Paula Novo

University of Leeds

This study focuses on the interplay between specific relations to nature and more abstract concepts and values regarding the nature of humans and nature and the relationships between humans and nature. We conducted Q sorts and interviews with 25 individuals who were growing plants in gardens, allotments or different kinds of agricultural settings i...

Water scarcity due to climate change and increased water demands is driving the use of non-conventional water sources, including reclaimed water, particularly in agriculture. In many EU countries affected by droughts, reclaimed water has become an important component of the overall water mix. For example, in Spain, Europe's most arid country, recla...

The use of science, scientific information, and other knowledge to inform decision-making is increasingly recognised as an integral feature of environmental governance – a governance principle which is reflected in the new agreement for the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ A...

Agricultural peatlands are the most productive soils in the UK for the cultivation of many food crops. Historical drainage of peat for agriculture (i.e., cropland and managed grassland), without consideration of other associated environmental and climatic impacts, has resulted in a significant emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs). There is a need to...

Values of local people are often poorly represented in environmental decisions due to power differences. Performance arts-based methods have been put forward as one way to increase the representation of local values and signalling power differences. Environmental professionals’ validation of these methods is essential as they shape the interpretati...

Nature degradation, poverty and social discrimination are some of the consequences of unfair decision‐making over environmental resources within rural communities in the Global South. Barriers to achieving fair environmental decisions are entrenched power differences and the lack of representation of the diversity of local values in environmental d...

Over 60% of the global population are expected to live in urban areas by 2050. Urban blue spaces are critical for biodiversity, provide a range of ecosystem services, and can promote human health and wellbeing. Despite this, access to blue space is often unequally distributed across socioeconomic gradients, and the availability of quality blue spac...

This article intervenes in the persistent hierarchy of epistemological worth that produces scientific knowledge as meaningful, and knowledge from arts or humanities as marginal, or illustrative. The specific trans-disciplinary project we discuss brings together environmental social sciences with performance-based Forum Theatre methods to explore ‘v...

Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping (FCM) is a participatory modelling tool used to explore complex systems by facilitating interdisciplinary cooperation and integrating a variety of knowledge systems. Here FCM was used to explore marine microfiber pollution. Through individual interviews with representatives from the research, industry, water and environmenta...

This report presents and overview and analysis of data on peatland restoration costs based on projects funded through the Petaland Action programme in Scotland.

Review of: Geo-trekking in Ethiopia's Tropical Mountains: The Dogu'a Tembien District. Edited by Jan Nyssen, Miro Jacob, and Amaury Frankl Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2019. 675 pp. Softcover: US$ 139.99, ISBN 978-3-030-04954-6. E-book: US$ 109.00, ISBN 978-3-030-04955-3.

Agriculture is both the cornerstone of global food security and one of the main drivers of environmental degradation. To address existing and potential environmental impacts of agriculture, policymakers are increasingly focussing on influencing farmers’ behaviour to adopt best management practices (BMPs). One of the strategies adopted is the provis...

Understanding costs of peatland restoration is very important to inform economic analysis to inform decisions on allocation of (public) budgets to restoration. Information on costs of peatland restoration is currently patchy and fragmented, and often based on small sample size. This report presents an analysis of what represents, to the best of our...

Efforts to tackle diffuse water pollution from agriculture are increasingly focusing on improving farmers' awareness under the expectation that this would contribute to adoption of best management practices (BMPs) and, in turn, result in water quality improvements. To date, however, no study has explored the full awareness-behaviour-water quality p...

Formalised knowledge systems, including universities and research institutes, are important for contemporary societies. They are, however, also arguably failing humanity when their impact is measured against the level of progress being made in stimulating the societal changes needed to address challenges like climate change. In this research we use...

Formalised knowledge systems, including universities and research institutes, are important for contemporary societies. They are, however, also arguably failing humanity when their impact is measured against the level of progress being made in stimulating the societal changes needed to address challenges like climate change. In this research we use...

We present a new systems model that encompasses both environmental and socioeconomic outcomes to simulate impacts of organic resource use on livelihoods of smallholder farmers in low to middle income countries. It includes impacts on soils, which in many countries are degrading with long term loss of organic matter. Many farmers have easy access to...

In this paper, we look at people's engagement with peatlands and peatland restoration in Scotland through the lens of care. Care is an elementary aspect of how we relate to each other and the world around us. Our results highlight the importance of personal experiences and relationships and embodied learning in fostering and defining care. The resu...

