5 May 2010

Launch of Centre for Environmental Change and Human Resilience

Public lecture May 6th: Professor Jan Bebbington - 'Delivering Scotland's Sustainable Future'

The chaos caused by the eruption of the Icelandic volcano over the past few weeks has illustrated the serious challenges sudden environmental change can place before society. Possibly far more disruptive may be the effects of long-term change affecting climate or other aspects of the environment.

The University of Dundee and SCRI, Scotland’s leading centre for crop research, are supporting a joint research venture which will examine environmental change and how society can react to it - The Centre for Environmental Change and Human Resilience (CECHR).

The collaboration links strengths within both institutions - SCRI’s expertise in plant sciences and ecosystems and the University's broad range of environmental research, which spans geography, law, engineering, life sciences and other areas.

'The issue of how we react to the effects of environmental change is a huge one and it needs to be addressed through a wide variety of expertise,' said John Rowan, Director of CECHR.

'The Icelandic volcano is a strong example of this - there are the geoscientists who assess the volcanic activity itself, climate scientists analysing the ash that is thrown up, the engineers looking at the effects on planes, then the social scientists get involved looking at the social and economic impacts of the event and what lessons can be learned for the future.

'Food security is another area which illustrates the complexity of such issues because it integrates political, economic, energy, agronomic and resource availability issues along with climate change uncertainties.

'There is a need to assemble multi-disciplinary teams which can address questions around which local, regional and international institutional arrangements should be strengthened to produce societies resilient to environment change and build sustainable futures.

'We have that range of expertise across the University and SCRI and we can promote that research capacity to ultimately inform policy and make a real difference.'

CECHR (pronounced 'checker') is based around four research themes:

• food futures
• water futures
• energy futures
• health futures

Professor David Hopkins, Director of Science at SCRI, said: 'These are all areas where SCRI ‘s research can be coupled to the University’s wider social and life science expertise. SCRI has expertise in plant science, land management for food and fuel production, efficient use of resource such as water and plant nutrients, biodiversity conservation and environmental protection

'SCRI and the University already work closely together through, for example, the recent launch of the Master of Research degree programme’Crops for the Future’. The new CECHR venture is an exciting further step in the co-operation between two of Scotland’s leading research organizations.'

CECHR has already been active for the past year and is running a number of student award projects at PhD level across various disciplines. It is also involved with the launch of a new Masters programme at the University this autumn on Marine Spatial Planning, addressing issues of planning policy for the seas.

CECHR will have a public launch on May 6th with a lecture from Professor Jan Bebbington, of the University of St Andrews, who will speak on 'Delivering Scotland's Sustainable Future'. Entry is free and a reception will follow the lecture (for tickets see www.dundee.ac.uk/centres/cechr/lectures.htm).

NOTES TO EDITORS

Environmental and social science research within the University of Dundee is presently conducted across a wide variety of areas and includes specialised centres such as the Centre for Energy, Petroleum & Mineral Law & Policy, the UNESCO Centre for Water Law, Policy & Science, the Geddes Institute for Urban Research, the College of Life Sciences and the Social Dimensions of Health Institute.

SCRI is in the process of forming a new research institute with the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute based in Aberdeen. The aim is to strengthen Scotland's rural-environmental research capacity and further enhance its international competitiveness.

SCRI has recently inaugurated the Centre for Sustainable Cropping at Balruddery Farm in Angus. Here scientists are hard at work on a unique experiment with the goal of improving arable biodiversity and creating greater crop resilience and productivity, and 'yield stability' at levels which would satisfy commercial requirements. The project will gather data over at least four rotation cycles, over a period of more than 20 years.

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