Manchester researchers win ESRC funding for collaborative think-piece

Funded by the ESRC, the Nexus Network brings together researchers, policy makers, business leaders and civil society to develop collaborative projects and improve decision making on food, energy, water and the environment. Following a call in June 2014 a team of researchers including Manchester, Loughborough, Cranfield and Lancaster successfully attracted ESRC funding to begin a dialogue on the challenges posed by Nexus thinking and questions raised for managing land for food, energy and water now and into uncertain futures.

THINKPIECE SUMMARY: COMPETING DEMANDS FOR LAND.

Maria Sharmina, Claire Hoolohan, Alice Bows-Larkin, Paul Gilbert, Kevin Anderson,Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Manchester; Paul Burgess, Jerry Knox, Cranfield University; James Colwill, Loughborough University; David Howard, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.

Land is a precious and finite resource, but in recent years in the UK, numerous policies and planning trends have emerged with competing and contradictory demands for the use of land. This includes the expansion of housing and industry to support a growing population; increased production of biofuels to meet low-carbon energy targets; intensification of agriculture to support food security, plus use of land for recreation, renewable energy, forestry, biodiversity, mining and landfill.

A tradition of disjointed management leaves energy, food and water competing for available land. Combined with policies and tools ill-equipped to reflect this complexity, there is little practical decision support available to policy makers and practitioners for developing sustainable solutions.

This thinkpiece:

  • Contrast the competing visions and policies from global to local levels and the interdependence of these for food, energy and water in the UK.
  • Suggest how important competing land uses are for the resilience of the UK.
  • Analyse and critique the existing policies and tools that are used for valuing and allocating land in the light of nexus challenges.

The full thinkpiece can be found here.

See Nexus Network website for further details.