Agriculture provides many public goods; however the costs and benefits of these are rarely well distributed. Maintaining public good provision often relies on external governance mechanisms, in turn reliant on the existing socio-ecological system. With two groups of stakeholders (practitioners and academics) we created cognitive maps of socio-ecolo...

This report summarises first results from an analysis of a database on peatland restoration with a focus on restoration costs. We have compiled a database that includes information from 90 unique peatland restoration projects covering 194 restoration sites in Scotland, of which data from 166 sites was suitable for an analysis of restoration costs....

The mixture of public goods that arise from rural land is shaped by multiple policy instruments, such as regulations and economic incentives. Whilst there is a vast literature focusing on categories of policy instruments, there remains the need for a deeper exploration of the interaction between these instruments and the consequences for managing p...

Environmental policies in the realm of land management are increasingly focussing on inducing behavioural change to improve environmental management outcomes. This is based, implicitly or explicitly, on theories that suggest that pro-environmental behaviour can be understood, predicted and altered based on certain factors (referred to as determinan...

This study provides key insights for the development of incentive-based conservation schemes for hilsa in Myanmar’s Ayeyarwady Delta. The results of a choice experiment suggest on average a willingness to participate in such conservation schemes. Some potential management options for conservation schemes such as additional closed fishing periods an...

This report evaluates two funded soil sampling and training schemes for farmers carried out in Northern Ireland: the EU Exceptional Adjustment Aid (EAA) Soil Sampling and Analysis Scheme (EU EAA SSAS), which ran during 2017-18 and included a nation-wide pilot and a targeted scheme in the Upper Bann catchment; and the DAERA-funded Colebrooke and Str...

The use of limited organic resources to build resilience to drought in semi-arid regions was investigated using systems modelling. The study focussed on Halaba in Ethiopia, drawing on biophysical and socioeconomic data obtained from a survey of farms before, during and after the 2015/16 El Niño event. Using a simplified weather dataset to remove no...

We present the methodological development of a surveying and accounting tool created in response to a lack of appropriate data for modelling ecosystem services in tropical wetlands in East Africa. The survey provides a practical field methodology for quickly characterising the environmental, vegetation, soil and hydrological properties of a wetland...

The use of limited organic resources to build resilience to drought in semi-arid regions was investigated using systems modelling. The study focussed on Halaba in Ethiopia, drawing on biophysical and socio-economic data obtained from a survey of farms before, during and after the 2015/16 El Niño event. Using a simplified weather dataset to remove n...

Ecosystem services (ES) has established itself as the predominant paradigm for framing environmental research and policy-making. Its rapid popularization is raising concerns about the possibility that it might lead to nature commodification. These concerns have been associated with a broader agenda for the neoliberalization of conservation, but res...

In a context of both long-term climatic changes and short-term climatic shocks, temporal dynamics profoundly influence ecosystems and societies. In low income contexts in the Tropics, where both exposure and vulnerability to climatic fluctuations is high, the frequency, duration, and trends in these fluctuations are important determinants of socio-...

Diffuse water pollution from agriculture (DWPA) is a major environmental issue worldwide causing eutrophication, human health problems, increased water treatment costs and reducing the recreational potential of water bodies. In addition to penalties and provision of incentives, policy efforts are increasingly focusing on raising land managers’ awar...

Despite several decades of research and financial commitment, diffuse water pollution remains a major problem threatening the health and resilience of social-ecological systems. New approaches to tackle diffuse pollution emphasise awareness raising and provision of advice with the aim of triggering behavioural change. However, empirical evidence on...

With increasing relevance of transdisciplinary research approaches and impact orientation of scientific achievements, research projects in agricultural landscape management frequently develop information and decision support tools (IS/DSS). An empirical overview on their applicability, user demands and capabilities, functionalities and stakeholder...

A key methodological challenge in understanding the relationship between the economy and the underlying ecosystem base resides in how to account for the ecosystem’s degradation and the decline of associated ecosystem services. In this study, we use information on nutrients and metals concentrations from the Environmental Change Network (ECN) databa...

Agricultural productivity and farm household welfare in areas of severe land degradation can be improved through ecosystem-based interventions. Decisions on the possible types of practices and investments can be informed using evidence of potential benefits. Using farm household data together with a farm level stochastic simulation model provides a...

Conservation projects have often been criticised for creating global benefits while causing negative impacts on local livelihoods. Ecosystem services approaches have been seen as one way to change this by focussing explicitly on maintaining ecosystems for human well-being of stakeholders at various scales. However, ecosystem services approaches hav...

Wetlands are critical natural resources around the globe, providing many direct and indirect benefits to local communities. However, wetland degradation and conversion to other land uses are widespread. Sustainable wetland management requires an understanding of stakeholders’ perceptions of the ecosystem and its management. This paper uses fuzzy co...

