Tony Allan [BA Durham 1958, PhD London 1971] heads the London Water Research Group at King's College London and SOAS. He specialises in the analysis of water resources in semi-arid regions and on the role of global systems in ameliorating local and regional water deficits. In his early career he was concerned with hyrdrological and environmental issues but gradually turned his attention to the social and political when it became evident that environmental science could not explain why people manage water as they do. He pointed out that the water short economies achieve water and food security mainly by importing water intensive food commodities. He identified the concept of virtual water. He provides advice to governments and agencies especially in the Middle East on water policy and water policy reform. His ideas on water security are set out in The Middle East water question: hydropolitics and the global economy and in a new book entitled Virtual water. In 2008 he was awarded the Stockholm Water Prize in recognition of his contribution to water science and water policy.

The purpose of the talk will be to show how global water and food security have been achieved. Food production and consumption account for over 80 per cent of society’s water use. Farmers who produce this food and the preferences of food consumers will be shown to be vital in achieving global food and water security. The concepts of green water, blue water, water productivity and sustainable intensification will be used to explain the importance of farmers in managing inputs at the beginning of the food supply chain. The concepts of virtual water, virtual water ‘trade’, and water footprints, that link water and food security, will be used to analyse the water-food-trade nexus. Food preferences of consumers at the end of the supply chain will play a major role in determining whether we can be water and food secure in future.

Professor Gordon is a University of Aberdeen zoology honours graduate and was awarded his PhD by the University of Cambridge. He worked at the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute in Aberdeen leading the ecology group before moving to Australia in 2003 to work for CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) in Canberra, where he led the biodiversity research teams across various centres. Professor Iain Gordon has now been appointed as the CEO of The James Hutton Institute, which is to be formed by bringing together the Macaulay and SCRI in April 2011.

With increases in sea surface temperature and ocean acidification associated with climate change Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is likely to face increased challenges to its diversity and integrity.  Globally we need to increase efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but as far as Australia is concerned the most effective action that can be taken locally is to reduce the pressure on the reef from land-based pollutants that flow out of the rivers into the GBR lagoon.  The primary pollutants leaving the land are nutrients (N&P), sediments and pest/herbicides.  The Federal and State Governments have recently implemented new funding and policy initiatives (e.g. ReefRescue), based on by good science, to encourage the agricultural sector to change management to reduce the amount of pollutants leaving farms and protect the reef in the face of climate change.

Economic growth is supposed to deliver prosperity. Higher incomes increase wellbeing and lead to prosperity for all, in this view. But the conventional formula is failing. The ecological and social consequences of unfettered growth are devastating. Development remains essential for poorer nations. But are ever-increasing incomes for the already-rich still a legitimate goal for advanced economies? Or should we be aiming for prosperity without growth?

Tim Jackson, an advisor to the UK Government, acknowledges that society faces a profound dilemma: economic growth is unsustainable; but de-growth or economic contraction is unstable. Confronting the dilemma demands a critical re-examination of the economic structure and social logic of consumerism. Prosperity without Growth calls for a new vision of a shared prosperity: the capability to flourish as human beings within the ecological limits of a finite planet. Fulfilling that vision is the most urgent task of our times.

Tim Jackson is Professor of Sustainable Development and Director of the Research group on Lifestyles, Values and Environment (RESOLVE). His research interests focus on understanding the social, psychological and structural dimensions of sustainable living.

Tim joined the University of Surrey in January 1995 under an EPSRC Fellowship on energy and environment, after five years as Senior Researcher at the Stockholm Environment Institute. In February 2000, he was appointed Professor of Sustainable Development, the first such chair to be created in the UK. From Jan 2003 to April 2005 he held an ESRC Fellowship on the social psychology of sustainable consumption. He founded RESOLVE in May 2006 with core funding from the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). RESOLVE is a novel inter-disciplinary collaboration involving around 30 researchers across four departments (CES, Psychology, Sociology, Economics) in Surrey. Its aim is to develop a robust understanding of the links between lifestyle, societal values and the environment, and to provide evidence-based advice to policy-makers seeking to influence people's lifestyles and practices.

Bill Slee is an experienced researcher in the field of rural development and head of the Socio-Economics Research Group which contains three main groupings of social scientists, specialising in environmental and ecological economics, rural and regional economics and society, institutions and governance. He was previously a senior lecturer in the University of Aberdeen and Director and Research Professor of Rural Economy at the Countryside and Community Research Unit at the University of Gloucestershire, where he retains a visiting chair.

