Category Archives: Sustainability As If People Mattered
Translational Science In Transition: The New Science Policy
Who owns Big Science in the UK? Does government science policy sit within wider public policy, or is it stand alone? The Cooksey Review has stirred strong feelings amongst medical scientists, and also further afield. Few science policy questions can be determined without understanding the wider public policy context.
Who pays for what in the constant race to stay at the global cutting edge in science and technology is a hot debate. Often neglected is an acknowledgement of the multiplicity of stakeholders, but this is an area which the scientists themselves sometimes ignore.
Getting to the bottom of who can / should pay for science and innovation in the UK is a difficult task. When all relevant interests – science and technology, policy makers, the economy / electorate – are perceived there is more clarity, but only rarely does this happen. The issue is however making headway as a result of changes resulting from the 2007 Budget, which promises an increase in investment in public science of 2.5 per cent from 2008-09 to 2010-11..
Both the Cooksey Review on funding for health research, and the (connected) introduction of the new Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills focus on ensuring that progress in scientific research and wider value for money go hand in hand.
Value for whom?
The really big question here is, who benefits from investment in what sort of science? This is surely the nub of the issue, but it needs a wide perspective to answer the question properly.
The emphasis seems so far to be on the ‘translation’ of blue sky research findings into marketable commodities – an entirely sensible idea in general., but not a complete one. The core issue of how much benefit accrues to whom when commodities become marketable is not easily resolved.
Whether the product eventually taken to market is a medical drug, a form of renewable energy or a development in nanotechnology, there are likely to be direct and indirect benefits and costs.
Medical priorities in research
One person’s or sector’s gain may be another’s loss – an obvious but frequently forgotten matter from the perspective of practising scientists.
This may be particularly true in the case of medical scientists, who are currently it seems most agitated, and who often have a specific, and possibly tragic, individual human condition in mind as they undertake their work. Nonetheless, this human priority cannot stand alone.
Medical scientists have not always covered themselves in glory when it comes to collaborating within the Big Science framework – the Daresbury crisis of a few years ago comes to mind – and for some of medical researchers the universe probably finishes at the point where abstract research translates (to use the new term) into pharmaceuticals. This is why, when public money is involved, others must take a wider view.
Science policy and public policy
Policy in government-sponsored science is not, contrary to much of the discussion, a singular issue. For a start, there is policy about science; and then there is policy relating science and the general public interest. These two are inter-connected, but not always the same.
Science policy variously (as examples, and in no order of priority) might be about:
* ‘translating’ or bringing blue sky research to the market;
* meeting a specific human or technical need;
* continuing promising lines of investigation which may or may not eventually go anywhere;
* establishing or maintaining national reputation, or that of an institution and / or individual/s.
Public policy relating to science might, e.g., concern:
* developing local science-based businesses;
* linking scientific and technical / medical research outcomes to the wider economy;
* developing programmes or projects in geographical or otherwise specifically identified areas, to progress regeneration or other ambitions for general benefit;
* seeking answers to particular policy conundrums or challenges, by way of developing the evidence-base available to decision-makers.
Contextual perspectives on science
To make sense of these difficult and often conflicting priorities between science and public policy requires seeing the wider contexts in which science and technology operate.
Social, economic and political backdrops are not secondary matters when government is paying directly for science to be done. They are central and critical, right from the beginning.
‘Translating’ science is ultimately about taking blue sky research to market, but it is also in another sense about making sure that stakeholders – the general public – know and are comfortable with what, through their taxes, they are paying for.
Consensus on taking science forward
From this point of view scientists need to accept that, if government pays directly, it wants to know how the research will take public policy forward.
Politicians are not usually keen to write open cheques for unknown outcomes, nor should they be.
Scientists paid by government are usually there to do their part within a policy framework geared to fairly tight timescales, to make the evidence-base available or to develop a required product. As such they rarely have the luxury of following their noses in research, just because it looks interesting.
