Rural Futures : the next 25 years for rural areas and research

Janet Dwyer Professor of Rural Policy

Outline

• Challenges for agriculture and rural areas in Europe and the UK

• Implications for rural spaces and places – the quest for innovation

• Policy: key needs, ideas from research and elsewhere

• Some reflections on tactics and directions

• Increasing fossil fuel prices – higher global demand, lower / more costly / less secure supplies

• Growing global food demand

• Climate change - pressures north and south from temperature and rainfall shifts

• Demographic change – shrinking workforce, pressure in south

• Continuing austerity in public finances –reduced financing for land and people?

Challenges for European

agriculture & rural areas

highest negativeimpact

medium negative impact

low negative impactno/marginal impactlow positive impact

No data*

reduced data*ESPON CLIMATE study

EU regions: climate change vulnerability

Population Change

2000-2007

Annual Average Change per

1000 inhabitants

- < -6.0 (193)

- -6.0 - -3.0 (154)

- -3.0 - 0.0 (226)

- 0.0 - 3.0 (300)

- 3.0 - 6.0 (249)

- > 6.0 (341)

- no dataSource: DEMIFER project, annex of maps: ESPON

2012

These trends are set to continue: pressure in some poor/

water-stressed regions; decline in CEE & north, plus

ageing – reduced employment base to finance services…

Implications for rural

activities & resources

• Agriculture and the food sector must become much more resource-efficient: using fewer non-renewable inputs, conserving carbon, soil and water, and reducing or eliminating waste

• The multifunctionality of

rural spaces must be

maintained and

increased, embracing

energy generation and non-

food products, plus sustained

use for leisure and food

production (all these demands

will not diminish, but grow)

• Ecosystem services will

require long-term planning

and much better spatial

co-ordination

Communities of rural place will see

reduced central support, but enhanced

information:

- Eroding transport options

- Increasing scope for long-distance learning

and exchange of ideas

- Continuing challenges from demography:

capacity to cope

- ‘Renewal’ via in-migration – new scope for

entrepreneurial action? (social, environmental

and economic)

What will be needed – a

‘step-change’ in practice

• Technological change

• New knowledge

• New ways of working

• New (space & place-based) systems

• New ways of doing policy

• New institutional arrangements

- INNOVATION is the name of the game

Innovation in spaces: Why?

• To transform farm-level knowledge about

best management strategies and

sustainability planning

• To raise standards of practice on farms,

achieving a ‘step-change’ in approach

• To develop new businesses / sub-sectors

and successfully exploit market opportunities

based upon sustainable resource

management

• To test and learn from the experience of

successful pioneers

Innovation in places: Why?

• To cope with continuing public funding

restraint among local government and

communities

• To overcome the real issues of remoteness,

ageing, rising housing and transport costs, and

reduced service provision

• To develop new approaches and

successfully exploit opportunities, increasing

self-reliance

• To learn from the experience of successful

pioneers

How best to promote

innovation?It is not possible to force people to innovate,

BUT

there is evidence of value in fostering and promoting a climate in which innovation is

encouraged

KEY ingredients:

• Stronger research-practice linkages

• Communities of learning: advice, training and information, identifying new partners

• Enhanced networking and collaborative action

Innovation in spaces

Innovation in places

Ecology BS,

AECB

Lancashire Rural

Futures

Tools for self-reliance:

• Google analytics, wiki, social

networking, e-books, open-source

GIS…..

Enabling policy is vital

“a supportive and responsive government is required at

a UK, devolved and local level. Action on all these

levels is needed to: address regional level inequalities;

build capacity in local communities; and mitigate

against any unintended consequences of macro level

policies at a local level.” Carnegie Trust, 2012

- the UK is not strong on social learning…..

Better policy-making

- consider the plumber…

• We need smarter working with multiple goals,

integrated planning & delivery - ditch the

outmoded mantras

• We need to control and reduce the weight of

controls and bureaucracy – make policies closer

to the beneficiary, more flexible

• We need to incentivise experimentation -learning, doing things differently

‘Better targeting’ does not have to mean more

constraints and higher costs!

Smarter Policy: ideas from

research

• Adaptive governance (Folke et al, 2005) seeks

to address uncertainty through continuous

learning, involving multiple actors in decision-

making processes, and self-organisation of the

governance system.

• Polycentric institutional arrangements(Ostrom, 2010) are needed, that operate at multiple

scales – linking top-down with bottom-up

processes: we need both.

Smarter Policy: ideas from

research

Rijke et al, 2012

‘Fit–for–purpose governance’

These ideas offer

diagnostic tools and

some conceptual re-

framing, emphasising

the key role of

stakeholder

involvement in

achieving change

Smarter Policy: models

from industry

• BPR – ‘business process re-engineering’, analysing processes to enable simplification, with a strong focus upon the experiences of all actors in the delivery chain

• Lean Systems – to enable a move away from ‘one size fits all’ approaches, to programmes which enable tailored solutions for each individual situation, without leading to excessive bureaucracy or high costs

local government has already begun to apply these models: can they teach the centre?

Reflections on directions

• The UK ‘habit’ is to lead aspirationally, but

be weak (laissez-faire) in the follow-through

• Local and private sectors are probably

doing more than central state, at present

• EU capacity to lead may be weaker, post-

enlargement / Lisbon / economic crisis

• Inspiration may come from further afield…

Reflections on tactics

„The lower the effectiveness of government, the

more governance starts to appear attractive to

other actors, but whose own effectiveness (and

legitimacy) is crucially dependent on the presence

of the state‟ (Borzel,2010, cited in Bulkeley & Jordan, 2012)

The inspirational leaders and thinkers need

to organise and change the politics

The politicians need to (believe), commit

and engage

Thank you