May 2021 – Cabot Institute for the Environment blog

Conference connects Climate Change Education with latest research

Posted on May 28, 2021March 30, 2023 by janet.crompton

The Climate Change Education Research Network (CCERN), a GW4 funded project, hosted the first in a series of online conferences on 20th April 2021. The event saw 300 attendees register from across the education sector and beyond.

The conference kicked off with a video compilation of youth climate activists explaining why they believe the climate emergency should be top of all teachers’ priority list – watch the Youth Voice video here. The inspirational words from the young activists addressed the ‘why’ teachers ought to respond to the climate crisis, the next question was ‘how’. To tackle this from a research-informed perspective, we interviewed Martha Monroe of the University of Florida to establish the theoretical context. Monroe shared findings from a recent review into effective strategies in climate change education. Watch the full interview with Martha Monroe here and read the review here.

The next section of the event was a series of quickfire presentations from a multitude of experienced practitioners sharing best practice from the classroom. We heard valuable contributions from teachers from across the CCERN network – watch them here. Sam Williams of Cotham Garden Primary School spoke about his work embedding a climate change curriculum in the primary school setting. Robert Walker of Fairfield High School offered a secondary school perspective from his role as Global Learning Co-ordinator. John Davidson and Simon Ross of Geography Southwest gave an insightful presentation of some of the common misconceptions around climate change. Celia Tidmarsh (University of Bristol) and Will Roberts (Fairfield High School) spoke about various initiatives on the PGCE course which seek to encourage an interdisciplinary approach to climate change education, including the Green Apple project. The Nature Relations group presented a beautiful series of photos to provoke new perspectives in how we think about our relationships with the natural world. Finally, the Primary focus group presented learnings from success stories from their own classrooms.

A further purpose of the conference was to launch the CCERN School Survey – an innovative approach to researching the current state of climate change education in schools using teachers as researchers to gather data on the ground. Find out more and get involved here.

While meeting on Zoom can never fully replace the connections made at in-person events, the conference certainly gave a feeling of being part of something bigger than oneself. The chat was used to make introductions and share ideas – see the chat text here.

The next CCERN conference will happen towards the end of June. Sign up to our mailing list and follow us on Twitter to stay in the loop. If you want to get more involved please contact us at ed-climate@bristol.ac.uk.

The Climate Change Education Research Network (CCERN) is an initiative of the University of Bristol, University of Bath, Cardiff University and the University of Exeter. We exist to connect academic researchers and educators to address the big questions in Climate Change Education (CCE) together.

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This blog is written by Lauren Hennessy. Lauren is the Research Associate on the Climate Change Education Research Network. She is also a Maths teacher by training and her research interests are youth climate activism and effective strategies for delivering climate change education with a focus on social justice.

Lauren Hennessey

Life in the deep freeze – the revolution that changed our view of glaciers forever

Posted on May 18, 2021March 30, 2023 by janet.crompton

Saiko3p/Shutterstock

I’ve been fascinated by glaciers since I was 14, when geography textbooks taught me about strange rivers of ice that crept down yawning valleys like giant serpents stalking their next meal. That kernel of wonder has carried me through a career of more than 25 years. I’ve travelled to the world’s peaks and its poles to see over 20 glaciers. Yet, when I first started out as a researcher in the early 1990s, we were convinced glaciers were lifeless deserts.

Then in 1999, Professor Martin Sharp and colleagues discovered bacteria living beneath the Haut Glacier d’Arolla in Switzerland. It seemed that glaciers, like the soil or our stomachs, had their own community of microbes, their own microbiome. Since then, we’ve found microorganisms just about everywhere within glaciers, transforming what we thought were sterile wastelands into vibrant ecosystems.

So what’s all that glacier life doing? These life forms may be invisible to the naked eye, but they can control how fast glaciers melt – and may even influence the global climate.

The glacier microbiome

Just like people, glacier microbes modify their homes. When I first saw the melting fringes of Greenland’s vast ice sheet, it looked as if a dust storm had scattered a vast blanket of dirt on the ice. Our team later discovered the dirt included extensive mats of glacier algae. These microscopic plant-like organisms contain pigments to help them harvest the Sun’s rays and protect them from harsh UV radiation. By coating the melting ice surface, they darken it, ensuring the ice absorbs more sunlight which causes more of it to melt. In western Greenland, more than 10% of the summer ice melt is caused by algae.

Bright blue glacier ice on rocky terrain. — The margin of Engabreen glacier, Norway.
Grzegorz Lis, Author provided

Again, just like us, microbes extract things from their environment to survive. The murky depths of glaciers are among the most challenging habitats for life on Earth. Microbes called chemolithotrophs – from the Greek meaning “eaters of rock” – survive here without light and get their energy from breaking down rock, releasing vital nutrients like iron, phosphorous and silicon to the meltwater.

Rivers and icebergs carry these nutrients to the ocean where they sustain the plant-like phytoplankton – the base of marine food webs which ultimately feed entire ecosystems, from microscopic animals, to fish and even whales. Models and satellite observations show a lot of the photosynthesis in the iron-starved Southern Ocean could be sustained by rusty icebergs and meltwaters, which contain iron unlocked by glacier microbes. Recent evidence suggests something similar occurs off west and east Greenland too.

A microscope image depicting chains of brown rectangular cells. — Glacier algae from the Greenland ice sheet.
Chris Williamson, Author provided

But glacier bugs also produce waste, the most worrying of which is the greenhouse gas methane. When ice sheets grow, they bury old soils and sediments, all sources of carbon and the building blocks for earthly life. We think there could be thousands of billions of tonnes of carbon buried beneath ice sheets – potentially more than Arctic permafrost. But who can use it in the oxygen-starved belly of an ice sheet? One type of microbe that flourishes here is the methanogen (meaning “methane maker”), which also thrives in landfill sites and rice paddies.

A waterfall at the edge of a glacier. — Leverett Glacier’s wild river, Greenland.
Jemma Wadham, Author provided

Some methane produced by methanogens escapes in meltwaters flowing from the ice sheet edges. The clever thing about microbial communities, though, is that one microbe’s waste is another’s food. We humans could learn a lot from them about recycling. Some methane beneath glaciers is consumed by bacteria called methanotrophs (methane eaters) which generate energy by converting it to carbon dioxide. They have been detected in Greenlandic glaciers, but most notably in Lake Whillans beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Here, bacteria have years to chomp on the gas, and almost all of the methane produced in the lake is eaten – a good thing for the climate, since carbon dioxide is 80 times less potent as a greenhouse gas when measured over two decades.

We’re not sure this happens everywhere though. Fast-flowing rivers emerging from the Greenland Ice Sheet are super-saturated with microbial methane because there just isn’t enough time for the methanotrophs to get to work. Will melting glaciers release stored methane faster than these bacteria can convert it?

Within the thick interior of ice sheets, scientists worry that there may be vast reserves of methane. The cold and high pressure here mean that it may be trapped in its solid form, methane hydrate (or clathrate), which is stable unless the ice retreats and thins. It happened before and it could happen again.

Waking the sleeping giant

Despite the climate crisis, when I spend time around glaciers I’m not surprised by their continuing vitality. As I amble up to the gently sloping snout of a glacier – traversing its rubbly lunar-like fore-fields – I often feel like I’m approaching the hulk of an enormous creature. Sleeping or seemingly dormant, the evidence of its last meal is clear from the mass of tawny-coloured rocks, pebbles and boulders strewn around its edges – a tantalising record of where it once rested when the climate was cooler.

As I get closer, I catch the sound of the glacier’s roaring chocolate meltwaters as they explode through an ice cave, punctuated by a cascade of bangs and booms as moving ice collapses into hollow melt channels below. The winds off the ice play ominously in my ears, like the whisper of the beast, a warning: “You’re on my land now.”

The author inside a giant icy chasm within a glacier. — Exploring a frozen melt channel of the Finsterwalderbeeen glacier in Svalbard.
Jon Ove Hagen, Author provided

This sense of aliveness with glaciers changes everything. Resident microbes connect these hulking frozen masses with the Earth’s carbon cycle, ecosystems and climate. How will these connections change if we take away the frigid homes of our tiny glacier dwellers? These creatures may be microscopic, but the effects of their industry span entire continents and oceans.

After a period of uncertainty in my own life, which involved the removal of a satsuma-sized growth in my brain, I felt compelled to tell the story of glaciers to a wider audience. My book, Ice Rivers, is the result. I hope the memoir raises awareness of the dramatic changes that threaten glaciers – unless we act now.

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute for the Environment Director Jemma Wadham, Professor of Glaciology, University of Bristol.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Professor Jemma Wadham

Indian farmers’ strike continues in the shadow of COVID-19

Posted on May 10, 2021April 4, 2023 by janet.crompton

In what is believed to be the biggest protest in history, in late November 2020 farmers from across India drove 200,000 trolleys and tractors towards Delhi’s borders in a mass protest against agricultural reforms. This was followed a few days later by a general strike involving 250 million people in both urban and rural areas of India as workers joined together to support the farmers.

The strike continues, despite the global public health crisis, which is hitting India harder than any other country in the world. Fear of COVID-19 has not deterred farmers, who have emphatically stated that regardless of whether they contract the virus, the “black laws” will kill them anyway.

