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The increased use of non-traditional materials is driven from multiple perspectives. These include societies' desire for a more sustainable future, reinforced by legislation, regulation and policy mechanisms to encourage the greater use of such materials. This paper discusses two contrasting materials. Tyre bales are free-draining and lightweight and have been used in road foundations and embankments over soft ground as well as in slope failure repair or slope stabilisation. Electric arc furnace steel slag has been used as a direct replacement for a road embankment and a base course layer, as well as in a rail track. Experience demonstrates that such uses become widespread only when a given environmentally friendly material has a cost advantage and/or a performance benefit, and the material and its use is included in an appropriate standard or specification. It is concluded that the lack of a Quality Protocol is likely to further impede their use. ; Les progrès vers une utilisation accrue de matériaux non traditionnels sont motivés par un certain nombre de points de vue différents. Le premier d'entre eux est un enjeu de plus en plus important des sociétés pour un avenir plus durable; cela est souvent renforcé par des mécanismes législatifs, réglementaires et politiques de haut niveau visant à encourager une utilisation accrue de ces matériaux. Cet article traite de deux matériaux contrastés. Les balles de pneus sont drainantes et légères et ont été utilisées dans des fondations routières et dans des remblais sur les sols mous ainsi que lors des réparations et stabilisation de talus. Les scories d'aciérie de four à arc électrique ont été utilisées pour remplacer directement un remblai routier et une couche de base, ainsi que sur une voie ferrée. L'expérience montre que ces utilisations ne se généralisent que lorsqu'un matériau respectueux de l'environnement présente un avantage en termes de coûts et / ou un avantage en termes de performances, et que le matériau et son usage sont inclus dans une norme ou une ...

Published ; This is the final version of the article. Available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record. ; The construction of culture as a class of ecosystem service presents a significant test of the holistic ambitions of an ecosystems approach to decision making. In this paper we explore the theoretical challenges arising from efforts to understand ecosystems as objects of cultural concern and consider the operational complexities associated with understanding how, and with what consequences, knowledge about cultural ecosystem services are created, communicated and accounted for in real world decision making. We specifically forward and develop a conceptual framework for understanding cultural ecosystem services and related benefits in terms of the environmental spaces and cultural practices that arise from interactions between humans and ecosystems. The types of knowledge, and approaches to knowledge production, presumed by this relational, non-linear and place-based perspective on cultural ecosystem services are discussed and reviewed. The framework not only helps navigate more fully the challenge of operationalising 'cultural ecosystem services' but points to a more relational understanding of the ecosystem services framework as a whole. Extending and refining understanding through more ambitious engagements in interdisciplinarity remains important. ; This research was funded through the UK National Ecosystem Assessment Follow-On (Work Package 5: Cultural ecosystem services and indicators) funded by the UK Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Welsh Government, the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), and Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

Producer interests have had great influence on policy and decision making in agriculture since 1945. But this corporatist arrangement is increasingly under strain. The various current challenges to the authority of the farmers' lobby are described and discussed. (CP)

Describes the origins of corporatism in the increased state direction of agriculture which emerged during and after the First and Second World Wars. The structures created then provided the basis for a transformation of agriculture's relations with the state, with the industry assuming greater responsibility for its own regulation. Finally, the article considers current developments which are threatening the corporatist consensus originating in the 1947 Agriculture Act. (AM)

This is the final version. Available on open access from MDPI via the DOI in this record ; Although the effects of public austerity have been the subject of a significant literature in recent years, the changing role of the state as a partner in collaborative environmental governance under austerity has received less attention. By employing theories of collaborative governance and state retreat, this paper used a qualitative research design comprised of thirty-two semi-structured interviews within the case study UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in the United Kingdom to address this lacuna. Participants perceived that the austerity period has precipitated negative changes to their extant state-orientated funding regime, which had compelled changes to their organisational structure. Austerity damaged their relationships with the state and perceptions of state legitimacy whilst simultaneously strengthening and straining the relationships between intra-partnership non-state governance actors. This case offers a critical contemporary reflection on normative collaborative environmental governance theory under austerity programmes. These open up questions about the role of the state in wider sustainability transitions. ; United Kingdom Food and Environment Research Agency

AbstractThis article follows an experimental interdisciplinary undergraduate course in the busy, unpredictable space of the contemporary city. It locates practice-based research of interdisciplinary higher education in a dynamic learning environment, which is comprised of unpredictable connections between disciplinary perspectives. Following Karen Barad, the aim is to diffract interdisciplinary higher education in order to recognise and work with a multiplicity of meanings and experiences. This article explores an alternative to the dominant model of challenge-based learning in the interdisciplinary classroom. Creating Edinburgh: The Interdisciplinary City is an undergraduate elective offered by Edinburgh Futures Institute at the University of Edinburgh. It provides students with opportunities to explore the city of Edinburgh in small groups of students from a wide range of degree programmes. Groups are invited to engage with a selection of themed fieldwork topics throughout the 11 weeks of the course, visiting specific sites and responding to a series of tasks and questions. These include themes such as Sustainability, Decolonisation and Wildness, which are presented as interdisciplinary field topics to explore rather than problems to solve. This article develops a research methodology that sets out to travel with students as they navigate their way through the city during their weekly field trips. Combining first-hand autoethnographic accounts with walking interviews, it offers an insight into interdisciplinary learning and teaching in the expanded field of the contemporary city. Conceiving urban space as an assemblage of digital and non-digital objects, events and activities, members of the research team accompany students during their fieldwork, equipped with audio recorders, cameras and notebooks. The documents of these research journeys are then diffracted within a new materialist framework. The article concludes with questions and prompts for working with the agency and the affordances of a field-based education practice.