Government funding
Sometimes there is a case for blue sky research directly funded by government, but probably, given budgetary constraints and the constant need to be immediately answerable to the electorate, not often.
The right way to support (most) blue-sky research is through the universities’ wider funding and large science-led corporations.
Such investment will, if directed wisely, bring reward in the longer term, when investors can as a result make the evidence-based case for government to invest in developing the applications of their new-found knowledge.
Sefton Park’s Grebes And Swans
Yesterday we saw the grebes on Sefton Park lake in Liverpool. There were the two adults who caused such excitement when they arrived some three years ago, plus two quite large chicks, all bobbing up and down happily in the centre of the lake. Then, a little further on we saw swans, a pair with four cygnets this year.
Like the grebe chicks, the cygnets are now almost full-size, but just a bit more fluffy and woolly coloured than their parents.
The grebes
This is the first time we’ve actually ever seen the grebes’ family; perhaps the young ones lurk near the island at the top end of the lake until they’re large enough to survive in more open water – though even today we saw the parents feeding their young straight from a catch of minnows.
Cygnets and swans
The swans, however, are less shy and their young have been ‘on show’ for several months. Perhaps their size is adequate protection without further caution. This year four out of an original five cygnets have survived, which seems to be about par for their annual breeding activity.
So how many cygnets must this pair of swans have produced over the years? And where do they all go?
Read more articles on Liverpool’s Great Parks & Open Spaces: Sefton Park
Liverpool’s Sefton Park, Swans, Herons And Grebes
Sefton Park, Liverpool: Winter Solstice 2006
Cherry Blossom For May Day In Sefton Park, Liverpool
Friends Of Sefton Park
Croxteth And Norris Green, Liverpool
Croxteth and Norris Green in Liverpool have recently become tragic headline news. But the no-hope issues behind the grim developments in these areas of North Liverpool have been simmering for many years. The Crocky Crew and Nogzy ‘Soldiers’ are not new. The challenge is how to support local people to achieve their higher expectations and horizons.
My first ‘real’ job post-college was as a junior social worker in Norris Green and Croxteth, Liverpool.
The task allotted me all that time ago was to visit every one of the 200+ people in the area, many of them living on the Boot Estate, who were on the Social Services list and had not been seen (‘assessed’) in the past year or two. And so, equipped only with the list, a degree certificate and a bus pass, I set about my first professional posting.
Forgotten land
Nothing, not my inner-city school, not my academic training, not my voluntary work, could have prepared me for what I was to see.
Here were elderly men who seemed to survive solely on Guinness, bread and marg; here were children with disability so severe that they had to live day-in, day-out in their parents’ lounge; here were old ladies who promised fervently to pray for me, simply because I was the first person they had spoken with for weeks.
Here, in fact, was a land, originally designed as the vision for the future, which, by those far-off days of the early 1970s, few knew, and almost everyone had forgotten.
For some, a zero-expectations environment
This was a Liverpool where there were people who, expecting nothing, eked an existence. It was the home of the dispossessed, the displaced and the despairing. Every day was like every other day in that concrete wilderness of dust, derelict front ‘gardens’, broken windows and enormous, fierce Alsation dogs.
No-one, or so it seemed, went to work. No-one ever seemed to leave the Norris Green ‘estate’, designed as a circular enclosure with concentric streets of council housing and no indication of via which road one might depart – urban planning surely to guarantee future disaster. There were few amenities (I had to take the bus to get even a sandwich or coffee at lunchtime) and even fewer shops.
Cut off from Croxteth
Until the 1980s Croxteth itself didn’t feature much in the Liverpool mind map as an area to live. Norris Green, the near-neighbour, was cut off from almost everywhere by dual carriageways on every side, and beyond them, on to the South-East was the huge, green Croxteth Estate – to this day the location of a fine country house and gardens open to visitors and in the ownership of the City of Liverpool.
