Read the latest Relu newsletter

 

Accounting for knowledge exchange, the Relu way

The Relu programme represents a £25 million investment in interdisciplinary research being carried out across the UK – and it is also a huge experiment in its own right. It gives us an opportunity to explore how knowledge “ripples outwards” from the research to the practitioner. “Telling stories: Accounting for knowledge exchange” describes an imaginative new approach to impact assessment being trialled by Relu. It describes how the programme is investigating the nature of stakeholder involvement, and how we can show that different types of involvement have different outcomes. Accounting for investment in science is a serious business. But that doesn’t prevent cartoonist David Haldane from adding his own humorous angle in this new publication from Relu. Read “Telling stories: Accounting for Knowledge Exchange” or email relu@ncl.ac.uk for hard copies.

 

Relu welcomes Foresight report

The Rural Economy and Land Use Programme has welcomed the publication of the Foresight Project’s “Land Use Futures: Making the most of land in the 21st Century”.

Relu Director Professor Philip Lowe said: “The report brings together current thinking on the competing pressures and demands on the limited land at our disposal in the UK, and how we must begin to order our priorities.  But it goes further than that, exploring how we must begin to think not just about rural land in this context, but how rural and urban will have to work together in the future.  Challenges such as water and flood management, and the pressures of a growing population on housing, on energy and food security, cross over the urban/rural divide and bring into much clearer focus the relationships between town and country and the dependencies that exist between them. 

“Looking at the benefits that land provides for us, it is not only the countryside that will have to deliver multiple benefits but also the land in our towns, cities and suburbs.  How we value land, whether in a rural or urban context, must be consistent, taking the whole range of goods and services it provides into account.

“Interdisciplinarity, is also a key approach within the report.   We must be able to overcome the stark research divisions of the past and find ways of working together.  Planners have to be able to link with economists, ecologists with engineers.  Our responses to challenges such as climate change, and the needs of a growing population, will involve social and technical adjustments, and that is reflected in Foresight’s conclusions. 

“We have been delighted at the useful and positive contribution Relu has been able to make to this process, by feeding in results from the research projects, through the involvement of researchers in key expert groups and by stimulating a wide-ranging and fruitful debate on land use in the UK.”

The report and executive summary may be downloaded from the Foresight website at http://www.foresight.gov.uk/OurWork/ActiveProjects/LandUse/lufoutputs.asp