Sociology, Science and Sustainability: Developing Relationships in Scotland

This paper considers the application of the sociological imagination during the analysis of data collected during an ethnographic study of an environmental regulator, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA). SEPA is tasked with implementing the European Water Framework Directive (WFD) in Scotland, which will radically alter the regulation of water use. Applying a sociological imagination allowed the researcher to advocate for a more interdisciplinary and equitable understanding of sustainable water use when feeding back initial research results at the end of the data collection period. The researchers introduced socialised definitions of the environment, which linked social justice and ecological concerns. These insights provided a challenge to the traditional bio-physical science focus of the organisational participants, for whom sustainability is a relatively new addition to their duties. The paper concludes by discussing the importance of developing these interdisciplinary relationships in the future.Sociological Imagination, Water Framework Directive, Sustainability Science, Consumer-Citizens

Resource use and biophysical constraints of Scottish agriculture

Agriculture is a fundamental sector of economy and society that ensures food supply, classified by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment among the so-called “provisioning ecosystem services”. Due to the increase of food demand worldwide, farmers are shifting more and more towards intensive agriculture. This trend is connected to the unsustainable consumption of natural resources, most often exceeding the carrying capacity of natural ecosystems. In this paper, the resource use and biophysical constraints of Scottish agriculture were investigated at regional and national levels by means of the Emergy Synthesis method. The study focused on two main agroecosystems: 1) the Cairngorms National Park (CNP) and 2) the national agricultural sector of Scotland as a whole. The evolution of the agricultural sector was explored over time (years 1991, 2001, 2007), accounting for local renewable and non-renewable resources as well as imported resources. Performance and sustainability indicators were then calculated with and without including human labor and economic services (money flows). In the year 2007, the Emergy Yield Ratio (EYR) of the Scottish agricultural sector was about 46% of the same indicator calculated for the CNP (2.65 versus 5.72, respectively). A higher Environmental Loading Ratio (ELR) was calculated for the national sector than for CNP (1.25 versus 1.02, respectively). The Emergy Sustainability Index (ESI) was 2.12 for the national sector and 5.60 for CNP. Such figures were calculated without including the emergy flows supporting labor and services. If the latter are also accounted for, the ESI of the national level and CNP drop by a factor 5.6 and 3.9, respectively. Such variations suggest that larger flows of non-renewable resources strongly affect the environmental performance, increasing the dependence on non-renewable resources supporting the larger economic system in which the agricultural sectors are embedded in

Can scenario-planning support community-based natural resource management? Experiences from three countries in latin america

Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) is a concept critical to managing socio-ecological systems, but whose implementation needs strengthening. Scenario-planning is one approach that may offer benefits relevant to CBNRM, but whose potential is not yet well understood. We therefore designed, trialled and evaluated a scenario-planning method intended to support CBNRM at three cases, located in Colombia, Mexico and Argentina. Implementing scenario-planning was judged as worthwhile in all three cases, although aspects of it could be challenging to facilitate. The benefits generated were relevant to strengthening CBNRM: encouraging the participation of local people and using their knowledge; enhanced consideration and adaption of future change; and supporting the development of systems thinking. Tracing exactly when and how these benefits arise is challenging, but two elements of the method seemed particularly useful. Firstly, using a systematic approach to discuss how drivers of change may affect local socio-ecological systems helped to foster systems thinking and identify connections between issues. Secondly, explicitly focusing on how to use and respond to scenarios helped identify specific practical activities ('response options') that would support CBNRM despite the pressures of future change. Discussions about response options also highlighted the need for support by other actors (e.g. policy groups): this raises the question of when and how other actors and other sources of knowledge should be involved in scenario-planning, so as to encourage their buy-in to actions identified by the process. We suggest other CBNRM initiatives may benefit from adapting and applying scenario-planning. However, these initiatives should be carefully monitored since further research is required to understand how and when scenario-planning methods may produce benefits, and their strengths and weaknesses versus other methods

Policy-driven monitoring and evaluation : Does it support adaptive management of socio-ecological systems?