The movement first began in the state of Punjab in June 2020, as farmers blocked freight railway lines in protest against these “black laws”, which increase corporate control over all aspects of the food chain from seed to sale. Farmers unions argue that the laws undermine state-controlled prices of key crops, by allowing sales outside of state mandis (markets).

The laws also enable corporations to control what contract farmers grow and how, thus reducing the bargaining power of small farmers. Corporations will be allowed to stockpile key produce and hence speculate with food, which was previously illegal. Finally, the laws provide legal immunity to corporations operating in “good faith”, thereby voiding the ability of citizens to hold agribusiness to account.

Braving tear gas and water cannons, thousands of farmers and their families descended on Delhi and transformed its busy roads into bustling camp cities, with communal “langhar” kitchens.

Undeterred by police violence, farmers fed these aggressors who beat them by day with free food by night. This act of community service not only underscored the peaceful intentions of the protests but also encapsulated one of the key ideas of the movement: “no farmers, no food”.

In the same spirit of solidarity, farmers at Delhi’s borders are responding to the rapidly escalating spread of COVID-19 in the city. They are distributing food packages and essential goods to hospitals, as well as in bus and railway stations for those leaving the capital.

Striking farmers have been supplying food to hospitals and other people in need during the COVID-19 emergency in India. Credit: EPA-EFE/STR. Source.

Farmers from numerous states, of all castes and religions, are coexisting and growing the protest movement from the soil upwards – literally, turning trenches into vegetable gardens. Many farmers refer to this movement as “andolan” – a revolution – where alliances are being forged between landless farm labourers and smallholder farmers. In a country deeply divided by caste and – increasingly – religion, this coming together around land, soil and food has powerful potential.

Women have also taken leading roles, as they push for recognition as farmers in their own right. They are exploring the intersections of caste oppression, gendered labour and sexual violence in person and in publications such as Karti Dharti – a women-led magazine sharing stories and voices from the movement.

Violent response

Despite the largely peaceful protests, farmers have been met with state repression and violence. At various points water supplies have been cut to the protest sites and internet services blocked. Undeterred, farmers have prepared the camp sites for the scorching summer heat that now envelops them.

Amnesty international has called on the Indian government to “stop escalating crackdown on protesters, farm leaders and journalists”. Eight media workers have been charged with sedition, while 100 people protesters have disappeared. In response, parliaments around the world have issued statements and debates on the right to peaceful protest in India, as well as a free and open press.

Women have been key players in the Indian farmers’ strike. EPA-EFE/Harish Tyagi. Source.

The heavy-handed government response and intransigence to the key demands of the movement adds grave doubt for farmers who are now being asked to disband protest sites in the interest of public health. It highlights the hypocrisy of being told to go home, while the ruling BJP was holding mass rallies in West Bengal.

The fear is that COVID-19 could derail the momentum of this movement, as with the protests around the Citizen Amendment Act, which were cleared in March 2020 due to enforced lockdown to curb the spread of COVID-19. Farmers repeat that they will leave as soon as the government repeals the laws and protects the minimum support price of key crops.

There has been a groundswell of support from around the globe, from peasant movements, the Indian diaspora community and celebrities – including Rihanna and climate activist Greta Thunberg. This movement is fighting for the principles of democracy on which the Indian state was founded and is part of a civil society movement filling in for the state, which has been found sorely wanting in its response to the calamitous consequences of COVID-19.

The “black laws” are but the latest in a long history of struggle faced by Indian farmers. India’s sprawling fields have been sites of “green revolution” experimentation since the 1960s. This has worsened water scarcity, reduced crop genetic diversity, damaged biodiversity, eroded and depleted soils, all of which has reduced soil fertility.

The financial burden of costly inputs and failing crops has fallen on farmers, leading to spiralling debts and farmer suicides. The impacts of climate change and ecologically destructive farming are primary reasons for this financial duress. However, the movement has yet to deeply address the challenges of transitioning towards socioeconomically just, climate-friendly agriculture.

Peasant movements around the world highlight the importance of collective spaces and knowledge-sharing between small farmers. The campsites in Delhi provide a unique opportunity to link socioeconomic farming struggles to their deep ecological roots. These are indeed difficult discussions, but the kisaan (farmer) movement has provided spaces to challenge caste, religious and gender-based oppression.

The movement’s strength is its broad alliances and solidarity, but it remains unclear whether it will link palpable socioeconomic injustices to environmental injustices and rights. The ecological origins of COVID-19 make these connections ever more pressing the world over.

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This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Dr Jaskiran Kaur Chohan, at the University of Bristol Vet School. Jaskiran is a political ecologist with an interdisciplinary background in the Social Sciences.

Dr Jaskiran Kaur Chohan