Centre for Environmental Policy: 2016 PhD Research Symposium

Each year, the Centre for Environmental Policy holds a research symposium for its PhD students, giving them a chance to present their research to the members of the department. For this symposium, first year PhD students are required to produce a poster about their research, while second years are expected to present the progress made regarding their PhD. In this post, I’ll be giving a brief overview of the 2016 PhD research symposium held on the 29th June 2016 with some insights on the presentations from the members of the Environmental Quality Research Group.

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Poster discussions.

The symposium started with brief poster discussions for the first year students to showcase their research. Attendees were encouraged to ask the students to briefly explain what the poster is all about. These discussions offer a great opportunity for the first year students to start communicating their research in preparation for next year’s symposium. I was glad to see a variety of topics being researched from pesticides in drinking water to energy systems in the Middle East and North African regions, and was really impressed to see the hard work invested in preparing such highly professional and informative posters.

In the presentations section of the symposium, it was interesting to see that systems approach in policy and management was among the most highly researched topics within our department (5 out of the 7 presentations!). To start things off, our very own Alozie presented his research on the management of mineral active regions where he said:

Mineral active region describes a region with stock(s) of mineral resources of intrinsic economic interest that can be used beyond the scope and or need of the local people and consequently has undergone decades of extraction activities. Mineral extraction inherently comes with environmental issues with knock-on effect on socio-economic variables. Traditional environment and resource management approaches have failed to deliver sustainable management mechanism due to lack in multi-disciplinary perspective. My research is investigating the potential of systems thinking as a holistic tool to addressing the problem to ensure a sustainable mineral active region.

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Alozie’s presentation on mineral active regions.

I was also one of the PhD students that presented during the symposium. It was truly a great experience to get my peers to critique my research and to provide useful recommendations for my future work. To give you some idea, my presentation explored the role of systems thinking in the development of Programme of Measures (management actions to manage pressures and improve water quality status) for the Water Framework Directive (WFD). My presentation puts emphasis on the need to see the catchment as a system and to understand the human-nature interdependencies that exist to optimise overall management efforts.

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My presentation on the role of systems thinking in informing Programme of Measures for the WFD (photo taken by: Iman).
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Fara presenting her research topic.

 

Fara’s presentation on antibiotics in sewage treatment plants (STP) touches on one of the novel issues that we face in the field of water management. Here’s what she has to say about to her research:

The aspiration of this study is to make possible recommendations on the most effective treatment for antibiotics removal in STP based on the available data and field sampling. To achieve this, it would therefore need to be holistic in its approach (multi-criteria analysis and systems thinking).

Kofi‘s topical presentation explores the need to understand the “true sustainable value” of energy investments. Exploring this further, he said that:

Renewable energy investment now follow similar reductionist policies adopted from the oil and gas sector. This linear approach of solely focusing on financial gains have led to massive project shutdowns of many renewable projects from planning, development and the operation phase. This research will focus on the need for a paradigm shift to solve this problem. A systems thinking approach will be evaluated as a possible solution. This approach will highlight indicators that can directly or indirectly affect the sustainability of renewable projects. Indicators will be selected from different areas in finance, environment, social and resource management. The causal interactive systems model will then be developed to map out the interactions with the selected systems.

Overall, it was a very informative day filled with insightful discussions and stimulating questions. I hope you that enjoyed this blog post and managed to get a taste of the highly complex and interdisciplinary research topics that we at the Centre for Environmental Policy passionately address.

Stay tuned for more updates.

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