The University Scholars Leadership Symposium is an annual event organised by Humanitarian Affairs Asia, dedicated to empowering and inspiring young leaders to develop innovative solutions for pressing global challenges. In 2024, the 12th edition of the event took place at the United Nations Conference Centre in Bangkok, Thailand, from August 6th to 9th. The symposium brought together 500 delegates from 47 countries, and I was honoured to be among them. As a Master’s student in Global Environmental Challenges at the Cabot Institute, I am deeply grateful to the institute for introducing me to this opportunity and enabling me to participate in such an enriching experience.
Attending this prestigious event was both immersive and inspiring. It was a week filled with discussions on global issues and how we, as emerging leaders, can contribute to advancing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Each day offered opportunities to attend talks on a wide range of topics, including water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), digital inclusion, female genital mutilation (FGM), elephant conservation, and refugee crises.
What made many of the talks particularly compelling were the speakers themselves—individuals actively working to make positive changes in communities around the world. Their stories, often rooted in personal experiences, were powerful and motivating.
One talk that stood out to me was by Shomy Hasan, a young woman from Bangladesh. After losing her mother to diarrhoea, she became a passionate advocate for WASH issues. “I find it unacceptable that people die from a preventable disease,” she said. Shomy went on to co-found Awareness 360, a non-profit organisation dedicated to empowering young individuals to lead community service projects aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Another inspiring story was shared by Sangduen Lek, who overcame significant obstacles in her remote Thai village to protect maltreated elephants by founding the Save Elephant Foundation. Her perseverance highlights the impact one determined individual can have on wildlife conservation. Similarly, Jack Growden’s story stood out—after donating his laptop to a school, he now leads a digital equity charity that has transformed the lives of over 200,000 students across Asia-Pacific and Australia by providing repurposed computers to schools.
The symposium also included an informative session on the global refugee crisis, delivered by Dunya Khan from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. This talk deepened my understanding of the complex reasons that force people to flee their countries, highlighting the importance of combating prejudice against migrants and refugees.
Inspiring and authentic, Ifrah Ahmed is a survivor of female genital mutilation (FGM) in Somalia, and her story even inspired a movie. In her fight against FGM, she emphasised the importance of understanding the cultural context when engaging with communities. Her message was clear: effective communication and partnerships must be built on respect, humility, and honesty.
The breaks between talks offered valuable opportunities to exchange ideas and network with other delegates. It was very interesting to meet students from every continent, each bringing diverse academic backgrounds and perspectives. While some expressed concerns about lacking direct experience in certain areas, I believe every field of study has a role in driving positive change. The diverse skills and knowledge we contribute can help create a more just and sustainable world.
A highlight of the symposium for me was our visit to a refugee camp and school in a community near the border with Myanmar. The refugees we met were Karen people from Myanmar, a country currently embroiled in civil conflict. Interacting with the children, learning about their culture, and playing with them was heartwarming and eye-opening. As an environmental engineer, I was particularly struck by the severe water and sanitation challenges faced by the community—no access to safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation, and poor waste management, all exacerbated by precarious housing conditions. Despite the language barrier, we found ways to communicate and connect, and I was reminded of the striking similarities between this refugee camp and rural communities in Brazil. The struggles may be similar, but so too are the generosity and hospitality of the people.
These are the very issues I study, and seeing them firsthand in the refugee camp reinforced the importance of my work. In settings like these, both children and adults are at heightened risk of diseases due to the lack of basic services. This experience has deepened my commitment to improving the living conditions in deprived communities and inspired me to continue my research on environmental engineering controls to prevent leptospirosis in Brazilian slums. Witnessing how inadequate WASH services directly impact health underscores the urgency of my work, and motivates me to find solutions that can make a tangible difference in similar communities around the world.
This incredible experience reinforced several lessons for me. Even if it sounds cliché, there is hope, and together, we can create a better world. It will never be a cliché until we achieve a society characterised by justice, environmental sustainability, and social and gender equality.
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This blog was written by Ana Maria Silva, an MScR student on the Cabot Institute’s MScR in Global Environmental Challenges. Ana Maria’s research is on leptospirosis transmission in slums in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, developing and evaluating a tool to understand the impact of environmental engineering infrastructure. Ana Maria is supervised by Professor Guy Howard and Dr Rodolfo Bezerra Nobrega.
Pursuing a PhD is a journey mostly about academic brain shaping, building your academic argument through literature, and finding your unique contribution to the research community. Believe me, that is amazing! However, doctoral students are often overshadowed by achieving daily tasks, scrutinizing data and information, building intellectual narratives, and most times forgetting why they started pursuing the PhD in the first place.