Also near Norris Green was the North-East Liverpool Technical College (which co-incidentally turned out to be my next employer), a provider of day-release training for local Fords apprentices and other ‘tradesmen’ (the only women were student radiographers) and set on a large piece of land. Later, when then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher effectively abolished apprenticeships, the NELTC site was sold and became, with the farming land next to the Croxteth Estate, the location of a private development of pleasant housing for people who worked in the surrounding areas.
Broken hopes and promises
And later still the Norris Green council housing residents were promised their own improvements, as part of the Boot Estate programme – a programme which raised, and then dashed, the hopes of those from this place of quiet desperation who had dared to look to beyond their immediate horizons.
Little surprise – though unspeakably sad – that from this strange amalgam of development and despair have arisen the Nogzy ‘soldiers’ and the Crocky Crew of Liverpool’s current tragic troubles. Set alongside an area of new (relative) affluence, Norris Green is an enclosed place still, it must feel, without either hope or many stories of success.
Nothing excuses the illegal drugs economy and vicious violence – the fatal shooting by a local youth of Rhys Jones, who lived in Croxteth and was aged just eleven – of which we have all recently read; but one does begin to see through this disturbing grey blur how it might have come about.
Facing the future
There are many serious and good people who live and work in Norris Green and Croxteth. Life for them at present must feel extremely difficult, and the way forward by any account challenging. Support for what they do is obviously a critical first requirement.
But beyond that, I look back to a conversation between my supervising senior social worker and myself, when I left the employ of the Social Services.
I was leaving, I told my boss back then, because I believed that resolution of the issues required deep economic and political engagement, as well as the personal approach.
Strategies for hope
Many years later I still hold that conviction. Since that time Government and European funding of multiple millions has come to Liverpool; and now – in theory at least – we know so much more about positive strategic and sustainable intervention that we could ever have known then.
The traditional challenges of all-embracing absolute material poverty are in truth behind us. No longer can poverty alone be used to ‘explain’ the grim situation that we see.
New challenges
What we now face in Norris Green, Croxteth and some other city areas in Liverpool and elsewhere is the gang-led imposition by the few on the many of a sometimes suffocating, stultifying local culture; a culture, it is said, created intentionally by illegal drugs dealers who enforce it via the callous manipulation of alienated local children.
Nothing can change what has already happened. But I hope one outcome of recent awful events will be a compelling sense of urgency about getting things sorted, before more people’s lives are ruined and even more people believe that for them there is no hope.
Liverpool’s Sefton Park Trees Under Threat – Unnecessarily?
The heritage people are (at last) about to make improvements to Sefton Park. Much of the intended work is welcomed by everyone. So why must they remove certain trees – such as a lovely willow – which those who use the park as a local place for peace and quiet have come to regard as part of that tranquility? I hope they change their minds soon.
See also: What Now For Liverpool’s Sefton Park?
Cherry Picking Liverpool’s Sefton Park Agenda
Sefton Park’s Grebes And Swans
Liverpool’s Sefton Park, Swans, Herons And Grebes
Sefton Park, Liverpool: Winter Solstice 2006
Cherry Blossom For May Day In Sefton Park, Liverpool
Solar Lighting Could Solve The Parks Problem
Friends Of Sefton Park
Brent’s Only Grade 1 Listed Building: St. Andrew’s Old Church, Kingsbury
Almost within throwing distance of the new Wembley Stadium in Brent there lies another, vastly older but sadly forgotten building – the 11th Century St. Andrew’s Old Church, in the grounds of the present fine establishment. Father John Smith and his parishioners are working hard to renew the present grim Church Hall and to reclaim the old church and churchyard for the local community.
For Father John Smith these small red bricks have a special significance; they suggest there was a church on the site of the photograph even back in Saxon times. The bricks are the original Roman evidence of the ancient (eleventh century) church which lies adjacent to the ‘new’ St Andrew’s Church, Kingsbury, within the grounds of his incumbency.
There is a great ambition in the parish congregation for the ‘old’ church and, especially the churchyard, with its many historic graves, to become a place of rest and respite in this busy part of London. Local people are giving their time and energy generously to clear the pathways and make more evident the generous clues to the area’s history which the overgrown graves can offer.
