Descrição: This interdisciplinary, exploratory agenda focuses on maturing low carbon innovations and policy for agroenergy and, often competing, localised social technologies in food and energy production in south Goias state and northern UK. It does so through two exploratory field visits and two subsequent collaborative pilot research periods. These pilots integrate a baseline geo-mapping survey with worker interviews to explore the implications of ethanol production in north England (from corn) and south Goias (from sugarcane) for the availability and quality of work, of water and of land for food production. These sites are of local, regional and global economic and environmental significance. Secondly, two component case studies of local, participative and potentially socially, environmentally and financially sustainable approaches to food and energy production will be drawn from coastal Scotland and south Goias. These activities form the basis for two complimentary workshops, with a focus on policy and technical innovation towards enhanced social and environmental futures for food and energy production and three structured meetings between partners, senior institutional staff and students to establish and resource an enduring, interdisciplinary research agenda and collaborative postgraduate training. The process will be filmed as part of project learning and dissemination. While much has been written on the theme addressed here, and projects have promised to deliver tangible benefits for commerce and local (not to say, national) communities, in the main, while reasonably promising major research deriving from international collaboration tends to be disciplinary-limited. One of the virtues of this proposal is that it offers a distinctive cross disciplinary collaboration that will come out the meetings and preliminary research activity recommended. It will assist in our understanding of the impact of new forms of production, work and employment on affected communities in social, physical, financial and health terms. Thus the project goes well beyond conventional interdisciplinary activities that tend to offer either an interdisciplinary natural science or social science agenda. By bringing together a community of scholars from the natural and social this unique programme of activity presents the possibility for an all-round set of outcomes that will greatly aid the work of company, community and local and national policy makers. The series of meetings and seminars will form the basis for richly developed international research programme supported both by regional and national government research funding. In addition, the cross national, interdisciplinary character of the network will allow for closer institutional links involving the movement of post graduate students between Brazil and the UK. Indeed the project deems their incorporation in this early stage vital as it allows for the cross disciplinary supervision of pilot research and student involvement in evaluation towards further exchange, course development and co-supervision. The pilot research periods combine exploratory fieldwork with technical expertise of project applicants along with the geo-processing laboratory expertise of the Knowledge Hub of CEE (Strathclyde) and Laboter of IESA.

 

Integrantes: Marcelo Rodrigues Mendonça - Coordenador / Adriano Rodrigues de Oliveira - Integrante / Ricardo Junior de Assis Fernandes Gonçalves - Integrante / Brian Garvey - Integrante / Paul Stewart - Integrante.

 

Vigência: 2015/Atual

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