Transition in the hills? Placing farmer identity and cultural landscapes at the heart of climate and nature friendly farming

University of Cumbria's Professor of Practice Julia Aglionby was invited to contribute to this conference, held by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, Mark Leonard Trust, and Aurora Trust, at the Sainsbury Laboratory in Cambridge and Downing College, Cambridge. The conference explored emerging practice and soil health in regenerative agriculture and how plant science can help address knowledge gaps for farmers. Julia joined researchers, farmers, farming advisors to foster new connections and explore what type of further research is required, how it should be undertaken, funded, and communicated. Regenerative farming offers the potential to produce healthy, affordable food, help us mitigate and adapt to climate change, protect nature, and secure farmer livelihoods. However, more research is needed to support farmers to adopt and maintain regenerative farming systems. Professor Julia Aglionby was Executive Director of the Foundation for Common Land for 10 years, chaired the Uplands Alliance and sat on the board of Natural England. At the University of Cumbria, she continues her research interests in commons and uplands. In 2024, she will be a candidate for Penrith & Solway’s next MP

The governance of commons in national parks :plurality and purpose

PhD ThesisEffective governance is key to the successful management of national parks and is particularly critical for commons in protected areas. This research explores how governance can be strengthened on commons in national parks to improve the delivery of multiple ecosystem services. Empirical data is presented from two case studies; Danau Sentarum, Indonesia and The Lake District, England. Appreciative Inquiry is used to discover commoners’ stories, design future options and consider them in the context of the plural legal and other normative orders in force. These highlight the strong motivation of commoners to govern for the purpose of delivering provisioning services that provide them with financial benefits and for which they have a cultural connection. The cases studies both reveal the difficult task of delivering conservation outcomes when no beneficial interest accrues to the provider, when property rights are uncertain or when there is no positive correlation between the provisioning service and biodiversity. The analysis uses three frameworks; Tamanaha’s typology of Legal Pluralism, Ostrom’s Institutional Analysis of Common Property Resources and Armitage et al’s Criteria for Adaptive Co-management. This tri-faceted process assesses these complex socio-ecological systems demonstrating that in neither case study will current governance structures deliver the full breadth of public and private ecosystem services society seeks. Three opportunities for strengthening governance are identified; 1) enhance linkages between the plural normative orders for the effective enforcement of rules, 2) manage access to common property resources to provide legal certainty regarding rights and responsibilities and 3) ensure the Ecosystem Approach incorporates property rights to harness the motivation of commoners as primary managers.Natural England: H&H Bowe Limited: The Royal Geographical Society Slawson Award

Farming with Nature 2021 event report

University of Cumbria’s Centre for National Parks and Protected Areas (CNPPA) hosted the online conference Farming with Nature in May 2021, with support from the Food, Farming & Countryside Commission. The event set out to explore two of the recommendations from Defra’s 2019 Landscapes Review, these being: (i) that our national landscapes should form the backbone of nature recovery networks and, (ii) that national landscapes should have a central place in forthcoming Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes. Contributions by guest speakers and the active participation of all attendees at the conference workshops provided substantial insight into the opportunities and challenges ahead. Attendees, mainly from a spread of geographical regions in England, held a range of job roles relevant to land management in protected landscapes. In the report, rich qualitative data arising from the conference sessions is analysed. Actions to facilitate ELM and to develop nature recovery networks in farmed landscapes are identified. Recordings of the conference sessions are available on the @CNPPA_UoC YouTube channel at https://bit.ly/3r4NHb

Debate: Is food production holding back nature recovery?

