Professor Janet Dwyer discusses the implications of current issues and policies for rural areas and policy development in the next 25 years, in particular the issues around CAP reform, climate change, innovation and ongoing research needs.

1. Rural Futures : the next 25 years
for rural areas and research
Janet Dwyer
Professor of Rural Policy

2. Outline
• Challenges for agriculture and rural
areas in Europe and the UK
• Implications for rural spaces and
places – the quest for innovation
• Policy: key needs, ideas from research
and elsewhere
• Some reflections on tactics and
directions

3. Challenges for European
agriculture & rural areas
• Increasing fossil fuel prices – higher global
demand, lower / more costly / less secure
supplies
• Growing global food demand
• Climate change - pressures north and south
from temperature and rainfall shifts
• Demographic change – shrinking workforce,
pressure in south
• Continuing austerity in public finances –
reduced financing for land and people?

4. EU regions: climate change vulnerability
highest negative
impact
medium negative
impact
low negative impact
no/marginal impact
low positive impact
No data*
reduced data*
ESPON CLIMATE study

5. Population Change
2000-2007
Annual Average Change per
1000 inhabitants
- < -6.0 (193)
- -6.0 - -3.0 (154)
- -3.0 - 0.0 (226)
- 0.0 - 3.0 (300)
- 3.0 - 6.0 (249)
- > 6.0 (341)
- no data
Source: DEMIFER project, annex of maps: ESPON
2012
These trends are set to continue: pressure in some poor/
water-stressed regions; decline in CEE & north, plus
ageing – reduced employment base to finance services…

6. Implications for rural
activities & resources
• Agriculture and the food sector must
become much more resource-efficient: using
fewer non-renewable inputs, conserving carbon,
soil and water, and reducing or eliminating
waste

7. • The multifunctionality of
rural spaces must be
maintained and
increased, embracing
energy generation and non-
food products, plus sustained
use for leisure and food
production (all these demands
will not diminish, but grow)
• Ecosystem services will
require long-term planning
and much better spatial
co-ordination

8. Communities of rural place will see
reduced central support, but enhanced
information:
- Eroding transport options
- Increasing scope for long-distance learning
and exchange of ideas
- Continuing challenges from demography:
capacity to cope
- ‘Renewal’ via in-migration – new scope for
entrepreneurial action? (social, environmental
and economic)

9. What will be needed – a
‘step-change’ in practice
• Technological change
• New knowledge
• New ways of working
• New (space & place-based) systems
• New ways of doing policy
• New institutional arrangements
- INNOVATION is the name of the game

10. Innovation in spaces: Why?
• To transform farm-level knowledge about
best management strategies and
sustainability planning
• To raise standards of practice on farms,
achieving a ‘step-change’ in approach
• To develop new businesses / sub-sectors
and successfully exploit market opportunities
based upon sustainable resource
management
• To test and learn from the experience of
successful pioneers

11. Innovation in places: Why?
• To cope with continuing public funding
restraint among local government and
communities
• To overcome the real issues of remoteness,
ageing, rising housing and transport costs, and
reduced service provision
• To develop new approaches and
successfully exploit opportunities, increasing
self-reliance
• To learn from the experience of successful
pioneers

12. How best to promote
innovation?
It is not possible to force people to innovate,
BUT
there is evidence of value in fostering and
promoting a climate in which innovation is
encouraged
KEY ingredients:
• Stronger research-practice linkages
• Communities of learning: advice, training and
information, identifying new partners
• Enhanced networking and collaborative action

13. Innovation in spaces

14. Innovation in places
Ecology BS,
AECB
Lancashire Rural
Futures
Tools for self-reliance:
• Google analytics, wiki, social
networking, e-books, open-source
GIS…..

15. Enabling policy is vital
“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
- the UK is not strong on social learning…..

16. Better policy-making
- consider the plumber…
• We need smarter working with multiple goals,
integrated planning & delivery - ditch the
outmoded mantras
• We need to control and reduce the weight of
controls and bureaucracy – make policies closer
to the beneficiary, more flexible
• We need to incentivise experimentation -
learning, doing things differently
‘Better targeting’ does not have to mean more
constraints and higher costs!

17. Smarter Policy: ideas from
research
• Adaptive governance (Folke et al, 2005) seeks
to address uncertainty through continuous
learning, involving multiple actors in decision-
making processes, and self-organisation of the
governance system.
• Polycentric institutional arrangements
(Ostrom, 2010) are
needed, that operate at multiple
scales – linking top-down with bottom-up
processes: we need both.

18. Smarter Policy: ideas from
research
‘Fit–for–purpose governance’
These ideas offer
diagnostic tools and
some conceptual re-
framing, emphasising
the key role of
stakeholder
Rijke et al, 2012
involvement in
achieving change

19. Smarter Policy: models
from industry
• BPR – ‘business process re-engineering’,
analysing processes to enable simplification,
with a strong focus upon the experiences of all
actors in the delivery chain
• Lean Systems – to enable a move away from
‘one size fits all’ approaches, to programmes
which enable tailored solutions for each
individual situation, without leading to
excessive bureaucracy or high costs
 local government has already begun to apply
these models: can they teach the centre?

20. Reflections on directions
• The UK ‘habit’ is to lead aspirationally, but
be weak (laissez-faire) in the follow-through
• Local and private sectors are probably
doing more than central state, at present
• EU capacity to lead may be weaker, post-
enlargement / Lisbon / economic crisis
• Inspiration may come from further afield…

21. Reflections on tactics
„The lower the effectiveness of government, the
more governance starts to appear attractive to
other actors, but whose own effectiveness (and
legitimacy) is crucially dependent on the presence
of the state‟
(Borzel,2010, cited in Bulkeley & Jordan, 2012)
The inspirational leaders and thinkers need
to organise and change the politics
The politicians need to (believe), commit
and engage

22. Thank you