The CCRI was well represented at the 2016 RGS-IBG Annual Conference, which took place from 30th August to 2nd September 2016. Damian Maye, James Kirwan, Dan Keech, Chris Short and Rob Berry were all involved in either organising sessions and/or presenting papers. Also in attendance was Marco Della Gala.
This year’s theme was ‘nexus thinking’, an approach that aims to address the interdependencies, tensions and trade-offs between different environmental and social domains.
Damian Maye and James Kirwan organised a session on food system sustainability and resilience, which aimed to connect thinking and theoretical perspectives from resilience theory with food system sustainability approaches, discourses and assessment methodologies. The session was well attended and received very positive feedback on social media for the great papers and discussion that ensued.
Damian and James also co-presented three research papers. Damian’s paper was about rural and urban consumer understandings of global and local food chains. This paper was based on GLAMUR research and is part of a session about the rural-urban nexus.
James presented two papers. The first was a paper about resilience ethics that stems from EU GLAMUR work comparing global and local food chain performance. The second paper used a farm resilience framework to compare the sustainability of inshore fisheries and dairy farming in the UK, and is linked to the Horizon 2020 project, SUFISA.
Dan Keech also made a presentation in the food and rurality nexus session. His paper was entitled ‘City horticulture – rural identity: local food in Bath and Bamberg’. Dan’s presentation can be viewed on the CCRI Slideshare account.
Read abstract of Dan’s presentation
Chris Short organised a session with Kerry Waylen from James Hutton Institute. The session was entitled ‘Managing the rural Nexus: exploring if and how we can manage for multiple goals’.
Read abstract of the session organised by Chris and Kerry Waylen
Chris also presented a paper, which was entitled ‘Evaluating the impact of integrated local delivery on enhancing ecosystem services resilience’, which was based on the research he has undertaken on the WILD project. Chris’ presentation can be viewed on the CCRI Slideshare account.
Rob Berry’s presentation, based on a paper co-written with CCRI colleague Mauro Vigani, examined landscape diversity and was entitled ‘Spatio-economic modelling of agricultural resilience’.
Read abstract of Rob’s presentation
On a final note, Damian Maye was also elected to the RGRG Committee.