Social science has been part of the Macaulay scientific architecture for a decade and a half, during which time it has played both a supporting role in linking with other scientific endeavours and developed stand-alone projects and research activity. Increasingly, government recognises a role for social sciences and the new RERAD programme which will be conducted within The James Hutton Institute contains more social science than ever before. Within the new programme, there is a desire from the Scottish Government to better integrate social science across a wide range of work-packages.

This desire for deeper integration of social science into the new programme offers both challenges and excitement. Social scientists see their role not as a tag-on to bio-physical science but both as an integral part of scientific inquiry into what are termed ‘wicked’ problems, many of which have both biophysical and socio-economic dimensions, and as providing a free-standing socio-economic contribution to the policy evidence base.

In addition, the seminar will explore the different ways in which different social science disciplines ‘do’ science, sometimes using mainstream (Mode 1) scientific approaches but also engaging with Mode 2 science which has been described as ‘socially distributed, application-oriented, trans-disciplinary, and subject to multiple accountabilities’. If that does not put biophysical scientists off completely, come along and listen to some reflections of a social scientist who, for most of his working life, has worked in university agriculture and forestry departments alongside bio-physical scientists and has found it mostly an enjoyable experience.

Dr Adam Smith, GWCT Director Scotland - Adam has now been with the Trust for fourteen years, although he started work on the Joint Raptor Study as a student a few years before that. Adam was the Trust's Senior Scientist in upland Scotland until August 2008 when he transferred to the role of Policy Officer Scotland, based at Scottish HQ. In February last year Adam was promoted to Director Scotland following Ian McCall's retirement.

Nature conservation values in 21st century Scotland still reflect the understandable concerns of 40 years ago. At that time key aims were to prevent man induced events such as extirpations of species as a result of game interests and pollution through agro-chemical use. The legislative response to these historical issues has been one of regulation and restriction, reflecting an ongoing view that those who exploit natural resources do not act in a sufficiently enlightened manner for a broad suite of public environmental benefits to accrue. Such an attitude may be reinforced as public policy moves closer to adopting an ecosystem approach. This approach can appear to rely on the breadth of knowledge only available through a large state sponsored body of research and an element of centralised implementation. However public sector support and guidance of environmental management itself has had a mixed record of success in delivering public goods. At the same time there is increasing research to suggest that a public interest in healthy wildlife and habitats is well served through the responsible use of game management principles. Those with an interest in game appear to accept a high ratio of personal to public sector investment in environmental activity. This may be useful as altruism and public benefit need to meet private incentive to maximise and balance ecosystem services in the 21st Century. To this end, public sector environmental research and policy should focus on stimulating an enlightened self-interest in those who own and work our countryside.

Douglas Kell was appointed Chief Executive of BBSRC on 1 October 2008. He was Top Scholar at Bradfield College, Berkshire (1966-71), and read Biochemistry at Oxford University (1971-5), where he also gained a Distinction in Chemical Pharmacology. He took his D. Phil. (1978) at the same institution, where he was a Senior Scholar of St John’s College, focussing on the development and exploitation of novel methods for the study of (mainly microbial) bioenergetics.

He was an SRC Postdoctoral Fellow and an SERC Advanced Fellow at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth (now Aberystwyth University), where he was appointed ‘New Blood’ Lecturer in 1983. He was promoted to Reader in 1988 and to a Personal Chair in 1992. From 1997-2002 he was Director of Research of the Institute of Biological Sciences in Aberystwyth.

In 2002 he took an RSC/EPSRC-funded Chair in Bioanalytical Sciences at UMIST, which merged with the Victoria University of Manchester in 2004 to form The University of Manchester, from which he is presently seconded. From 2005-2008 he was Director of the Manchester Centre for Integrative Systems Biology.

He has served on numerous scientific panels, including on the Programme Management Committees of 3 LINK schemes and the RCUK Basic Technology Panel, and was a member of BBSRC Council from 2001-6.

His scientific achievements include the development and exploitation of many novel analytical methods, such as the use of radio-frequency dielectric spectroscopy to determine microbial biomass; Aber Instruments, a company he co-founded to exploit this method, received the Queen’s Award for Export Achievement in 1998. He has been a pioneer in a variety of areas of computational biology and experimental metabolomics, including in the use of evolutionary, closed-loop methods for optimisation. He also contributed to the discovery of the first bacterial cytokine.