Seminars

The Arkleton Trust organises seminars on rural development. Details of recent seminars are included here.

2007 Seminar

“Rural community strategies for managing the economic & social impacts of climate change”

This seminar was the culmination of the two year thematic project covering all the Trust funds for 2005 - 2007.  The starting point in this programme was the award of four competitive fellowships. The fellows were located in Venezuela, India, Bhutan, and Finland, and each of them was charged to work with rural communities known to them on ‘Rural Community Impacts of Climate Change and Associated Amelioration and Mitigation Measures’. Subsequent awards on this theme were awarded to three other people using the David Moore Fund and the John Higgs Fund. One examined micro-impacts of low level ozone on English farming. A second examined the rural community impacts on two Swiss alpine communities. A third examined tourism-fisheries conflicts in a Mexican rural community, broadly linked with climate change impacts.

A synthesis paper of all the abovementioned reports was compiled. A copy of this report can be uploaded by clicking seminar-briefing-paper..

All the fellows with the sole exception of the Fellow from Bhutan (who unfortunately failed to obtain a visa) attended the seminar. The seminar also had additional participation from Canada, China, Norway, Algeria as well as extra participants from India and the UK.

The conclusion of the seminar was that many rural and indigenous communities are actually putting into place initiatives to adapt to climate change. However, many of these communities are not being identified nor are they sharing the lessons they are learning. It was therefore felt that a global mapping of communities needed to be commenced. There was wide agreement among seminar participants that the work undertaken to date by fellows should be deepened, widened, made publicly accessible, and that links should be created with other organizations and initiatives in the field. Further that the Trust should invest in some proactive assistance to the communities the fellows had worked with where it fitted into the overall strategy of the Trust. The point was made that it is the poorest and most vulnerable individuals and communities in rural areas that suffer most from climate change impacts, and that some of these may well have the least capacity to adapt to those impacts.

The final seminar report can also be downloaded by clicking  arkleton-report_final1

2004 Seminar

The Importance of Place Based & Consequential Learning for Rural Communities and People.

Seminar Attendees outside Dounside House, Tarland, Scotland

2002 Seminar

Local Rural Communities – Potential Champions of their own Destinies? Full text

2001 Seminar

Past Seminars