The Sustainable Management of UK Marine Resources Programme (SMMR) is a new £12.4m programme funded through UKRI Strategic Priorities Fund. SMMR will be jointly delivered by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) on behalf of UKRI, and in partnership with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and Marine Scotland. The SMMR Champions are Professor David Paterson & Dr Mark James (St Andrews University).
The SMMR programme aims to improve understanding of how to achieve sustainable societal, behavioural and economic benefits through better management of UK marine resources; integrate this into systems based approaches that support the development and analysis of interventions; and use this to inform effective decision making for marine management and policy.
The major SMMR themes are:
- Theme 1: Understanding the different value systems people hold when they connect with the marine environment and how this affects their decision making, in order to inform and direct policy development.
- Theme 2: Development and integration of modelling tools to support coastal and marine natural capital approaches and accounting.
- Theme 3: Development of interventions that support government policy to improve the marine environment for the next generation.
If this sounds of interest, I would encourage you to take a look at the SMMR website and in particular the Announcement of Opportunity document. This funding call has a compulsory Notification of Intent to Submit stage, and the deadline for this is 12.00 on 12 June.
Please get in touch if you would like to discuss the programme, your project ideas or need help finding a project partner or stakeholder. The Champions would be delighted to assist you, and can be contacted at smmruk@st-andrews.ac.uk. Please also feel free to disseminate this information and opportunity around your own networks.