Clare Twigger-Ross at IAPS board in Spain

Photo credit: ''A Coruña' by Gabriel Gonzalez on Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

CEP's Dr Clare Twigger-Ross at IAPS board in A Coruña, Spain

Dr Clare Twigger-Ross attended the International Association of Person-Environment Studies (IAPS) board meeting and AGM  on the 29th and 30th August, A Coruña, Spain.  She is the Treasurer of the IAPS board and part of the executive along with Prof. Ricardo Garcia Mira and Dr. Tony Craig.  The meeting covered a wide range of topics concerning the running of IAPS including the next IAPS conference in Rome, 2018 see here for details on the call for papers and the conference itself which is titled: Transitions to sustainability, lifestyles changes and human wellbeing: cultural, environmental and political challenges

CEP and partners to study the value of bathing waters in Scotland

CEP and partners commissioned by the Scottish Government to study the value of bathing waters in Scotland

CEP, with partners Economics for the Environment Consultancy (eftec) and experts from The South West Research Company (SWRC), University of St Andrews, University of Surrey and Mercatus Research, has been commissioned by the Scottish Government to study The Value of Bathing Waters and the Influence of Bathing Water Quality in Scotland.

CEP will be leading a multi-disciplinary team in developing a detailed and quantifiable socio-economic understanding of the current and future value of bathing water quality to Scotland and how water quality influences bathers, beach users and the national and local economies.

This study will provide the Scottish Government with key information on existing designated bathing waters and benchmark values to support decision-making relevant to the cost/benefit of driving further improvement to bathing water quality classifications under the revised Bathing Water Directive (BWD).

The socio-economic values explored will consider the wider aspects of Scotland’s reputational value for environmental excellence, and include less tangible values relating to health and wellbeing (e.g. benefit of being near blue spaces). These validated reference values will be used in policy development and decisions when assessing new sites and managing existing protected area designation (including de-designation).

CEP's Dr Peter Phillips is the project manager.

Environmental Psychology conference presentations available

Photo credit: 'Two trees' by Jan Tik on Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Environmental Psychology conference presentations available

Dr Clare Twigger-Ross gave a keynote lecture at the British Environmental Psychology conference hosted by the University of Surrey, Sept 21 – 22nd 2016.  The theme of the conference was Healthy and sustainable places: Providing evidence based solutions to real world problems and it was attended by a mixture of researchers, academics and practitioners from a range of disciplines.  The conference shows that the field of environmental psychology in the UK is vibrant, energetic and has much to offer in relation to current real world issues of sustainability and place-making.

A reflection on the conference, presented by Sara Grenni of SUSPLACE, can be found in her blog post here.

A link to all the presentations can be found here.

CEP'S CLARE TWIGGER-ROSS PRESENTING AT IAPS CONFERENCE ON PEOPLE-ENVIRONMENT STUDIES

Photo credit: 'Wheat' by Dag Terje Filip Endresen on Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

CEP'S CLARE TWIGGER-ROSS PRESENTING AT IAPS CONFERENCE on People-Environment STUDIEs

CEP's Dr Clare Twigger-Ross will be presenting at the 24th IAPS conference (International Association for People-Environment Studies). It is hosted by the Environmental Psychology Research Groups at Lund University and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in southern Sweden and takes place from 27th June - 1st July in Lund and Alnarp.   

The conference will address the study of the interrelations between the social, the built and the natural environment, and the impacts on them. The conference theme turns the spotlight on to what is at the core of the bigger issues related to global sustainability – the actions and everyday lives of humans. 

Clare will be presenting at the following sessions, on Tuesday 28 and Wednesday 29, drawing from the findings of two of CEP's recent projects to discuss:

• Unpacking the relationships between green spaces and social cohesion: a brief overview of evidence and practice across the EU (Project insights: The health and social benefits of nature and biodiversity protection)
• Developing frameworks for understanding and evaluating community resilience to flood risk: evidence from the UK (Project insights: Flood Resilience Community Pathfinder evaluation)

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.

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.