Advisory Board
The FCRN Advisory Board provides guidance on development of the FCRN. Members are experts from a range of food and climate related fields and include representatives from government agencies, research institusions, the Climate Change Committee and NGOs. In alphabetical order, the Group members are:
Adrian Williams
Dr Adrian Williams is the Principal Research Fellow in Operational Research / Natural Resources, at Cranfield University.
His project portfolio has included several projects of Defra and other organisations in which Environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of agricultural and horticultural commodities is being applied and developed. These included comparisons of commodities produced domestically and overseas, the benefits of genetics in reducing unwanted emissions from livestock, assessing 'carbon footprinting' as a methodology for agricultural and horticultural products and was a co-author of the work for WWF and FCRN: How low can we go? An assessment of greenhouse gas emissions from the UK food system and the scope to reduce them by 2050.
Alison Austin
Alison Austin worked for Sainsbury's Supermarkets Ltd for 25 years, finishing in September 2009. Alison set up an independent consultancy, ‘Environment and Business’ which supports a number of clients in addressing environmental issues within a commercial context. In the last 18 years at Sainsbury’s she headed up the environmental team and in the last 5 years the food policy team for all own brand products at Sainsbury’s. She was responsible for policy development and communications on packaging, waste and recycling, health and nutrition, raw material sourcing (fish, timber and palm oil), agricultural issues, organics, biotechnology, carbon and water footprinting, Fairtrade as well as energy and refrigeration systems.She has recently been appointed as a Non Executive Director for WRAP and is a founder member of The Robertsbridge Consultancy.
Andrew Fearne
Professor Andrew Fearne has three main titles at Kent University:
- Professor of Food Marketing & Supply Chain Management.
- Director of the Centre for Value Chain Research.
- Chair of the External Services Committee.
His main area of research is:
- Vertical co-ordination and the role of supply chain partnerships as a means of improving performance (reducing cost, adding value) and managing risk.
- Demand management and the impact of promotions on food purchasing behaviour.
- Development of supply chain mapping methodologies for the analysis of co-innovation and sustainable waste management.
- Co-regulation of food safety and quality assurance.
Andrew Jarvis
Andrew Jarvis is an Executive Director of GHK, a consultancy that provides public policy strategy, research and evaluation services. He is also an Associate Fellow at Chatham House. He is an environmental economist with a background in applied biology who has worked on environmental and infrastructure issues in the UK, EU and East Asia. He leads GHK's Environment and Food Chain practice, working for the European Commission and UK public sector clients in policy development, impact assessment and appraisal.
From 2006 to 2008 he was the senior policy adviser on environment, energy and innovation in the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit, Cabinet Office. While in this role he managed a cross-government review that defined the new framework and objectives for UK food policy as set out in the report Food Matters and subsequently developed through 'Food 2030' and other activity across Whitehall.
He directs GHK's work for the European Commission on food chain policies and has also provided strategic advice on food policy and food security issues to a number of organisations in the public and private sectors in the UK and overseas. His work for the Commission has covered the EU’s legislation governing cultivation of GM crops, the allocation of plant variety rights, GM-free labelling, the regulation of animal cloning in the food chain, the financing of official controls and the Better Training for Safer Food programme.
Andrew was resident in Hong Kong from 1996 to 2001, managing GHK's local office and leading consultancy assignments for the Hong Kong Government. and other organisations, before relocating to the UK. He previously worked for ECOTEC in the UK and Brussels.
Bill Vorley
Bill Vorley is Principal Researcher in the Sustainable Markets Group at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in London. His research interests are market structure and governance, the position of small and family scale producers, the role of business in sustainable development, and the means to decouple food production and trade from the degradation of livelihoods and environment. He was coordinator of the international 'Regoverning Markets' programme, which analysed the position of small scale producers in modern/restructured agrifood markets.
Prior to joining IIED in 1999, Bill worked at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy in Minneapolis, the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University, and spent many years in agribusiness after post-doctoral field research in Malaysia.
Chris Foster
Chris Foster works part-time at the University of Manchester, as a Senior Research Fellow in Manchester Business School (www.mbs.ac.uk). He is also director of the environmental consultancy EuGeos Limited (www.eugeos.co.uk), which he established in 2000. Chris holds a first degree in Chemistry from the University of Oxford and an MPhil from UMIST which studied the incorporation of environmental issues into R&D management processes.Chris' work has three strands:1. Practical environmental management and compliance, particularly in EPR/IPPC-regulated food-processing businesses2. Environmental life cycle assessment (LCA), with which he's been engaged since the late 1990's. He's conducted and reviewed LCAs on waste management processes, pacagign systems and construction products as well as agri-food systems.3. Academic research, bringing insights from industrial ecology, practical environmental management in firms and innovation studies to bear on the challenges of transformational eco-innovation. Recent projects have also focused on food systems.
christofwalter
Christof has worked for over ten years in various sustainability roles in Unilever, from working directly with farmers in Germany and other countries to Sustainable Sourcing Development. In his current role he designs and runs multi-partner projects, advises on strategy and works on foresight on strategic risks and opportunities in sustainability and sustainable agriculture. Christof’s technical experience spans; Farming and horticulture in developed and developing countries, Smallholder farming systems, Climate change, its impacts and mitigation, Food security, biofuels, biodiversity and water issues, Risk mapping, LCA, carbon and water footprinting, sustainable farming standards.