Most conservation efforts today recognise the need to involve the public if conservation is to succeed in the long-term. A common approach has been to try to educate the public on why they should care. However, information campaigns are often not effective in changing opinions, let alone behaviour. In this paper, we try establishing the basis for a...

In many situations, the overuse of natural resources is aggravated by illegal use. More insights on the drivers and significance of this phenomenon are needed in order to formulate policies that can effectively ease human pressure on the environment. This paper makes use of the water footprint (WF), as a physical indicator of freshwater use, and in...

The objective of this paper is to identify the type of barriers related to the implementation of a new Water Law in Nicaragua. By exploring the perceptions of 40 actors involved in the drafting process of the Law, this paper finds that major barriers are related to the power configuration of the water administration set-up, which creates conflicts...

Increasing pressure to expand agriculture production is giving rise to renewed interest to obtain access to land and water resources in the world. Water footprint evaluations show the importance of green water in global food trade and production. Green water and land are almost inseparable resources. In this work we analyse the role of foreign dire...

The purpose of this chapter is to report the footprint evaluations obtained at the national, regional and river basin levels for 1997–2006. The procedures and data sources used to generate the results were presented in Chaps. 3 and 4. A similar though slightly different approach was used in the case of the Guadiana river basin, which can be found i...

This chapter attempts to bring the evaluations reported in Chaps. 5 and 6 to the policy context, by looking at economic performance, variations and causal relationships associated with agricultural and water policies. We start by reviewing changes in land productivity, both rainfed and irrigated, from a temporal and spatial perspective. Since agric...

Global trade establishes an “invisible” and indirect link between water demand and water consumption sites. The literature on virtual-water “trade” has emphasised the options available to arid and semiarid countries to use international trade to deal with water resources scarcity (Allan 2003; Yang and Zehnder 2005; Chapagain et al. 2006a; Ma et al....

The purpose of this chapter is to describe the methodologies applied in this study and to discuss other methods that are also applied in virtual-water studies. Within the virtual-water literature, the general approach is based on calculations of the virtual-water content of products in order to estimate the water footprint (WF) of a sector or econo...

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a detailed description of data sources and the limitations of the study based on these data.

This work presents new evidence that helps to question existing paradigms and tenets related to water policy and management in Spain. Historically, the management of water resources has focused on the supply side, securing water access through an engineering approach that has been, in most cases, a costly endeavour from economic and environmental p...

First introduced by Allan (1997, 1999), the concept of “virtual water” refers to the volume of water used to produce a commodity, good or service. This term can be defined from two distinct perspectives. From the production-site standpoint, the virtual-water content of a product is the volume of freshwater used to produce a product measured at the...

The evaluation of the water footprint and virtual water trade has become a promising means to evaluate the sustainability of a country’s water resources. This book is based on the research and results of a thorough study carried out for Spain, which serves as a leading case for a semi-arid country. The objective of this study was to assess and anal...

The Nicaraguan Water Law, enacted in September 2007, is the first attempt to implement a new water law in the country. This is not an isolated legislative process in Central America, as other countries initiated similar reforms based on the Dublin principles. Although all new water laws need time to be implemented, the progress in Nicaragua has so...

Virtual water adds a new dimension to international trade, and brings along a new perspective about water scarcity and water resource management. Most virtual water literature has focused on quantifying virtual water "flows" and on its application to ensure water and food security. Nevertheless, the analysis of the potential gains from internationa...

As the most arid country in the European Union, water resources management in Spain is an issue as important as controversial. In this country, even if water resources are unevenly distributed and, in some regions drought conditions are increasing, the crisis is one of water governance rather of than physical scarcity. The estimation and analysis o...

Virtual water adds a new dimension to international trade, and brings along a new perspective about water scarcity and water resource management. Most of virtual water literature has mainly focused on quantifying virtual water flows and on its application to ensure water and food security. Nevertheless, the analysis of the potential gains from inte...

Agricultural trade is by far the largest vehicle to ‘move’ water virtually around the world. Observing that most countries import and export water embedded in the exchanged products, the objective of this study is to assess the virtual water ‘trade’ in Spain for the period 1997-2006. We differentiate between the green and blue components of virtual...

This paper provides a diagnosis about the Nicaraguan Water Law, enacted in September 2007, by identifying the major factors that may impede or delay its future implementation and enforcement. Its empirical underpinning is provided by 41 in-depth interviews among a sample of representative policy actors and stakeholders. The analysis is approach fro...