What is often overlooked, but is profoundly important, are the opportunities given to postgraduate research students outside their research spaces that link to their passions and personal abilities to positively contribute to change. We have different stories, experiences, and backgrounds but nothing compares to sitting in a room with fellow young people with a shared goal of being change-makers, while listening and speaking to people who have taken the steps towards that direction. As a Ugandan girl, who at 20 years old had a justified reason to leave school for good but is now a PhD student, I found myself in a room as a delegate representing the University of Bristol at the 12th University Scholar’s Leadership Symposium held at the United Nations Conference Centre in Bangkok, Thailand! What are the odds?!
It was a remarkable opportunity to watch keynote speakers from different career paths share their life experiences, lessons, ambitions, challenges, and the odds they had to defy to be part of the spinning wheel of global change. From one amazing woman, Ifra Ahmed, founder of Ifra Foundation sharing her story of protecting women’s sexuality in our African communities, running for asylum in a foreign country to Prof Peter Mathieson, Principal and Vice-Chancellor at the University of Edinburgh emphasizing the need for: compassionate leadership, team building, learning from past mistakes as a leader, seeking advice from people who have walked the journey, leveraging on our networks, and looking for opportunities to be part of the voices of change.
As David James Begbie, Founder of Crossroads Foundation said, “The hardest job for a person willing to make change is not to attain education or expertise in a specific field or lobby for money to drive the process but rather to change people’s hearts to make them care, have compassion and empathy to commit to a mission of making this world a better place.”
It was clear to me that being a change-maker is about one’s willingness to offer their knowledge, skills, creativity, time, and uniqueness to the world and the places that need it the most. Humanity, compassion, and empathy are far more affordable than education and it takes one commitment for a person to have them.
Watching prestigious and influential people in different capacities talk about their journeys to enact change made me realize that nothing is impossible if we explore new ideas. As a current leader, this opportunity showed me ways in which I can be more compassionate and empathetic towards people I work with and those I am privileged to lead. I realized the importance of listening and appreciating different experiences through people’s voices and ideas. Transformational leadership can start with a small circle and a small cause to create change.
As someone from a background of hopelessness, once on the verge of giving up on the pursuit of my ambition and now a first-generation student in a foreign country I never imagined to be in, this opportunity affirmed the possibility of me pushing boundaries and becoming the beacon of hope to all the girls and women in my home country and community. I believe that rich or poor, famous or unknown, sophisticated or not, we all have a time marker on earth, and we ought to make the most of it. I will start by changing one life at a time.
I extend my profound gratitude to the Cabot Institute for Environment for granting me the opportunity to represent the University of Bristol at the 12th University Scholars Leadership Symposium.
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This blog was written by Ritah Pavin Nakanjako, a PhD student in the Climate Change and Health research group. Ritah’s PhD research is on the effectiveness of passive heat adaptation strategies in low-income housing communities in South Africa and Ghana. Ritah is supervised by Professor Guy Howard and Dr Eunice Lo.
For centuries, people have claimed that their aching joints can predict changes in the weather, often reporting increased discomfort before rain or cold fronts. Given the scale and duration, there is a sense of legitimacy to these anecdotes – but this phenomenon remains scientifically contentious.
From shifts in barometric pressure to temperature fluctuations, many theories attempt to explain how environmental factors might influence joint pain. But is there an anatomical basis for this claim, or is it simply an enduring weather-related myth? Are our joints any more reliable than the Met Office?
At the heart of this debate lies barometric pressure, also known as atmospheric pressure – the force exerted by air molecules in the Earth’s atmosphere. While invisible, air has mass, and the “weight” pressing down on us fluctuates with altitude and weather systems.
Higher barometric pressure often signals fair-weather conditions with clear skies and calm winds, whereas lower pressure typically precedes unsettled weather, such as cloudy skies, precipitation and humidity.
Moveable joints are intricate structures cushioned by synovial fluid, the viscous liquid that lubricates joints, and encased in capsules rich in nerve endings. In healthy joints, these components should allow smooth, pain-free movement. However, when joints are compromised by cartilage damage (as in osteoarthritis) or inflammation (as in rheumatoid arthritis), even subtle changes in the environment may be acutely felt.
One leading hypothesis suggests that changes in barometric pressure may directly influence joint discomfort. When atmospheric pressure drops ahead of storms, it can allow inflamed tissues within joints to expand slightly, increasing stress on surrounding nerves and amplifying pain. Conversely, rapid increases in pressure, characteristic of fair-weather systems, may compress already sensitive tissues, leading to discomfort in some people.
