This research will update former research on how to more effectively engage women in the Rural Development Programme (RDP) for Northern Ireland. The EU is committed to gender equality through gender mainstreaming. RDPs delivered across Member States incorporate a commitment to gender mainstreaming. This is enshrined in Article 8 of the Rural Development Regulation 2007-2013. Our project will update research on how to increase the impact of the RDP on rural women. We will update desk research, qualitative interviews, and focus groups. There is concern at a regional and EU level that the RDP is not having a sufficient impact on women. While we will specifically focus on Northern Ireland, lessons will be relevant to other regions in the EU. This research will also contribute to the theoretical literature on gender mainstreaming, specifically by critically reflecting on the notion of gender mainstreaming the RDP, seen as one of the most male policies in the EU. This research will consider how the RDP might be mainstreamed, and whether there are tensions between the EU's commitments to gender mainstreaming and a viable agricultural industry. There are inherent difficulties in trying to gender mainstream RDPs. In general across Europe, men inherit land. While women are rarely the holder, they are key contributors to the farm family labour force, and frequently their off-farm labour is essential to the viability of the family farm. It is unclear how gender mainstreaming can apply to an industry that is intrinsically premised on the exploitation of family labour. We will also examine if the RDP is adopted in ways that reflect existing gender imbalances. It may be the case that gender mainstreaming is circumvented by cultural norms and established patterns of practice, and this normative knowledge shapes how the programme is implemented. This is particularly relevant for those elements of the RDP aimed at women in rural areas not on farms. These women are not bound by the same cultural and historical constraints as those involved in agriculture, yet women continue to be under-represented in monitoring boards and implementing bodies. The European Commission and Parliament have expressed concern about the differential gender impact of the RDP across Europe. In the NI context, a policy report was commissioned in 2000 to make recommendations on how to increase the impact of the RDP on women (Shortall and Kelly, 2001). While there is awareness of the need for gender equality, the Mid-Term Evaluation Report of the current programme specifically notes that there is little evidence to date of active targeting of women in the current programme, and recommends that DARD actively engages with relevant organisations to use their expertise to reach this target group to promote the programme. It states the need to do this many times but it does not suggest how this might be achieved. The research process will actively engage with policy makers, civil society sectors, and the political sphere. It will be designed in close consultation with DARD, the Local Action Groups who deliver the programme, women's networks, key rural development and agricultural organisations, and political actors. The research will produce a final report and briefing notes for the relevant sectors engaged with the project. It will produce academic journal articles and conference presentations for academic audiences. There will be collaboration throughout the project, bringing together a university, a government department, civil society groups and the Northern Ireland Assembly, in an innovative four way transfer of knowledge. There will be a final project launch, media interviews will be given and it will be publicised on Queen's University's website.

Given the economic, social and environmental value of the marine environment it makes sense to manage it in a way that ensures long term sustainability of both ecosystems and human uses. We can only do this if we understand the impact that human activities and management practises have on marine systems, including people. Spatial management measures such as fishery closures, marine protected areas and marine plans have emerged as a core component of the UK's marine management portfolio. In essence, spatial management aims to incorporate the diversity of human uses, consider the compatibility of different activities, and balance use with the impacts of these activities on biodiversity and people. Yet despite the extensive use of spatial management, substantial gaps in understanding exist regarding how to monitor the impacts of spatial management measures and evaluate their effectiveness across environmental, social and economic outcomes. Our research aims to systematically bring together the available evidence on existing and emerging environmental, social and economic techniques for monitoring the effects of spatial management measures and evaluating their effectiveness. In particular we will focus on examples from countries with a coastline and in a similar socio-economic and political context to the UK. By clearly and transparently describing this evidence, we will be able to explore understanding surrounding methods for how to monitor and evaluate spatial management measures, and inform the development of guidelines and future monitoring and evaluation practises across the UK. Our findings, in the form of a database, will be published alongside an article in the open-access journal Environmental Evidence, providing