Getting to the root of poor soil health and bringing it back to life

Researchers in our Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences have examined degraded soils of grasslands in Kenya and China to understand the role of soil biodiversity in creating and supporting healthy ecosystems.

We’ve scaled up novel approaches to harness ecological connections between native soil microorganisms (bacteria, fungi, algae) and native plants to accelerate recovery from degraded to healthy soil.

Tools have been developed to provide accessible and practical knowledge for local communities to repair soils and public and policy awareness has been raised of the vital importance of soil biodiversity on a global scale.

IncredibleOceans

At our Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre, we partnered with IncredibleOceans to deliver outreach talks and programmes to raise awareness of how oceans are facing threats from development and overfishing, climate change, pollution, acoustics and more.

We teamed up with scientists, creatives, community organisations, campaigners, companies and broadcast media to maximise the impact of this educational outreach activity.

UK rivers and microplastics

Life below water, in rivers and at sea, is threatened by waste flowing from urban river channels into the oceans.

We’ve been highlighting the effect of microplastics – very small pieces of plastic debris including microbeads, microfibres and plastic fragments – on river systems and marine life through a range of pro-active media coverage, engagement with water companies and input into UK legislation on water management.

The carbon footprint of the music industry

Climate scientists at our Tyndall Centre are partnering with Bristol-based band Massive Attack to jointly examine the carbon footprint of the music industry.

Utilising data from the Massive Attack touring schedule will provide information and guidance to the wider music industry to reduce negative environmental impacts.

GrowGreen project

Our academics are involved in GrowGreen, a five year, EU-wide project that promotes nature-based solutions to climate change.

The project involves a range of citizens, business and public-private partnerships in neighbourhoods and across cities to promote learning, sharing and replicating nature-based solutions and strategies to urban sustainability challenges.

Roots and Branches

Our Manchester Museum has been awarded Arts Council England and National Lottery Project Grant funding for an ambitious two-year partnership project in collaboration with Museum Development North West and the Carbon Literacy Trust. The project will accelerate the museum sector’s ability to respond to the climate crisis.

The Museum will host the ‘roots’: creating a nationally significant co-working hub of cultural environmental action that will bring together museum staff, educators, environmentalists, artists, researchers, third sector organisations and students.

Changing how international policy organisations understand and manage environmental problems

Research by Alliance Manchester Business School has demonstrated how large-scale transitions are needed to deliver significant climate change.

This has transformed how reducing greenhouse gas emissions is understood and addressed by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and has fed directly into policy recommendations made by the European Environment Agency.

Empowering local climate-change action

To enable the UK to deliver significant carbon emissions reductions, the University created the Tyndall Local Carbon Budget Tool, helping cities, regions and organisations to play their part in achieving the global Paris Agreement.

Building on the Setting City Area Targets and Trajectories for Emissions Reduction (SCATTER) project, this foundational research established the importance of embedding carbon budgets – rather than end point targets – in setting carbon reduction targets.

It has been used by 250 UK local authorities, led local policymakers to focus on immediate emissions reductions and shaped global policy as part of the United Nations’ Race to Zero initiative.

Change Points

We worked with colleagues at The University of Sheffield on Change Points to develop new ways of understanding how householders’ routine activities end up demanding resources, including energy, food and water.

A key output was the co-design of a toolkit to support policy makers and other non-academic stakeholders interested in developing nuanced policy processes and business practices around household sustainability.

SCI Festival

Every year, our Sustainable Consumption Institute (SCI) holds the SCI Festival, promoting active discussion and networking among the public, practitioners and policy makers working on the front line of social change towards sustainability.

Cultural institutions

Our four key cultural institutions – the Manchester Museum, the Whitworth, John Rylands Research Institute and Library and Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre – provide access to more than a million visitors each year to engage with buildings, collections, monuments and natural heritage landscapes, advancing how our city and region can be inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.

