Stakeholder participation for environmental management: A literature review

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers

The impacts of agricultural land use are far-reaching and extend to areas outside production. This paper provides an overview of the ecological status of agricultural systems across the European Union in the light of recent policy changes. It builds on the previous review of 2001 devoted to the impacts of agricultural intensification in Western Europe. The focus countries are the UK, The Netherlands, Boreal and Baltic countries, Portugal, Hungary and Romania, representing a geographical spread across Europe, but additional reference is made to other countries. Despite many adjustments to agricultural policy, intensification of production in some regions and concurrent abandonment in others remain the major threat to the ecology of agro-ecosystems impairing the state of soil, water and air and reducing biological diversity in agricultural landscapes. The impacts also extend to surrounding terrestrial and aquatic systems through water and aerial contamination and development of agricultural infrastructures (e.g. dams and irrigation channels). Improvements are also documented regionally, such as successful support of farmland species, and improved condition of watercourses and landscapes. This was attributed to agricultural policy targeted at the environment, improved environmental legislation, and new market opportunities. Research into ecosystem services associated with agriculture may provide further pressure to develop policy that is targeted at their continuous provisioning, fostering motivation of land managers to continue to protect and enhance them.

Ecological impacts of early 21st century agricultural change in Europe: a review. J Environ Manag

Ecological impacts of early 21st century agricultural change in Europe - a review.

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Citizen Science: A Study of People, Expertise and Sustainable Development

Over recent years the concept of ‘knowledge’ in the singular has been increasingly challenged by ideas of differentiated, contextualized ‘knowledges’. In this paper we propose the concept of ‘knowledge-cultures’ as a way of exploring the fluidity of diverse forms of knowledge and the rules, norms, and values that enable or constrain their production. Elaborating on Shotter's idea of knowledge-from-within, we argue that knowledge-cultures are social achievements that equip those who embody them with a relational–responsive kind of understanding of events and surroundings built on multiple knowledge-forms. To explore this contextual nature of knowledge-culture construction and illustrate our arguments, we draw on detailed empirical research of farmers' experiences with the precision-farming technique of yield mapping in the English counties of Lincolnshire and Suffolk.

Exploring Knowledge-Cultures: Precision Farming, Yield Mapping, and the Expert–Farmer Interface:

There is increasing public policy interest in the management of rural landscapes for conservation, both in terms of natural and cultural heritage. Agri-environmental policies are an important part of an emerging vision for a sustainable countryside, with increasing support for the existing Environmentally Sensitive Area (ESA) and Countryside Stewardship (CS) schemes. This paper provides insight into the nature of land-manager attitudes towards the conservation of rural landscapes and how these relate to differing modes and levels of engagement with these two schemes. It is based on the results of a recently completed project exploring the attitudes and practices of 100 land managers towards features of landscape and historic interest. Agri-environmental research has often sought to ‘typologise’ attitudes and practices around discrete land-manager types; an approach that may downgrade commonalities between land managers, the potential interplay of elements defining these types, and the possibility that lan...

Conserving English Landscapes: Land Managers and Agri-Environmental Policy:

Moralizing the Environment: Countryside Change, Farming and Pollution

In this paper the emergence during the 1980s of a water pollution problem associated with intensive livestock production is examined. Farm pollution is socially constructed and is shaped by rural social change. Rural areas are experiencing social and economic restructuring with a resultant shift in emphasis from production to consumption concerns. ‘New’ people are living in the countryside, with ideas about how its resources should be managed that often differ from those with traditional production interests. At the same time, the debates surrounding the privatisation of the water industry opened up the issue of water pollution in the countryside to greater critical scrutiny. It is in this context that pollution from farm ‘wastes’ (termed here ‘farm pollution’) has gone from being a ‘nonproblem’ in the 1970s to an issue of greater public and political concern and regulatory activity since the late 1980s. Based on evidence from a study of dairy farming in Devon, it is argued in this paper that the farm pol...

Rural Restructuring and the Regulation of Farm Pollution

In this paper we examine the regulation of agricultural practice to reduce the risks of water pollution in England and Wales. We present case-study material concerning water pollution from farm liv...

S. Seymour

Papers

Exploring Knowledge-Cultures: Precision Farming, Yield Mapping, and the Expert–Farmer Interface:

Conserving English Landscapes: Land Managers and Agri-Environmental Policy:

Moralizing the Environment: Countryside Change, Farming and Pollution

Rural Restructuring and the Regulation of Farm Pollution

Keeping Matter in its Place: Pollution Regulation and the Reconfiguring of Farmers and Farming: