The Living Land

The Living Land sets out a new 'stakeholder' vision for rural regeneration in Europe. It integrates three themes: sustainable agriculture, localised food systems and rural community development. All three offer ways of rebuilding natural and social capital, and a large 'sustainability dividend' is waiting to be released from current practices - creating more jobs, more wealth and better lives from less.

Jules Pretty is Director of the Centre for Environment and Society (CES) at the University of Essex. The CES is a transdisciplinary research centre that draws on the expertise of departments and research centres across the University. From 1989 to 1997, he was Director of the Sustainable Agriculture Programme at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). The Programme was engaged in a wide range of collaborative research, policy, training and outreach programmes, mainly in Africa, Asia and Latin America. It was involved in the methodological development of new participatory approaches for community and social development. He is a founding member of the Agricultural Reform Group and the Neighbourhood Think Tank, a trustee for the Farmers World Network and The Pesticides Trust, editorial adviser to various journals, and member of the Institute of Biology and British Agricultural History Society and the Government's Advisory Committee on Release to the Environment (ACRE).