This plan, part of an intended programme to replace the past-its-best Church Hall with a lively and responsive building which will serve all who live in the area, is surely one which many will wish to support.
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- Father John T. Smith
Fast Trains And The North-South Divide
Is large-scale sustainable transport possible? Should we welcome Britain’s fastest-ever domestic train, which has arrived in Southampton this week? The UK’s North- South economic divide brings these questions into sharp focus. The further one is from London, the more important connectivity can become. So is carbon footprint a critical issue only after the economics have been taken care of?
Economics and environment don’t always mix. For some the pressing need is to reduce travel. For others, it is vital to improve physical connection. These complicated issues have come up the agenda again this week, with the news that the Go-Ahead Group has arranged imminent delivery of 29 high-speed Hitachi trains from Japan, which will operate from 2009 on the South Eastern network.
Low expectations?
Whilst commuters in the South are getting excited about travel times and accessibility to the Capital, those in more northerly parts of the UK are likely to be less enthused. For many the expectation of poor transport is a way of life, and there is a feeling – perhaps unjustly in respect of some local northern operators – that nothing is going to happen to change this. For others, the temptation is to believe that yet again the South is benefiting and the rest are not. Few Northerners are as yet willing to ditch their cars.
Will the new fast trains effect a change of heart? The optimists for train travel think that signs we are catching up with the Europeans will focus a national clamour for this form of transport. More dour observers suggest that because of potential damage to the environment we should not be encouraging travel anyway.
Sustainable transport, sustainable economies
I’m generally on the side of the optimists here. There’s little chance of sustainable living across Britain whilst inequalities (not just North-South, but certainly including that) are so great. I’d like to see more trains, and faster ones, right across the country. This is one area of environmental concern where we really can ask the technical people to work on the ‘clean and green’ agenda.
Science can’t solve all eco- problems, but in terms of transport and communications, we shouldn’t write technology off yet. The challenge now is for the politicians to come up with proposals which will match economic balance across the North and South with the possibilities opening up in transport.
Nothing in life stays still. Sustainability in communities of whatever size must start from the ‘can do’, the will to be positive and fair, because any other starting point is doomed in the long-run to failure.
Unique Selling Points In Regeneration, Or Just ‘Special’ Ones?
Regeneration and development are often focused on what’s ‘unique’ and ‘special’ about a location. What does it have which others don’t have? This is a good question, but it needs a context. There are many ways to define ‘special’ – and even more to define ‘unique’. Not all of these special qualities translate well beyond local boundaries. Maybe it’s when locations work with outsiders to find commonalities and difference that they can make this ‘USP’ regenerational focus most effective? But how can this be done? And by whom?
Marketing and renewal have in recent times become closely connected in terms of what happens to areas which require ‘regeneration‘. Along with the basics of reasonable housing and facilities, there is often a clear focus on what sort of ‘unique selling point’ (USP) a location can offer, as plans are made to develop and energise a rather stagnant local economy / community.
As an initial strategy this is sensible. Asking people to reflect on the defining features of their locality is a good way to support emerging ideas about how to improve things. Direct stakeholders’ views are always crucial to the exercise.
Local perspectives
It is not always reasonable to expect those who live in a place to be aware of what is unique about their location, and what may not be. How can we be sure?
But encouraging the view that a place is better / more interesting than anywhere else can be a political or cynical ploy, not a genuine attempt to move forward. How much easier to leave people in their comfort zone, than to challenge local assumptions which perhaps make a difficult situation more immediately palatable for those who have to cope with it every day…
Wider responsibilities?
One aspect of regeneration in practice is a responsibility by those who take the lead, to ensure that the wider picture is at least available to direct stakeholders. No-one can insist that everyone has a wider view, but it seems reasonable to require at minimum that this is easily available. (Not all regeneration powers-that-be would agree about this requirement, of course; and many of them are not equipped for various reasons to do it.)
