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Some consider there to be a significant paradigm shift in the management of the natural environment. This is typified in the elaboration of the Ecosystem Approach under the Convention on Biological Diversity and attempts to roll out the concept at national and supranational levels. The opportunities,challenges and constraints in achieving the delivery of new holistic approaches are examined. A tool for the functional analysis of wetland ecosystems is examined as one way of achieving more integrated and balanced management decisions at the landscape scale,including strategies to combat the impacts of an elevated carbon economy. Finally the case of peat-forming ecosystems is examined to illustrate some of the potential dilemmas facing policy-makers.

Robert Gray is a Chartered Town Planner and Chartered Landscape Architect with more than 30 years experience in both the public and private sectors. He has been in his current post of Head of Service (Planning Policy and Environment) for the last five years. During that time he has been involved in the Aberdeenshire Local Plan, the Aberdeen City and Shire Structure Plan, the emerging Aberdeenshire Local Development Plan, the Core Paths Plan and numerous environmental programmes and projects. Part of his remit is in driving forward the Sustainability Agenda both within the Council and throughout Aberdeenshire.

Forestry has the potential to make a significant contribution to meeting the UKâ?Ts challenging emissions reduction targets. Woodland creation provides highly cost-effective and achievable abatement of GHG emissions when compared with alternative abatement options. This is leading to increased government support for woodland expansion for carbon gain. However, land use change and developments in energy forestry in particular, present a number of risks to soil and water that could threaten sustainable forest management. This presentation will focus on the potential impacts on water quality and quantity, as well as consider opportunities for new woodlands to aid water and flood management. Work underway to quantify the water benefits and trade-offs will be described.

Tom Nisbet obtained a joint honours BSc degree in biology and geography at the University of Strathclyde in 1980 and a PhD in soil science at the University of Aberdeen in 1984. The subject of his PhD was a study of the effects of soil water regime on the growth of Sitka spruce. He then spent 3 years at the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute in Aberdeen on a Department of the Environment post-doctoral fellowship studying the transfer of acidity through vegetation and soils.

Tom joined Forest Research in 1987 as a project leader in forest hydrology. His primary interests are in studying the impacts of forestry on the quality and quantity of water resources, and evaluating the effectiveness of best management practices in protecting and enhancing the freshwater environment within forests. He has played a central role in the development of national forest and water guidelines and maintains strong links with end users through the provision of expert advice and involvement in key stakeholder groups.

Dr. Graeme Purves is an Assistant Chief Planner in the Scottish Government’s Directorate for the Built Environment. He has many years experience in the development of strategic planning policy, development management and the environmental assessment of policies and proposals. He has a strong background in urban regeneration and rural development and has been active in promoting community participation in environmental management. He has served as a member of a group of international experts advising on good practice in spatial planning in the Celtic and Baltic countries, is a member of the British Irish Council’s working group on spatial planning, and leads the team which prepared Scotland’s second National Planning Framework.

Dr. Purves will explain how the planning system is contributing to the achievement of Scotland's ambitious targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and the programme of mitigation and adaptation set out in the Scottish Climate Change Delivery Plan.

Sir George Stapledon, perhaps the greatest agricultural scientist of the 20th century, believed that mixed farming with both crops and grazing livestock was the system best suited to British conditions. He considered it key, not only to a secure supply of quality food, but to a thriving rural economy. Like many western countries the UK has largely abandoned mixed farming and based its food supply on high-input grain crops. However, this system is highly dependent on fossil fuels in the form of agrochemicals and chemical fertilizers, and as diesel fuel. With the steady rise in oil prices it begins to look untenable. There's also evidence that it is damaging to soils and wasteful of scarce water resources. Perhaps the time has come to reinstate mixed farming with its fertility-building grazing pastures? Any such system would almost certainly require more labour than today's highly mechanised cereal systems, so there's a need to provide new opportunities for land-based business, through farm tenancies and share-farming, for example. There's also a case for giving land reform a higher place on the political agenda.