a highly accessible, freely available summary of the evidence. We will also produce a one-page policy summary, to disseminate our results to decision-makers, and a set of guidelines for use to facilitate application of our database. By making these outputs publicly available and easy to use we will give our work a lasting legacy beyond the life of the project. For example, researchers will be able to easily update and build on our database as desired or design research to fill evidence gaps, and decision-makers will be able to easily locate evidence of relevance to inform their monitoring and management activities. We will involve key stakeholders through our Stakeholder Group in the design of our project and discuss our results with them to ensure they are used to help inform spatial management in the UK. The evidence base collated within this project is anticipated to benefit a wide range of sectors and users of the marine environment, as well as nature conservation and academic research. These benefits will extend beyond the UK to international policy audiences facing similar challenges in determining the impact of their spatial management activities. Our extended review team demonstrates the interdisciplinarity nature of this project being composed of researchers specialising in marine and fisheries management from environmental, social, economic and policy perspectives based across academic and charitable institutions. Our existing Stakeholder Group attests to the value of this project with support from: the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Marine Management Organisation (MMO), Marine Scotland Science (MSS), Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA), Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC), the Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authorities (IFCAs), and the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas). We will seek to extend our Stakeholder Group to incorporate all of the UK Statutory Nature Conservation Bodies during the project programme. Keywords: evaluation methods; fishery closure; marine spatial management; marine protected area; marine spatial plan; monitoring methods; systematic map

major transformation of the food system is required, which is focused on the production and consumption of healthy and sustainable food. Change will need to be facilitated through a number of means, both direct and indirect. The Sus-Health project will establish and demonstrate a blueprint of a system that incentivises both directly and indirectly the consumption of sustainable and healthy food. The project will demonstrate to stakeholders how the use of a codesigned, combined measure of environmental impact and nutritive value (the Sus-Health Index) of foods, meals and ingredients can be used to influence the future direction of our food system and the stakeholders within it. Sus-Health will co-create a systemic strategy and innovative solution for influencing food choices and consumption, so that they better align with planetary boundaries and nutritional guidelines. The resulting consumer preferences (obtained through living lab experiments and through simulation) will feed back down the entire food chain driving the processes and raw materials used, towards more sustainable and health-inducing foods and diets. Comprising two academic partners and a range of stakeholder involvement Sus-Health will demonstrate a range of stakeholder focused communication vehicles, in a range of interventions in Northern Ireland followed by upscaling activities in the rest of the UK. The consortium comprises a mix of academic, and food industry partners with expertise in consumer behaviour, sustainability, nutrition, agri-economics, software design, agriculture, food service, and food systems. Key outputs of the project will be: - The develpment, validation and demonstration of the use and applicability of a combined measure for assessing sustainability and nutritive value in real settings (restaurants, fast food outlets, canteens and related supply chains) - A range of communication tools and approaches aimed at influencing change in consumer food choices - Interventions focused on food affordability including economic assessments of direct policy interventions that would make healthy sustainable food more affordable. - Stakeholder guidelines for using the Sus-Health index and related communication tools together with extensive stakeholder focused communication and dissemination activities

Vision: To determine novel and policy relevant pluralistic values for marine biodiversity and apply these values to co-develop green investment options, leading to a transformative shift in our understanding and utilisation of the economics of biodiversity. There have been significant developments in understanding how economies are embedded in nature and how biodiversity can be integrated into economic models and decision making. This has included growth in environmental valuation, ecosystem service assessments, natural capital approaches, and green investments. Despite these advances biodiversity is only sporadically integrated into decision making and remains external to our economic systems. The result is continuing biodiversity loss with negative implications for our society, economy, and fundamental wellbeing. Key challenges include: i. a nascent understanding of how biodiversity provides benefits resulting in a lack of decision grade data; ii. hesitance of users