Finding common ground
Suggestions that things could be better if we emulated others elsewhere – or indeed the proposal that, instead of insisting we’re unique, we acknowledge commonality with others who also do things well / have a given local attribute – need not be negative.
Offered positively, information about other places and ways of doing things becomes a strength. Why not share a problem or a benefit? Increasingly, disparate geographical areas are coming together in this way. The North of England Mills and Canals conferences have been going for some years; BURA has recently identified both the Seaside and Universities as shared challenges and opportunities for the towns and cities concerned; rural areas have long-time histories of sharing good practice in agricultural produce shows and much else.
Taking it to the people
These good ideas now need to become more visible. For regeneration to be effective ordinary people, the immediate stakeholders in the process – not just the experts – must understand what’s happening and why. And part of that much-needed understanding is sharing commonality (specialness) as well as defining uniqueness.
Is there a role here for new ways to reach regenerating communities on the world-wide web? And, if so, who’s going to make it happen?
National Allotments Week (13 – 19 August 2007)
This week is U.K. National Allotments Week, promoting ‘the awareness and availability of allotments both locally and nationally, to show … the strength of support and interest for the heritage of allotment culture.’ This excellent initiative is quite new, but allotments themselves have stood the test of time. Here is an example from rural Portugal, on a tributary of the Duoro River, of a smallholding which has probably been in place for centuries.
You may also like to see these photographs and articles:
Early Summer In Edinburgh Botanic Gardens
Cherry Blossom For May Day In Sefton Park, Liverpool
Wirral’s Ness Gardens
Sefton Park, Liverpool: Winter Solstice 2006
Flowers In Pots For All
Liverpool Botanic Garden, Edge Lane
Visiting Valencia
Love Parks Week!
Seasonal Food – Who Knows About It?
Read more about National Allotments Week here: National Allotment Gardens Trust
Where The Science Meets The Social: The UK’s Wettest Summer On Record
The rain it raineth every day; but, strange as this British ‘Summer’ weather feels, we know a lot about what’s triggered the deluge. We can debate the extent of global warming, but the big issue is how to ensure it doesn’t carry on. This is where conventional science gives way to understandings of human behaviour. Hearts and minds will help us meet the challenges of climate change, not simply technology.
As everyone keeps telling us, these are uncertain times. You don’t have to have been in the floods to have felt in some way their effects….
But understanding it all is a bit of a challenge. Is it true that climate change is well and truly upon us? (I suspect, on the whole the answer is Yes) Is there anything we can do about it? (Ditto.)
Knowing what we know
And do we need to know more? I’d say Yes again, but it’s a qualified Yes.
We already know a lot; how to reduce and recycle waste, how to travel carbon-lightly, how to share resources for food, water and other essential commodities. What we sometimes don’t know is how to put that ‘knowledge’ into practice.
Taking evidence to policy
The challenges of interpreting the environmental phenomena currently around us are being taken up by some of the brightest natural scientists. Their evidence is and will continue to be both good and available for everyone to consider for themselves.
Now we must move also to include, in a quite fundamental way, the social sciences and the understandings they bring. Best progress towards confronting climate and other fears needs to embrace how people – people of all sorts, not ‘just’ those already committed to doing something, but everyone else as well – feel in their hearts, as well as how in their heads they understand.
Hearts and minds in context
Science in the service of coping with climate change is first and foremost a tool towards sensible actions and policies. It will do
that science no harm at all if it has two conjoined wings, the natural and the social, bringing together the evidence required to make action happen.
This is a dialogue in which everyone can play their part. The challenge is to articulate and explore what best makes people get engaged, positively and in a meaningful way……
A version of this article was first posted on Climatespace on 27 July 2007.
Beans Or Beef? The New Eco-Moral Choices
Vegetarians have long maintained that ‘beans are best’. Morally and practically, they say, vegetarian diets win over carnivorous varieties. Now there’s another string to the non-meat-eaters’ bow: veggie, especially vegan, is eco. So will people choose carrots, not carne, to reverse climate change?
Dreaming Realist 