Janet Dwyer, Director of CCRI, discusses challenges facing the future of rural policy development and the role of the CCRI.

1. Future challenges, rural
policy?
Janet Dwyer
CCRI Director

2. • Increasing fossil fuel prices – higher global
demand, lower / more costly / less secure
supplies
• Growing global food demand: higher prices
• Climate change - pressures north and south
from temperature and rainfall shifts
• Demographic change – shrinking workforce,
pressure from migration
• Slow growth, tight public finances – reduced
funding for land and people?
Context: Europe’s rural areas
face significant challenges

3. Food
Biodiversity
Habitats Economic
Viability
Climate Change
Resource-
management
Bioeenergy
Biomass
Supply Chain
Integration
EC Challenges and Opportunities
(courtesy Martin Scheele, DG Agri)

4. The multifunctionality of rural
land must be maintained and
increased: embracing energy
generation and non-food products,
sustained use for leisure, and food
production (these demands will not diminish, but
grow)
Ecosystem services
require better long-term planning and
broader spatial co-ordination
(e.g. flooding, green infrastructure,
carrying capacity)

5. Implications for rural areas
Agriculture, forestry and the food sector must become
much more resource-efficient:
– using fewer non-renewable inputs,
– conserving carbon, soil and water,
– reducing or eliminating wastes

6. Rural communities will face
reduced central support, but
enhanced information
- Eroding transport options
- Increased scope for distance
learning and exchange of ideas
- Continuing challenges from ageing:
capacity to cope
- ‘Renewal’ via in-migration (potential
social, environmental and economic gains)

7. Considering future links
- Cotswolds example
4 degree
temperature
increase -
Longer season,
faster crop growth,
higher/drier yields
Grow more
arable (wheat,
rape)
Switch to more
southern / high-
value crops
Increase in
pests and
diseases
decreased
summer rain,
more winter
storms/floods
Up to 10m sea
level rise,
Severn
Switch to more
resilient (drought
tolerant, robust
over winter)
crops
Pressure for
more residential
development,
infrastructure,
industry?
Glos, Chelt,
Stroud
flooding
Hedge and wall degradation
(reduced need for
boundaries)
Grazing stock
relatively more
difficult/low
return?
Need for
renewable
energy
Grow and harvest
more trees –
SRC, woods
Changes in physical structure, more mixed
cover, more man-made elements, more
intensity of use, more variety of colours

8. Policy: successes & messes
• Strong local/regional actors and networks borne of the
many ‘partnerships’ in recent years, in some areas
• Buoyant rural economic activity in many areas
BUT
• Many disconnected schemes and initiatives acting in
different ways – SPS + pillar 2 + NIAs + PES; RDPE
central versus LEPs and LAGs; laissez-faire approach
to market concentration in business and services,
looser planning for housing, weak transport …
 The mix is complex: is this promoting resilience at
a local level?

9. Reflections: policy needs
• We need smarter policies which acknowledge multiple
goals, and use integrated planning & delivery - join up
environment, people, food and economy, think longer-term
and provide consistent policy signals / reduce risk
• We need to reduce the weight of controls and
bureaucracy – make policies closer to the beneficiary, more
flexible, learn from on-the-ground experience
• We need to be tracking the Piketty effect – what scope
for reducing inequalities?
• We need to incentivise experimentation - learning, doing
things differently, building confidence to act, sharing
experience
• Global awareness and exchange is needed, too

10. The role of policy: enabling
“a supportive and responsive government is required
at a UK, devolved and local level. Action on all these
levels is needed to: address regional level inequalities;
build capacity in local communities; and mitigate
against any unintended consequences of macro level
policies at a local level.”
Carnegie Trust, 2012
- This was written about rural communities; but
the same might equally be said about future
policies for land, food and farming

11. Reflections: the role of research
• Learning by doing: CCRI is experimenting with
integrated local planning & delivery, communities of
learning, fuelling dialogue
– Emphasis on resilience planning – in top-down and bottom-up
structures, social, economic and environmental
– The climate will continue to surprise us: need to work with
natural science, uncertainties (soils, water)
– Visioning the future: a key area for GIS and social media
• Ideas: Towards new theories of governance
– From transaction costs to benefits: managing/cutting
bureaucracy, building inter-institutional trust
– From cost-benefit to social returns, to well-being
– Polycentric but more transparent – new media and new models

12. Where is the rural, and are we
its champions?