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Prof. Jules Pretty
Research Interests
main topics:
I have a number of research students in these areas (10 as of January
2007),
and I would be pleased to receive applications from prospective students or
visiting researchers on any of these subjects.
Publications
Please click here to access a list of Recent Publications and pdf files to
download
New book:
The Earth Only Endures (Earthscan, 2007)
(see also Current
Departmental Publications)
Memory Map written trail: "Constable's
Other Country"
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Career Resumé
Posts & Training
I joined the Department in 1997, having worked for ten years at the
International Institute for Environment and Development, where I was
director of their sustainable agriculture programme from 1989. Before that,
I worked at Imperial College. At the University of Essex, I set up the
Centre for Environment and Society, which links across a variety of
departments and disciplines. I was appointed A D White Professor-at-Large by
Cornell University for six years from 2001.
Teaching
I teach a second year undergraduate course entitled 'Sustainability'.
This module is about our relations with nature, animals, food and places.
It centres on themes of connections and estrangement. For most of human
history, we have lived our daily lives in close proximity to the land.
Within the next few years, though, there will for the first time be more
people worldwide living in urban than rural areas. When we lose nature and
green places, we forget the animals and birds that once were there. We eat
anonymised foods that have no place-based stories, and put the fat of the
land on ourselves. At the same time, we are consuming the world to death.
The modern lifestyles (and economies) put up as the most desirable in the
world are precisely those that would need six to eight earths to provision
if all the world’s population adopted them. Can we ourselves make it across
this century? Life made this planet as it is now, shaping and changing the
conditions to make them more favourable to life. Individual organisms do the
same thing by constructing their niches in ways to improve their likelihood
of survival. As humans, we did the same over a few hundred thousand
generations as highly successful hunter-gatherers. Today, we find ourselves
in the remarkable position of being the first to change our environment to
make it less favourable to life. We are making our own world inhospitable,
and so risk losing what it means to be human. Gaia will become Grendel,
unless sustainability is taken seriously, as if the world matters.
The aim of this module is to analyse and explore these environmental
factors and relationships, and relate them to the potential for developing
sustainable patterns of living for the future.
Learning Outcomes (including lectures and practicals)
To pass this module students will need to be able to:
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Describe the key components
of sustainability and the challenges of moving from current practices to
more sustainable ones.
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Describe the interactions
between humans and animals, and the many conflicts and contradictions for
ecological management.
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Outline the environmental and
health aspects of green places.
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Show a knowledge and
understanding of the benefits of sustainable practices in food production,
in agricultural development and the pressures preventing them;
-
Show an integrated
understanding of the cross-disciplinary (environmental, social, economic
and policy) features of sustainability thinking and practice.
-
Use the key skills of
information retrieval, written communication, critical analysis and make
small group presentations.
The Issues in Sustainable Development module is designed to provide an
insight into a range of current issues in sustainable development, and the
nature of environmental management that is required to address these. Issues
covered will include agricultural and food systems, management of marine
resources, freshwater conflicts and policies, social structures,
environmental policies, biodiversity and wildernesses, and climate change.
The module is centred on the development of a sustainable development plan
with prioritised actions for one of three regions (lowlands, uplands and
coasts) of a tropical, poor country rich in natural resources.
Wider Involvement
I am Deputy-Chair of the
government’s Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment (ACRE), and
have served on government advisory committees for DEFRA, DFID, the Cabinet Office
and DTI. I am a Fellow of
the Institute of Biology and the Royal Society for Arts.
I am a regular speaker, contributor to media, and presenter of the
1999 BBC Radio 4 series Ploughing Eden and contributor and writer for the
2001 BBC TV Correspondent programme The Magic Bean. I was awarded in 1997 by the Indian Ecological Society
a medal for “International Contributions to
Sustainable and Ecological Agriculture”, and was runner-up for the 2002
European Sicco Mansholt Prize for agricultural science. I am a founding member of the Agricultural Reform Group and the Neighbourhood
Think Tank, editorial advisor to academic journals, vice-president of
Suffolk-ACRE, trustee of Essex Wildlife Trust and the Operation
Wallacea Trust, member of the Institute of Biology and British Agricultural
History Society, adviser to government on social and environmental
development, and adviser to the corporate sector. I was appointed to the
International Jury for the Slow Food Award in 2002, and am Chief Editor of
the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability.
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Contact address
Professor Jules Pretty
Centre for Environment and Society and Dept of Biological Sciences
University of Essex
Wivenhoe Park
Colchester CO4 3SQ, UK
tel. +44 (0)1206 873323
fax. +44 (0)1206 872592
email : prefix the name 'jpretty' to the '@essex.ac.uk' stem
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