Graham Harvey has written on the countryside, food and environmental issues for a range of national publications including Country Life, Private Eye and New Scientist. He has written over 500 episodes of The Archers, as well as being their agricultural story editor. His first book Killing of the Countryside was published to critical acclaim in 1997 and won the BP Natural World Book Prize. His new book - We Want Real Food - explains how many everyday foods have been depleted in nutrients and how to find the sort of foods that will truly protect our health. He lives in West Somerset.

This presentation takes the livestock sector and its GHG impacts, as the focus. It briefly sets out what life cycle analysis has to say about livestock emissions, and the various LCA derived proposals made for reducing these impacts. I then argue that the merits of these approaches very much depend on the framework within which they are viewed and are in fact the products of a particular set of economic, social, and moral assumptions; given a different framework of assumptions, different approaches to GHG mitigation from livestock may be considered preferable. To illustrate this, I describe a set of scenarios for livestock production (based on systems that already exist worldwide), each of which takes as its goal the mitigation of GHG emissions but which sits within a different set of framing assumptions. I explore how successful each scenario might be in achieving reductions while also examining what the moral and social implications, for example with respect to human health or animal welfare, might be.

Tara's work focuses on researching the contribution that our food consumption makes to UK greenhouse gas emissions and the scope for emissions reduction. Her work focuses both on the technological options for tackling food-GHG emissions and at consumer behaviour around food and how this might be influenced in more sustainable directions.

Tara also runs the Food Climate Research Network. This brings together 760+ individuals from across the food industry, NGO, Government and academic sectors and from a broad variety of disciplines to share information on issues relating to food and climate change. The Network is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and is based at the University of Surrey's Centre for Environmental Strategy.

Until recently, there has been a widespread working assumption in many countries that problems of food production have been solved, and that food security is largely a matter of distribution and access to be achieved principally by open markets. The events of 2008 challenged these assumptions. Environmental change is providing added impetus to reconsider where and how crops should be produced and how food might be accessed and utilised. In this seminar I will demonstrate how global environmental and social changes are affecting food systems and suggest some of the challenges and opportunities locally and internationally.

Peter Gregory is Chief Executive and Institute Director of SCRI (the Scottish Crop Research Institute) based near Dundee. He has held this position for nearly 5 years, before which he spent most of his professional career at the University of Reading, England with 5 years in Western Australia in the early 1990’s. His research has involved studies of root/soil interactions, the use of water and nutrients by crops, and interactions of climate change and food security.

This seminar will present a critical appraisal of participatory research in academic and policy research. Participatory research covers a diverse range of approaches that claim to co-produce knowledge with people more usually positioned as research subjects. The discussion will be situated in the current zeitgeist for University public/community engagement, and draw on lessons from the recent establishment of the Centre for Social Justice and Community Action at Durham University. First I explore issues of definition, examining the historical roots of participatory research in the Global South and the ways in which it has been taken up in the Global North, including its institutionalisation in state, NGO and academic practice. I discuss the various critiques that have been levelled at the theory and practice of participation (including the ‘tyranny’ critique, poststructuralist approaches and empirical concerns). I then outline some ways in which geographers have responded to these critiques, drawing on examples from research on crime, migration, flooding and rural land use. I explore issues relating to research funding, working approaches, methods and publication; and come to the knotty question of whether it is possible to see beyond adding on participation to ‘business as usual’, to put the co-production of knowledge at the heart of our practice as academics.

Born in Northumberland and brought up in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Rachel has lived in the North East for most of her life. She completed her first degree in geography at Lancaster University and PhD at the University of Edinburgh, then worked as a lecturer in geography at Northumbria University before moving to Durham in 2000. Here, she teaches at undergraduate level, supervise nine PhD students, and is Co-Director of the Centre for Social Justice and Community Action.

Dr Rachel Pain is interested in exploring alternatives to current publishing practices, and am part of the collective mrs (c) kinpaisby(hill). She is keen that the University plays a full role in the region, listening to the needs and priorities of the local communities which we’re all part of. As well as locating her own research and some training and teaching locally outside the University, Rachel is involved in a number of initiatives to encourage public engagement, including the Centre for Social Justice and Community Action which develops and supports theory and practice around participatory action research at local, national and international levels. Finally, she is interested in the challenges that the idea of work life balance presents for academic business and cultures, and in supporting fairer institutional policies and practices for fractional, flexible and non-traditional workers.