Four speakers took part in the OFC Oxford Union Debate with the motion: "This house believes that farming for food is holding back nature recovery in protected landscapes”. Ben Goldsmith, Chair of the Conservative Environment Network and Sarah Dickins, Sustainable Economics Adviser proposed the motion and Will Cockbain, a Lake District farmer, and Julia Aglionby, Professor in Practice at the University of Cumbria, opposed the motion. Julia made the case that while there is much more to do to enhance nature in our protected areas - and across the other 76% of England - it is the failure of government policy that is holding back nature recovery not 'a drive' for food production

Farming and conservation: pathways to coexistence

Julia Aglionby, Professor of Practice, Centre for National Parks & Protected Areas, University of Cumbria, UK, was one of three guest speakers (alongside Professor Amy Dickman, University of Oxford and Iain Tolhurst MBE, Tolhurst Organic) at this seminar, part of the Grand Challenges Seminars 2024, which seeks to explore the challenges encountered by farmers and conservationists who may be seeking very different outcomes from areas of land. The seminar will attempt to examine these challenges and hear potential solutions from both academics and practitioners from different contexts. Core topics to be discussed include: traditional agricultural practices and how much they relate to current practices; economically feasible routes for sustainable farming and conflict mitigation strategies; farming requirements for populations and the negative effects of farming; how we change and develop policy to reflect sustainable practice; and nature based solutions that reflect biodiversity and conservation requirements. Julia is a Professor in Practice and focuses on the governance of common land and legal pluralism. She is also the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Candidate for Penrith and Solway

Rewilding and farming: could the relationship be improved through adopting a three compartment approach to land use?

What would a positive relationship between rewilding and farming look like in England? Do terms matter? When is extensive farming better categorised as rewilding and when is rewilding really farming with nature? Can farming and rewilding co-exist and complement each other to meet national ambitions to produce sufficient high-quality food, and address the interconnected biodiversity, climate, and health crises? This chapter explores these questions digging beneath the binary polarisation that has in recent years characterised much conversation, social media, and writing in this space. Barriers to land use change are explored and ideas to address them provided. The chapter focuses on England, which is currently facing a number of policy and funding challenges and opportunities, but it is recognised that many of these issues will have resonance in other countries and contexts. The analytical framework adopted is the three-compartment approach to land use as recommended by the National Food Strategy (Dimbleby, 2021). Could this framework better enable the co-existence of farming and rewilding when partnered with appropriate government levers and delivery mechanisms including the Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes

On the issuing of traffic regulation orders in the Lake District National Park: Stubbs (on behalf of Green Lanes Environmental Action Movement) v Lake District National Park Authority and Ors Judgment

Book abstract: This open access book collects 11 reimagined judgments from the UK and challenges anthropocentrism in legal decision-making across a range of legal areas. It draws from a range of Earth law approaches including rights of nature, animal rights, environmental human rights, well-being of future generations, ecocide, and reinterpretations of existing legal principles. There is an urgent need to transform our legal institutions and cultures to foster healthier relationships between people and planet. The book explores how relationships between people, place, and the more-than-human world are produced, transformed, and destroyed through law, the limits of current law and the potential for positive transformation. A paradigm shift towards planetary, ecological and multispecies approaches offers possibilities for envisioning what the future of legal decision-making could look like. Beyond the judgments, the book critically reflects on the developing field of Earth law and its potential for reshaping legal reasoning in the UK and beyond. It also offers possibilities for the future of Earth law from scholarly, educational, and policy perspectives within legal practice, training and education. The book is a must read for scholars, students, legal practitioners and activists questioning the role of law and courts as mechanisms for change

The 'Social Life' of Conservation: Lessons from Danau Sentarum

This article focuses on a team's collaborative conservation experience, beginning in 1991 in Danau Sentarum National Park in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. The experience of three teams is recounted as they worked collaboratively with local Malay and Iban communities to manage the flooded and lowland tropical forest area. Relations between conservation workers and communities are discussed, and social capital among conservation workers is highlighted as another centrally important feature in conservation success. Subsequent involvement of the network of concerned researchers is also described. Central points of the article are 1) that conservation practices are socially embedded, and 2) that a "best practices" approach is inadequate when personal characteristics, experiences, and networks have such long lasting impacts on conservation itself