CECHR takes off

Overhead shot of road Four years after the creation of the Centre for Environmental Change and Human Resilience, the joint initiative between the University and the James Hutton Institute is moving into a new period of expansion.

For Director Dr John Rowan it is a particularly exciting time with an increasing range of potential benefits and opportunities for the University.

“We are growing critical mass, new projects are popping up and things are moving into a more dynamic phase,” he said. “It is enormously exciting as it will lead to even more valuable work.

“We started out with a very clear agenda. It was about building the network and communicating a shared vision and we have done that. The academic community is now much more connected.

“At the outset we had three PhD students and now we have 14. At the same time we’ve been recruiting new staff in environmental risk, global environmental change and we’re recruiting multiple new Chairs in cognate areas including the Social Dimensions of Climate Change; Planning and Architecture and Environmental Law. We’re seeing now that we have a much stronger University presence.”

Dr Rowan added that additional signs of the Centre’s growing success are the increase in the number and diversity of research grants, the publication of more research in top journals and the acknowledgement of expert status giving vital academic impact.

“External income generation is a key indicator of our progress,” he said. Recent successes have included awards from NERC to Mike Bonell at the IHP HELP Centre for Water Law, Policy and Science for work on Changing Water Cycles inIndiaand to both Andrew Allan (UNESCO) and Terry Dawson (School of the Environment) for Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) Projects. Also from the School fo the Environment Mark Cutler and colleagues were awarded a NERC consortium grant of £ 2.5 M to develop the world’s first satellite-based global lake surveillance system.

Colin Reid in the School of Law has achieved success from the Arts and Humanities Research Council to fund research into privatisation and biodiversity, whilst Alan MacDonald in History is working on climate change in Early Modern Scotland with support from the Leverhulme Trust. Chris Connolly (Neuroscience) is now approaching the completion of his highly successful ‘Insect Pollinators Initiative’ considering the impacts of agro-chemicals on bee and other insect pollinators.

“The productive potential of this vibrant and creative research community is also now being realised as the flow of publications in high quality journals begins to grow.

“We are also building stakeholder engagement through representation in the Scottish Government's new 'Centres of Expertise.' For example Chris Spray (UNSECO) has been appointed to the Policy Research Advisory Group of the Centre for Research Expertise on Water (CREW), whilst I’ve been appointed to the Directorate of ClimateXChange, which is a major investment (> £ 15 M over five years) aligning research to support the Scottish Government in relation to climate change mitigation, adaptation and transition to a low carbon economy.”

With the first cohort of CECHR PhD Students due to complete their doctorates this year Dr Rowan is hopeful for the future for interdisciplinary research in Dundee.

“We are building something very tangible,” he said. “The challenges we are addressing are not going to go away. In fact they are getting more severe and they are wicked problems. It is difficult for one discipline to make a difference. CECHR has always been about bringing people together and harnessing the creativity of academics so that we can make a difference. As our research is translated more widely and effectively into policy we can see the impact translating into improving people’s lives and well-being. But of course there is still much to be done!!”