CAWR Policy Briefs
The Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience (CAWR) works to ensure that its research and knowledge mobilisation have the greatest positive impact for equity, resilience and sustainability.
The centre’s Policy Briefs provide accessible, evidence-based, and timely analysis to audiences around the world, including policymakers, academics, practitioners, and social movements. The Policy Briefs enable CAWR and its partners to influence policy and institutional choices as well as stimulate change in practices at global, regional and local scales.
Seed systems for climate-resilient and just food futures
Published
March 2024
Authors
Maya Marshak, Poppy Nicol, John Nzira, Dionysios ‘Dennis’ Touliatos
Abstract
The global challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss and food injustice call for urgent and radical transformations in our food systems. The seed systems upon which our food depends are a critical component of climate resilience.
Farmers and community-based seed savers have been custodians of crop and genetic diversity for millennia and are key players in ensuring just and climate-resilient seed systems into the future. Yet they remain largely overlooked and undervalued in climate-resilience thinking. Farmer-led and community-based seed systems require urgent attention and support in policy and legislative frameworks to realise just climate resilience. Drawing on a study conducted through the Farming for Climate Justice Project, this brief highlights the role of farm-saved seed for climate resilience from the perspective of seed savers from the nation of Wales in the United Kingdom, and the district of Vhembe in the Limpopo Province of South Africa.It outlines steps that governments, civil society, and international organisations can take to support farmer-led and community-based climate resilient seed systems and networks.
Financing Agroecological Transformations for Climate Repair
Published
November 2024
Author
Abstract
Life-threatening heat waves, forest fires, hurricanes, rising sea levels, droughts and floods mean that climate change must be tackled on a ‘war footing’. With agri-food systems responsible for close to 40% of total greenhouse gas emissions, food and farming need priority attention in government negotiations at COP 29. A rapid and substantial reduction in carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane emissions is urgently needed throughout the entire agri-food system and its global supply chains. There is growing consensus that agroecological approaches offer huge potential – not only to cut emissions, but also to create many more active carbon sinks. This briefing calls on governments to mobilise finance for the large-scale transitions needed towards climate-friendly food and farming. This will involve switching funding and subsidy support from globalised, fossil-fuel intensive, long-distance linear supply chains to re-localised agri-food systems; funding transitions to low-meat diets and agroecological livestock production; taxing financial speculations and the windfall profits of agri-food corporations; reducing the gross inequalities associated with greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in and between countries; a global wealth tax and financing democracy for climate repair.
The Right to Food in the UK
Published
November 2023
Authors
Jasber Singh and Imogen Richmond-Bishop
Abstract
The right to food and nutrition (RtFN) is a human right, but the high – and growing – levels of household food insecurity in the UK are in violation of this right, even though the UK Government has signed and ratified international instruments to protect, respect and fulfill the right to food and nutrition. Without incorporating the RtFN into domestic law so that it is justiciable, there are limited democratic mechanisms to challenge policies that cause persistent and worsening household food insecurity. Given the scale of the growing poverty crisis, it is now essential to incorporate the RtFN into domestic law to guarantee social protection for anyone living in the country, and to better understand and remove the structural root causes of poverty and associated hunger.
Saying NO to development-forced displacement and resettlement: myths and alternatives
Published
April 2023
Author
Jessica Milgroom, Asmita Kabra and Brooke Wilmsen
Abstract
For 50 years, mainstream development thinking has legitimised the displacement and resettlement of people for large-scale projects such as dams, infrastructure and wildlifeconservation. But half a century of evidence shows, indisputably, that displacement causes social, economic and environmental harm, and that it cannot be mitigated by resettlement. Despite this evidence, estimates suggest that the number of people displaced for development has risen drastically in the last few decades, from 10 million a year in the 1990s to 20 million in the 2010s (Cernea and Maldonado, 2018). Resettlement continues to be the preferred solution to overlapping claims on land. The three authors of this brief have each been working in and researching development-forced displacement and resettlement (DFDR) for 15-20 years in different parts of the world. We come together to express our shared conclusion: displacement causes irreparable harm, and well-intended resettlement policies and practices perpetuate and justify further displacement. Decades of experience and research demonstrate that it is impossible to get large-scale resettlement right. New policies must prioritise human-scale development that does not require displacement.
