Qualitative Impact Assessment of Land Management Interventions on Ecosystem Services (“QEIA”). Report-1: Executive Summary: QEIA Evidence Review & Integrated Assessment

The focus of this project was to provide an expert-led, rapid qualitative assessment of land management interventions on Ecosystem Services (ES) proposed for inclusion in Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes. This involved a review of the current evidence base for 741 land management actions on 33 Ecosystem Services and 53 Ecosystem Service indicators by ten teams involving 45 experts drawn from the independent research community in a consistent series of Evidence Reviews covering the broad topics of: • Air quality • Greenhouse gas emissions • Soils • Water management • Biodiversity: croplands • Biodiversity: improved grassland • Biodiversity: semi-natural habitats • Biodiversity: integrated systems-based actions • Carbon sequestration • Cultural services (including recreation, geodiversity and regulatory services). It should be noted that this piece of work is just one element of the wider underpinning work Defra has commissioned to support the development of the ELM schemes

Qualitative impact assessment of land management interventions on Ecosystem Services (‘QEIA’). Report-2: Integrated Assessment

The focus of this project was to provide an expert-led, rapid qualitative assessment of land management interventions on Ecosystem Services (ES) proposed for inclusion in Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes. This involved a review of the current evidence base for 741 land management actions on 33 Ecosystem Services and 53 Ecosystem Service indicators by ten expert teams drawn from the independent research community in a consistent series of ten Evidence Reviews covering the broad topics of; • Air quality • Greenhouse gas emissions • Soils • Water management • Biodiversity: croplands • Biodiversity: improved grassland • Biodiversity: semi-natural habitats • Biodiversity: integrated systems-based actions • Carbon sequestration • Cultural services (including recreation, geodiversity and regulatory services) These reviews were undertaken rapidly at Defra’s request by ten teams involving 45 experts who together captured more than 2,400 individual sources of evidence. This was followed by the Integrated Assessment (IA) reported here to provide a more accessible summary of these evidence reviews with a focus on capturing the actions with the greatest potential magnitude of change for the intended ES, and their potential co-benefits and trade-offs for the other ES

Comparing the Climate Change Actions, Targets and Performance of UK and US Retailers

It is often held that the UK has been something of a leader in its response to climate change, and that the USA has been more of a laggard. Whilst much of this debate relates to government policy, in this paper we consider whether this is true when it comes to corporate action on climate change. We use the retail sector to explore this question. This sector is important because of its own greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and because of the emissions it influences through its supply chains and value chains. On the basis of extensive reviews of corporate reports and other publically available data, we find that companies in the UK are some way ahead of their US counterparts in terms of the actions they are taking (in particular in relation to their willingness to focus on their supply-chain-related emissions), the ambition of the emission reduction targets that they are setting for themselves, and (while acknowledging the difficulties in making direct performance comparisons) the rates of improvement in their energy consumption and GHG emissions. We therefore conclude that at least some of the wider claims about the relative performance of the UK and the USA on climate change are mirrored in the manner in which corporations are responding to climate change

Involving the Public in Catchment Management: An Analysis of the Scope for Learning Lessons from Abroad

Scholars have tended to treat the European Union (EU) as an environmental ‘leader’. Yet significant potential nonetheless exists for it to learn lessons in areas such as water policy where it has a long and successful history of involvement. The EU's Water Framework Directive (2000) imposes potentially far reaching requirements on its Member States to enhance public participation in the process of catchment management. However, to date, its implementation has been highly variable across and even within individual states. As the EU starts to revise the original Directive, thoughts will turn to how the current situation could be improved. One potentially productive avenue, which has not yet been fully explored, is to draw lessons on public participation from comparable multi-levelled governance contexts such as in the USA and Australia, where public engagement has arguably been more advanced. Drawing on theoretical accounts of the most likely facilitators and obstacles to lesson drawing, this paper assesses the scope for transfer. It finds that while the EU could potentially learn from these jurisdictions, there are likely to be significant obstacles in practice. These should be born in mind by would-be policy learners