to apply values due to low confidence, poor understanding, and a negligible definition of the beneficiaries; iii. uncertainty regarding routes of green investment. To address these interconnected challenges ValMaB-DM brings together expertise in marine ecology, human geography, environmental and ecological economics, governance, and finance. The team includes academics, consultancies, and NGOs coupled with an extensive partner network of government, industry and commerce representatives. To drive a meaningful shift in the understanding and utilisation of the economics of biodiversity our partners highlighted a need for state-of-the-art theoretical development to be coupled with practicable representations. As such ValMaB-DM takes a twin track approach. One track will develop innovative, internationally applicable approaches whilst a parallel track will ground the research in key coastal habitats identified as priorities for net-biodiversity gain at the Solent and the Moray Firth, showcasing potential ecological, social, economic, and financial benefits. To address a critical evidence gap and inform the net zero agenda we will focus on the regulating services: bioremediation of waste and carbon sequestration. To tackle the stated challenges ValMaB-DM will first substantiate the interlinkages between marine biodiversity and carbon sequestration and bioremediation through the combination of new and existing data to assess how the condition of biodiversity affects the quantity, quality, and resilience of the services. Collaborating with international expertise we will develop consensus on scaling these findings from local to national and generic. Building on current understanding robust, generically applicable, monetary valuations of carbon sequestration and bioremediation will be further developed and applied to support natural capital accounting frameworks, and also coupled with novel ecological understanding at the case studies. As singular monetary valuations may not align with community aspirations participatory mapping initiatives will be advanced and deployed to engage real world communities in mapping the social values and trade-offs associated with biodiversity and Natural Capital resources. The ecological, monetary, and social values of biodiversity will be connected to decision-making through the co-design and implementation of green investment to maintain and enhance coastal habitats. Communication and capacity building are at the heart of ValMaB-DM. Strategic stakeholder engagement will be choreographed through the co-development of research, stakeholder mapping, the Programme Steering Group, and sharing of outcomes (e.g. policy briefs, trade shows, social media). We will also run a training programme for practitioners, collaborators and external stakeholders, enabled by Natural Resources Wales and the Coastal Partnership Network, and develop of an MSc course module and capitalise on links to the SuMMeR Centre for Doctoral Training

The agri-food system, producing 23% of UK emissions, must play a key role in the UK's transition to net zero by 2050, and through leadership in innovation can support change globally. Our Network+ will build on existing and new partnerships across research and stakeholder communities to develop a shared agenda, robust research plans, and scope out future research and innovation. The Network will design and deliver high-reward feasibility projects to help catalyse rapid system transformation to ensure the agri-food system is sustainable and supports the UK's net zero goal, while enhancing biodiversity, maintaining ecosystem services, fostering livelihoods and supporting healthy consumption, and minimising the offshoring of environmental impacts overseas through trade. The radical scale of the net zero challenge requires an equally bold and ambitious approach to research and innovation, not least because of the agri-food and land system's unique potential as a carbon sink. Our title, Plausible Pathways, Practical and Open Science, recognises the agri-food system as a contested area in which a range of pathways are plausible. Success requires that new relationships between natural and social science, stakeholders including industry, government and citizens, be forged in which distributed expertise is actively harnessed to support sectoral transformation. We will use our breadth of expertise from basic research to application, policy and engagement to co-produce a trusted, well-evidenced, and practical set of routes, robust to changing future market, policy and social drivers, to evolve the agri-food system towards net zero and sustainability. Marshalling our many existing stakeholder links, we will review and evaluate current options and use Network funding to catalyse new partnerships through retreats, crucibles, workshops, online digital networking and scoping studies to develop system approaches to transformation, reframe the research agenda and undertake novel research projects. We will co-design productive and creative spaces that enable the research community to engage with a wide range of stakeholders and thought leaders through the following framework: 7 Co-Is who govern the Network but are not themselves eligible for funding; 9 Year-1 Champions (with new appointments after Year 1) dynamically forging new connections across research communities; 11 Advisory Board members tasked with challenging business-as-usual thinking; and regular liaison with other stakeholders.