Module 14 understanding the drivers of countryside change

A programme of work to investigate the social, economic and policy factors that drive countryside change.

Countryside Survey will provide a wealth of information about the extent and quality of the different rural environments of Britain. It will also reveal recent changes in the extent and quality of these environments. However, although clearly important, when using these data in a policy context, we will need to understand not only what changes are occurring but also what the underlying causes (drivers) of those changes might be.

In designing CS2000, it was always recognised that an understanding of the drivers of countryside change was necessary to interpret and respond to the results of the survey. Therefore a new programme of work will review the underlying social, economic and policy factors that initiate countryside change. A consortium (see below) led by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) will undertake the work, which is funded by DEFRA.

The work programme is made up of three elements. The first concerns the general issues of rural change and sustainability, and will entail development of a conceptual framework in which the general socio- economic trends and pressures in rural areas can be understood. The other two modules, which focus on agriculture and forestry, have been designed to examine these themes in greater depth. In the long term, the goal is to focus on how other research or data can be used alongside CS2000 to develop and broaden its policy relevance. The work will help set CS2000 outputs in a policy context, and allow us to explore how we might pick up the implications of the changing social, economic and policy drivers in these outputs.

It is recognised that the problem of understanding the drivers of countryside change goes much more widely than CS2000, and the team members would be interested to hear of other on-going work in this important area of concern.

Project aims
The aims of this project are to:

1. To support the presentation of the first outputs from Countryside Survey 2000 with a detailed review and analysis of the social, economic and policy drivers relevant to understanding the patterns of change detected since the earlier surveys

2. To shape DEFRA’s long term research strategy in relation to the social, economic and policy drivers of countryside change, so that more effective and integrated policies for achieving sustainable development can be developed.

The project consortium

	Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH)
	University of Nottingham
	University of Cambridge
	Wye College
	Countryside and Community Research Unit (CCRU) at Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education
	Countryside and Community Research Unit (CCRU) at Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education