Our Pathway to Impact
Mark Reed

Plan
• The impact
• Video
• The pathway

1 The Impact

• £1M RELU/LWEC & ESRC funded project
helping people anticipate and adapt to future
change across UK uplands since 2005
• Almost £1M co-funding from research users
• Interdisciplinary team of 25 people from 5
Universities & 2 NGOs

The Impact
• Findings featured prominently in evidence
gathering initiatives used to inform policy:
– National Ecosystem Assessment
– EFRA Inquiry on Farming in the Uplands
– CRC’s Inquiry on the Future of England’s Uplands
– IUCN Commission of Inquiry on Peatlands
– Government Office for Science’s Foresight Land
Use Futures project

The Impact
• Contributed to policy processes:
– Inputting evidence to a review, best practice
guidelines and Action Plan re: Payment for
Ecosystem Services as part of DEFRA’s Natural
Environment White Paper
– Guiding DEFRA to develop a UK Peatland Carbon
Code to facilitate private investment in peatland
restoration
• Used by water companies to justify using land
management to reduce water treatment costs

• Analysing upland/catchment management
case studies across the UK, comparing RELU to
other RCUK and NGO/business projects
• Workshops with KE academics/professionals
• Best practice principles
• LWEC’s Knowledge Exchange Guidelines
• RCUK Impact Toolkit?

2 A short film

2 Our pathway

Knowledge exchange with stakeholders:
• Co-generation of knowledge with small but
representative groups of highly connected, influential
stakeholders, selected via Social Network Analysis

• You Tube and DVDs – as requested by stakeholders
concerned about the abstract nature of the GIS
outputs we’d suggested
• Articles in professional journals/magazines
• Newsletters
• Project websites

• Policy briefs
• Presentations to policy makers, policy advisors and
practitioner groups
• DEFRA placement
• Consultancy contracts

Public engagement:
• Twitter (now over 1600 followers)
www.twitter.com/reluuplands
• Interactive website www.ouruplands.co.uk
• Schools resources (Summer 2012)

Arts:
• Song and music video by award-winning
photography collective
• Jazz composition by Huw Warren
• Fairytale told by storyteller and made into book
• Conceptual art by Dalziel & Scullion (hunting bag)

www.sustainableuplandresearch.org
m.reed@abdn.ac.uk