Inadequate Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) is often thought to hinder adaptive management of socio-ecological systems. A key influence on environmental management practices are environmental policies: however, their consequences for M&E practices have not been well-examined. We examine three policy areas - the Water Framework Directive, the Natura 2000 Directives, and the Agri-Environment Schemes of the Common Agricultural Policy - whose statutory requirements influence how the environment is managed and monitored across Europe. We use a comparative approach to examine what is monitored, how monitoring is carried out, and how results are used to update management, based on publicly available documentation across nine regional and national cases. The requirements and guidelines of these policies have provided significant impetus for monitoring: however, we find this policy-driven M&E usually does not match the ideals of what is needed to inform adaptive management. There is a tendency to focus on understanding state and trends rather than tracking the effect of interventions; a focus on specific biotic and abiotic indicators at the expense of understanding system functions and processes, especially social components; and limited attention to how context affects systems, though this is sometimes considered via secondary data. The resulting data are sometimes publicly-accessible, but it is rarely clear if and how these influence decisions at any level, whether this be in the original policy itself or at the level of measures such as site management plans. Adjustments to policy-driven M&E could better enable learning for adaptive management, by reconsidering what supports a balanced understanding of socio-ecological systems and decision-making. Useful strategies include making more use of secondary data, and more transparency in data-sharing and decision-making. Several countries and policy areas already offer useful examples. Such changes are essential given the influence of policy, and the urgency of enabling adaptive management to safeguard socio-ecological systems. Highlights • Policy strongly influences Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) of socio-ecological systems. • We examine M&E of 3 major European policies in 9 regional and national cases. • Policy-driven M&E is imperfect versus ideals of M&E to support adaptive management. • Attention needed to systems, social issues, sharing data, and sharing intended uses. • Examples from across Europe and different policies offer ideas for improvement

Convalescent plasma in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 (RECOVERY): a randomised controlled, open-label, platform trial

SummaryBackground Azithromycin has been proposed as a treatment for COVID-19 on the basis of its immunomodulatoryactions. We aimed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of azithromycin in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19.Methods In this randomised, controlled, open-label, adaptive platform trial (Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19Therapy [RECOVERY]), several possible treatments were compared with usual care in patients admitted to hospitalwith COVID-19 in the UK. The trial is underway at 176 hospitals in the UK. Eligible and consenting patients wererandomly allocated to either usual standard of care alone or usual standard of care plus azithromycin 500 mg once perday by mouth or intravenously for 10 days or until discharge (or allocation to one of the other RECOVERY treatmentgroups). Patients were assigned via web-based simple (unstratified) randomisation with allocation concealment andwere twice as likely to be randomly assigned to usual care than to any of the active treatment groups. Participants andlocal study staff were not masked to the allocated treatment, but all others involved in the trial were masked to theoutcome data during the trial. The primary outcome was 28-day all-cause mortality, assessed in the intention-to-treatpopulation. The trial is registered with ISRCTN, 50189673, and ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04381936.Findings Between April 7 and Nov 27, 2020, of 16 442 patients enrolled in the RECOVERY trial, 9433 (57%) wereeligible and 7763 were included in the assessment of azithromycin. The mean age of these study participants was65·3 years (SD 15·7) and approximately a third were women (2944 [38%] of 7763). 2582 patients were randomlyallocated to receive azithromycin and 5181 patients were randomly allocated to usual care alone. Overall,561 (22%) patients allocated to azithromycin and 1162 (22%) patients allocated to usual care died within 28 days(rate ratio 0·97, 95% CI 0·87–1·07; p=0·50). No significant difference was seen in duration of hospital stay (median10 days [IQR 5 to >28] vs 11 days [5 to >28]) or the proportion of patients discharged from hospital alive within 28 days(rate ratio 1·04, 95% CI 0·98–1·10; p=0·19). Among those not on invasive mechanical ventilation at baseline, nosignificant difference was seen in the proportion meeting the composite endpoint of invasive mechanical ventilationor death (risk ratio 0·95, 95% CI 0·87–1·03; p=0·24).Interpretation In patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19, azithromycin did not improve survival or otherprespecified clinical outcomes. Azithromycin use in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 should be restrictedto patients in whom there is a clear antimicrobial indication