Ageing-friendly culture

Our Manchester Museum is working with regional and national partners to host a pioneering Creative Ageing Development Agency (CADA) – a national organisation advocating for and supporting the culture sector to be more age friendly.

Towards Inclusive Environmental Sustainability

Our Towards Inclusive Environmental Sustainability research project is engaging with communities of Pakistani and Somali heritage (two of the largest and fastest-growing groups in Manchester) on research to understand how knowledge and practices of migrants from the Global South contribute to building just and sustainable cities in the Global North.

Air quality

Our Policy@Manchester publication On Air Quality explores how air pollution affects public health, economic outcomes and acts to widen existing inequalities.

Some of the recommendations include extending projects such as the Manchester Urban Observatory and citizen science projects like Britain Breathing to provide accurate on-the-ground information about poor air quality, which disproportionally affects already-disadvantaged communities.

We’ve also helped create the Clean Air for Schools Framework, which engages and educates the next generation to help them and their families make cleaner air choices.

Sustainable Cities MOOC

Our academics have contributed to a free massive open online course (MOOC) developed with Lund University, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability.

83,000 students around the world have used this to explore key trends of urbanisation and sustainability and apply this in advancing sustainability in cities around the world.

Reducing inequalities through our cultural institutions

Following the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement, our gallery’s Whitworth Young Contemporaries was motivated to create an Other Utopia zine which connected art, ideas and communities to challenge white narrative of its collections.

Our Museum’s Our Shared Cultural Heritage youth project, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, utilises a range of engaging activities and events to explore and celebrate the shared histories and cultures of the UK and South Asia.

Manchester Urban Villages

We used participatory methods to test a US-style ‘village model’ of neighbourhood-based interventions to support people to age well within their communities.

Cultures of Anti-Racism in Latin America

Our three-year project, Cultures of Anti-Racism in Latin America (CARLA), is funded by AHRC.

It explores how artists in Argentina, Brazil and Colombia address racial diversity in their work, and how they use their art to challenge racism.

Talking Migration

Academics from our Department of Politics have created Talking Migration, a free, publicly accessible podcast filled with discussions, debates and interviews on all aspects of the politics of migration.

Race Archives and Community Engagement

Our University Library hosts the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah RACE Centre – an open access library and outreach facility, based in the city of Manchester’s Central Library.

The Centre specialises in the study of race, migration and diversity, empowering communities with the information and knowledge they need to challenge racism.

Manchester Innovation Labs

Our Manchester Innovation Labs provide a robust, effective means of co-developing research projects with companies to address a business need.

Capacity-building for NGOs, businesses and government

We deliver free activities and resources for the public, private and third sector including vocational training, executive education and continued professional development.

We’ve helped create a pioneering NGO Explorer to build networks, increase transparency and provide potential for commissioning of work with NGOs through a searchable database.

Our annual Prometheus programme offers learning and development opportunities for third-sector leaders to make their organisations grow and be economically sustainable.

Good employment

Our Alliance Manchester Business School has partnered with regional organisations and authorities to create the Greater Manchester Good Employment Charter, which aims to advance decent work and employment standards across our city region.

We have also joined campaigns with Citizens UK to highlight our role as a living wage organisation.

FutureDAMS Approach

As part of our world-leading FutureDAMS programme, we’ve produced a guide (PDF) to propose a series of steps and principles for conducting public, private and community stakeholder engagement in decision-making around water-energy-food-environment (WEFE) interventions.

This is underpinned by the principle that better decisions are generated when a broad range of stakeholders are included in a genuinely participatory manner.

Energy poverty

Our researchers have established a framework to explain how domestic energy deprivation affects households and communities.

Through a prolific programme of European-wide engagement – 100 events, 200 high-level presentations, ten policy briefs, two sets of EU member state energy poverty reports, and three pan-EU energy poverty reports – our research shaped the policy direction of the European Commission’s Vulnerable Consumer Working Group, the body responsible for developing EU energy policy.