Initiatives to make towns more sustainable (#journal)

Transition Towns and EcoDistricts: Local Sustainable Initiatives

The Transition Town movement seeks to assist towns to transition to a new future beyond the negative effects of Peak Oil and Climate Warming. A 12 Step Programme helps identify key sectors of transitioning, such as reducing energy use and providing more local food supplies and employment. A parallel movement is spreading through the United States; the EcoDistrict organization communicates its ideas through an active website, annual meetings and the development of university course linkages. These two examples of grass-roots activism provide an important addition to the ways in which urban places can become more sustainable and locally resilient.

Improve your funding bids (online)

The ten habits of highly unsuccessful research bid writers

"I’ve just reviewed a lot, and I mean a lot, of research bids. I review research bids regularly, as do a lot of senior academics. Some of them are great and some of them are decent, sensible and worth doing. But more of them could be like this. I’m always pretty shocked when I get bids where the basics haven’t been attended to. I know that there are more issues than are here on my list, but honestly, I’d be a pretty happy reviewer if all the bids I get/have to read attended to these ten simple things."

Greening agrarian studies - 40 free articles (journal)

Greening Agrarian Studies Special Issue

A special issue of the Journal of Peasant Studies on 'Greening agrarian studies'. The articles are free to access. As the title suggests, this collection brings together 40 articles on various environmental themes that speak to critical agrarian studies. The editors hope academics will find this virtual special issue useful in their courses, that students will find it useful in building their theoretical foundations and that policy practitioners will find it relevant in informing policy debates. They hope agrarian, food and environmental activists will find it relevant in their political struggles.

Permaculture thriving in Malawi (online)

Permaculture in Malawi: using food forests to prevent floods and hunger 
Guardian (UK), 20 April 2015
Permaculture projects in Malawi are developing sustainable food systems. It is time the development sector took this ‘marginal hippy movement’ seriously.

Reducing greehouse gases from crops (online)

Emissions from Crops - POST Note

Agriculture contributes 9% of the UK’s greenhouse-gases (GHG) emissions burden and 10-12% globally. Although there is a long-term declining trend from UK agriculture, the sector may account for a larger share of overall emissions in the future as other sectors reduce emissions. This POSTnote focuses on reducing GHG emissions from growing and storing arable and horticultural crops

Biodiversity auditing explained (online)

Biodiversity Auditing - POST Note 

Biodiversity supports the ecosystem services humans rely on for well-being and economic resources. Areas that have had an audit can make more effective use of ecological data to meet planning and conservation objectives for biodiversity. This POSTnote summarises the data sources used and the advantages of the audit approach for addressing biodiversity loss.

Soil loss crisis (online)

Ploughing On Regardless 

Almost all other issues are superficial by comparison to soil loss. So why don’t we talk about it? George Monbiot's latest column for The Guardian newspaper discusses the growing crisis of soil...and argues permaculture is part of the solution.