Community Matters: Reflections from the Field

This article asserts that community matters, not least because of the continued importance of community demonstrated by residents of a post-fordist resort town in North Australia. Far from being an outdated concept, confined to stable rural villages, (as often argued in the literature), even this extremely transient population profess a strong desire to find and maintain 'community'. A sense of community is constructed through narratives of place and lifestyle to create an inclusive collective identity. However, my fieldwork demonstrated that the ideal remains elusive. Access to social networks is unequal and the norms of community fall short of reciprocity or duty, making it a 'community without obligation'.Australia.; Community; Exclusion; Lifestyles; Social Capital; Tourism

How does legacy create sticking points for environmental management? Insights from challenges to implementation of the ecosystem approach

There are many recommendations for environmental management practices to adopt more holistic or systems-based approaches and to strengthen stakeholder participation. However, management practices do not always match or achieve these ideals. We explore why theory may not be reflected by practice by exploring experiences of projects seeking to implement the ecosystem approach, a concept that entails participatory holistic management. A qualitative inductive approach was used to understand the processes, achievements, and challenges faced by 16 projects across the British Isles. Many projects made significant progress toward their goals, yet failed to achieve fully participatory holistic management. Many of the challenges that contributed to this failure can be explained in terms of the legacy effects of previous projects and the wider social-ecological system. These legacy effects do not necessarily imply a fixed path dependency or lock-in. We therefore call these effects sticking points. Drawing on the literature on institutional analysis and knowledge production, we distinguish three main types of sticking point: (1) institutional, arising from previous ways of working; (2) cognitive, arising from ways of framing and knowing; and (3) political, arising from pre-existing power relations. These sticking points may interact. For example, attempts to promote systems thinking and management may be impeded by a tendency for reductionist thinking, itself reinforced by the constraints on prioritization that arise from pre-existing statutory targets. These influences often arise from aspects of societal and institutional context beyond the control of any individual project. Stickiness is not necessarily all bad, but often acts to constrain the "opening up" away from previous approaches. Because the long-term success of natural resource management is argued to depend on more integrated, participatory, and holistic environmental management, we argue that these sticking points demand more explicit attention in both research and practice

Enhanced decision making:balancing public participation against 'Better Regulation' in British environmental permitting regimes

An increase in the rights of the public to participate in environmental permitting decisions has paralleled developments in other areas of administrative decision making in Britain. It is generally accepted that one of the key objectives underlying the enhancement of participatory rights was to improve the quality of decision making through improving the quality or range of values and information upon which decisions were based. This objective now has a counterweight in the Better Regulation agenda. The result is a balancing of objectives in which the emphasis increasingly appears to be falling on ensuring speed and consistency in decision making. It is argued here that too much emphasis has now been placed on ensuring the objectives of the Better Regulation agenda and greater emphasis should be placed on the benefits that arise from public participation

The limitations of regulatory science in the effective control of diffuse pollution

This paper focuses on the application of regulatory science by an institution charged with implementing a holistic approach to environmental regulation within strict time limits. In particular, it centres on the question of whether effective control of diffuse pollution can be achieved in the desired timeframe imposed by the Water Framework Directive (WFD). It examines implementation of the WFD by one environmental regulatory agency, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA). The WFD requires the scientific mind-set that operates within the context of environmental regulation to alter quickly as it, the WFD, requires greater collaboration between laboratory-based science and other disciplines (e.g., economics and sociology) in both approach and the interpretation of findings. It is argued that, in order to manage diffuse pollution specifically, SEPA and other bodies need to embrace the practice of sustainability science or post normal science, in order to guide and underpin their regulatory work more effectively. As the paper illustrates, however, aspects of operational environmental regulation such as, institutional structures and path dependency resulting from resource constraints, serve to frustrate this occurring