WOMEN ARE PEASANTS TOO: Gender equality and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants
Published
December 2021
Authors
Priscilla Claeys and Joanna Bourke Martignoni
Abstract
Food sovereignty cannot be achieved for all people unless structural inequalities in food systems are identified and redressed. Women within agrarian social movements have long campaigned for gender equality and women’s rights to be fully integrated into policies and legal instruments designed to guarantee the rights to food, land, work and social security. The 2018 UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants (UNDROP) is an important achievement for rural people as it explicitly recognises the human rights to land, seeds and food sovereignty. However, it fails to directly include key gender equality provisions, such as women’s right to inherit land. This brief discusses the various pressures that led to agrarian women’s demands being excluded from the final version of the declaration. It recommends steps that governments, civil society and international organisations can take to ensure that UNDROP is implemented in a way that promotes gender equality and women’s rights effectively.
Supporting credit union members towards greater financial wellbeing
Published
February 2020
Author
Dr. Lindsey Appleyard, Professor Sally Dibb, Dr. Hussan Aslam
Abstract
The financial capability of adults across Europe is key to their financial wellbeing (European Union, 2015). Yet half of all adults in the UK are financially vulnerable, with little savings to rely on if they experience a financial shock such as redundancy, illness, or relationship breakdown (FCA, 2018). This paper examines the role of credit unions in improving the financial capability of their members, through the provision of financial education and resources for credit unions to support this process. The findings come from recent research at Coventry University that tested the effectiveness of practical education materials designed to improve financial resilience. Recommendations for credit unions are included through a series of action points. Details of a free-to-use MoneySkills app that offers money management guidance and provides an interactive budgeting tool are shared in the paper. This app can be personalized and used ‘on the go’ to improve credit union members’ ability to manage their money.
Seeking sustainability in the coffee shop industry: innovations in the circular economy
Published
August 2019
Author
Dr Jennifer Ferreira and Dr Carlos Ferreira
Abstract
The circular economy has been heralded as a key instrument for addressing the challenge of climate change, with its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and reduce, reuse and recycle waste products. The coffee and coffee shop industries are acutely aware of the potential impacts of climate change given the base of their industries is a crop that is highly vulnerable to shifts in global temperatures. There is great potential for these industries to make efforts to reduce emissions, energy consumption and contribute to the circular economy, moving towards a more sustainable approach for the future. Many actions are being taken by individuals and organisations in the coffee shop industry to find ways to utilise the growing consumption of coffee and use of coffee shops to engage in the circular economy, and create more sustainable business models.
This paper outlines the principles of the circular economy, to explore why it is relevant for the coffee shop industry. It presents examples of innovations from those involved in different ways with the coffee shop industry in order to engage in a more circular economy, and presents a case for further research.
Terminally in decline or able to be regenerated? The future of the high street
Published
June 2019
Author
Professor Lyndon Simkin and Dr Kevin Broughton
Abstract
Much has been discussed in the news headlines in recent months about the death of the High Street and the demise of the traditional town centre shopping area. Every High Street is struggling to find tenants for empty and disused shop units, some of which are large former variety stores and even larger department stores. Online shopping, changing leisure habits and new consumer behaviours are responsible. So is the traditional town centre retailing experience obsolete, now replaced by online shopping and other leisure activities, or is there hope for the High Street? This chapter first scopes the extent of the demise of the High Street and store-based shopping, before exploring the emerging options facing landlords, planners, local authorities and retailers, as they seek to inject vitality into former bustling High Streets and maintain viability.
Circular economy: What does it mean for remanufacturing operations?
Published
May 2019
Author
Professor Benny Tjahjono and Dr Eva Ripanti
Abstract
It appears that our modern society is somewhat characterised by the industrial economy of “take, make, throw-away”, where raw materials are extracted, converted into products, sold and consumed by end users, and at their end-of-life, the products are disposed of. Though many of the parts of the products can be recycled, in reality much still ends up in landfill. In the midst of the emerging global economy and growing middle class, this “linear economy” model is obviously an unsustainable way forward. Mass media have recently reported ongoing discourse by politicians, non-governmental organisations, commercial organisations and academics about the emerging concept of a Circular Economy (CE).
