from academia, civil society, government, practitioners, and forest owners, to discuss the vital role Europe’s forests play in the EU’s Green Deal. The new EU Forest Strategy provides a policy framework to deliver on environmental and climate ambitions as well as livelihoods, the rural economy, and the bioeconomy but how to implement? Talks spanned forest management, biodiversity, circular bioeconomy, and managing for ecosystem services. The need for research and innovation alongside training and advisory services to support successful implementation was clear. A summary report from the event will be made available online soon. You can watch the closing of the seminar with Kerstin Rosenow, DG Agriculture and Rural Development, here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgbBQ-dtH6k 

Finally, on December 8th, AGROMIX was part of a panel of European projects invited to the Soil Health Networking Day organised by the H2020 project LANDSUPPORT to find synergies and complementarities in research and innovation to advance soil health, and most importantly on how to engage with farmers and land managers on how to adopt sustainable land uses.

To find out more about AGROMIX project activities and events, subscribe the project newsletter or visit https://agromixproject.eu/newsroom/

Research Services - Research Finance and Compliance

Hello all, I hope you are all keeping well and it has been great to see some of you at CAWR as I have been on site. I wanted to write a few lines about myself and Sue Chambers, together we support the accounting for the funded Research Projects that sit within RISER.

My name, as you know is Geetha Neelakantan, I am Research Finance Manager and RISER is one of the Institutes for which I have responsibility. I have worked for the university for 6 years now and I am a familiar face for many of you! I support RECOMs, Organic PLUS and oversee the funded research projects at RISER. I love coming to CAWR, it is very compatible with my own personal interest and conversations about soil, plants, bees and lunchtime walks to look at fungi make me feel at home!

Sue Chambers is part of my team and supports many projects, AGROMIX, People Environment and Wild Rice to name a few. Sue has been at CU for around 4 years and is well established support for Research Projects at CAWR. We are both available to contact at any time via MS Teams, telephone and email. I have been coming to Ryton at least one a fortnight and will continue to do so as per government guidelines.

Events

Catch up on our events and seminars from this month by visiting our YouTube channel

Studentships

Chemical analysis and bioaccumulation of ‘forever chemicals’ in aquatic organisms - This opportunity will remain open until a suitable candidate is identified

Publications

Pimbert, M.P. 2021.  Citizens’ Juries.  In: Patricia Leavy (Ed). Popularizing Scholarly Research: Working with Non-academic Stakeholders, Teams, and Communities. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Pimbert, M.P., 2021. Regenerating Kurdish Ecologies through Food Sovereignty, Agroecology and Economies of Care. https://www.agroecologynow.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Regenerating-Kurdish-ecologies-Pimbert-2021.pdf In: Stephen Hunt (Ed). Ecological Solidarity in the Kurdish Freedom Movement. Lexington Books.

Mahdad, F., A. R. Bakhtiari, M. Moeinaddini and S. Charlesworth (2021) Seasonal occurrence, source apportionment, and cancer risk assessment of PAHs in the second largest international holy metropolitan: Mashhad, Iran. Environmental Science and Pollution Research. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-16336-6