Christof studied Horticulture, Agronomy, Environmental Sciences and Economics at the University of Hanover, Germany, from where he also received his PhD in Horticultural Science. Before joining Unilever, Christof worked for the Chamber of Agriculture (Landwirtschaftskammer) Northrhine-Westphalia, developing a sustainability assessment system for arable vegetable production.
Christof has advised the government of Azerbaijan (Ministry for Economic Development) on developing and export-orientated agricultural sector; and is member of the Sustainability Council of ethical funds management firm Earth Capital Partners LLP.
Joe Millward
Emeritus Professor of Human Nutrition, University of Surrey.
After a long and distinguished career in nutrition, in 1992, Joe was appointed to the Chair of Human Nutrition at the University of Surrey where he became Divisional head of Nutritional Sciences. Having now retired from this post, he is Emeritus University Professor at the University of Surrey. He is also currently a visiting Professor to St Georges Medical School, Grenada. Joe has held numerous professional affiliations, served on many high level advisory panels and editorial boards relating to human nutrition.
Kath Dalmeny
Kath Dalmeny is the Policy Director at Sustain, where she works on campaigns and policy advocacy to promote a more healthy, sustainable and equitable food system. Current priority campaigns include Good Food for Our Money - the campaign for mandatory health and sustainability criteria for public sector food; and Sustainable Fish City, promoting adoption of sustainable fish policies in the public and private sectors. Kath's background is in food campaigning and consultancy for organisations such as the Food Commission, National Consumer Council, National Federation of Women’s Institutes and the London Development Agency. She is currenty a member of the Food Advisory Group to the London Organising Committee of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and a member of the London Food Board Executive. Kath also volunteers as a trustee of a London community-run box scheme and farmers' market called Growing Communities which is a low-carbon food distribution enterprise based in Hackney, which in 2010 launched a replication programme to help other communities do the same in their own areas. She has a Masters in Food Policy from the Centre for Food Policy at City University London (formerly Thames Valley University).
Mike Thompson
Mike Thompson is a senior economist at the Committee on Climate Change, the independent advisor to the UK Government established under the Climate Change Act 2008.
Mike leads the secretariat's analytical programme on carbon budgets, pathways to 2050, electricity generation, and agriculture. He has been with the Committee since its foundation in shadow form in 2007.
His main projects on agriculture have developed marginal abatement cost curves for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the sector out to 2020 and examined the opportunities for reducing emissions through changes in diet.
Richard Perkins
Richard Perkins is a Senior Commodities Adviser at WWF, UK.
His expertise lies in research supervision, agricultural supply chains and agri-environment policy analysis. Richard has worked in agriculture and the environment including work on greenhouse gas emissions, and water and the other key impacts of the food sector. He has consulted global businesses to inspire them to improve the impact that they have on the environment.
Tara Garnett
Tara Garnett initated, and runs the Food Climate Research Network at the University of Surrey. Tara has been working on food related issues for nearly 20 years. Her work focuses on the contribution that the food system makes to greenhouse gas emissions and the scope for emissions reduction, looking at the technological options, at what could be achieved by changes in behaviour and how policies could help promote both these approaches. She is particularly interested in the relationship between emissions reduction objectives and other social and ethical concerns, particularly human health, livelihoods, and animal welfare. Much of her focus is on livestock, since this represents a nodal point where many of these issues converge. Some of Tara’s publications can be found here. Tara is keen to collaborate through the FCRN with other organisations to undertake research, organise events and build and extend interdisciplinary, intersectoral knowledge in this field.
Tim Jackson
Tim Jackson is Professor of Sustainable Development at the University of Surrey and Director of the Research group on Lifestyles, Values and Environment (RESOLVE). Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, the aim of RESOLVE is to explore the links between lifestyles, societal values and the environment.
Since 2004 Tim has been Economics Commissioner on the UK Sustainable Development Commission and is the author of their controversial and groundbreaking report, now updated and expanded in the book Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet (Earthscan 2009).
In addition to his academic work he is an award-winning playwright with numerous radio-writing credits for the BBC.
Tim Lang
Tim Lang is the Professor of Food Policy at City University, London.
Tim Lang has been Professor of Food Policy at City University since November 2002. He was Director of the Centre for Food Policy at Thames Valley University from 1994 to 2002, before it moved to City University.
Tim in 2006, was appointed the Natural Resources and Land Use Commissioner on the UK Government’s Sustainable Development Commission. He regularly consults the World Health Organisation at global and European levels.
He has an interest in exploring issues such as food security, food inequalities and the differentiation between food democracy and food control.