Scientific studies offer some support for these claims, though results remain mixed. For instance, a 2007 study published in the American Journal of Medicine found a slight but significant correlation between dropping barometric pressure and increased knee pain in osteoarthritis patients. However, this pattern is not universally observed across all joint conditions.
A 2011 systematic review in Arthritis Research & Therapy examined the relationship between weather and pain in rheumatoid arthritis patients. It revealed highly variable responses: while some people reported increased pain under low-pressure conditions, others noted no change. A few even experienced discomfort during high-pressure fronts.
More recently, a [2019 citizen-science project] called Cloudy with a chance of pain used app-based pain tracking to explore this connection. The study found a modest association between falling pressure and heightened joint pain, but it also highlighted substantial individual differences in how people perceive weather-related pain.
These findings suggest that while changes in barometric pressure may influence joint pain for some, responses are far from uniform and depend on a complex interplay of factors, including the individual’s underlying joint condition and overall pain sensitivity.
Why responses differ
Barometric pressure rarely acts in isolation. Fluctuations in temperature and humidity often accompany pressure changes, complicating the picture.
Cold weather can have a pronounced effect on joints, particularly in people with existing joint conditions. Low temperatures cause muscles to contract and become stiffer, which can lead to reduced flexibility and a greater risk of strain or discomfort.
Ligaments, which connect bones to one another, and tendons, which anchor muscles to bones, may also lose some of their elasticity in colder conditions. This decreased pliability can make joint movement feel more restricted and exacerbate pain in conditions like arthritis.
Cold weather can also cause blood vessels to narrow — particularly in the extremities, as the body prioritises maintaining core temperature. This reduced blood flow can deprive affected areas of essential oxygen and nutrients, slowing the removal of metabolic waste products like lactic acid, which may accumulate in tissues and exacerbate inflammation and discomfort.
For people with inflammatory conditions, the reduced circulation can aggravate swelling and stiffness, especially in small joints like those in the fingers and toes.
Cold also slows the activity of synovial fluid. In lower temperatures, the fluid becomes less effective at reducing friction, which can heighten joint stiffness and make motion more painful, particularly for people with degenerative conditions such as osteoarthritis.
Sudden temperature changes may also play a role. Rapid shifts can challenge the body’s ability to adapt, which might worsen pain in people with chronic conditions. Similarly, high humidity can intensify sensations of heat or dampness in already inflamed areas, further complicating the experience of pain.
However, isolating a single variable – whether humidity, temperature or pressure –proves difficult because of the interplay of overlapping factors.
Responses to weather also depend on individual factors, including the extent of joint damage, overall pain sensitivity and psychological expectations. This variability makes it difficult to link a single meteorological factor to a biological response.
Still, the evidence suggests that people with joint conditions tend to be more attuned to environmental changes, particularly pressure fluctuations.
While the relationship between weather and joint pain remains an imperfect science, the collective evidence indicates that there may be some truth to the age-old belief. For those with chronic joint conditions, shifts in barometric pressure and accompanying weather changes might indeed serve as nature’s warning system – albeit one that’s far from foolproof.
Although exploring the synergies between these three COPs is of great importance and their close temporal proximity this year facilitates such discussion, I will focus solely on the CBD COP 16 as I had the opportunity to attend it in person as a University of Bristol academic observer.
CBD COP 16, held in Cali, Colombia started on the 21st of October and was due to end on the 1st of November. Negotiations overrun until the morning of the 2nd of November but they were suspended as the quorum was lost, leaving discussions on some key issues such as the strategy for resource mobilization to be resumed at a later date.
As biodiversity COPs are held biannually, COP 16 was the first COP since the adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) at COP 15 in 2022. No one was expecting the negotiation of another major agreement at COP 16, with the key issue being the implementation of the GBF framework.
An introduction to the GBF
Differently from the Paris Agreement under the UNFCCC, the GBF is not legally binding. Nevertheless, given that the boundary between binding and non-binding instruments in international environmental law is not always so clear-cut, the GBF has a central role in directing biodiversity law and policy. The GBF is a largely aspirational goal and target-oriented instrument. It contains four Goals to ‘live in harmony with nature’ by 2050 and 23 global Targets for 2030, split into three categories, namely ‘reducing threats to biodiversity’, ‘meeting people’s needs through sustainable use and benefit-sharing’ and ‘tools and solutions for implementation and mainstreaming’. The Targets have different degrees of ‘quantifiability’, impacting also on Parties’ strategies and methodologies of implementation.
For example, the well- known ‘30 by 30’ target (Target 3) sets the threshold of 30% of the coverage of protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) in terrestrial and inland water areas as well as marine and coastal areas to be reached by 2030. In contrast, Target 5, which still falls within the first category of ‘reducing threats to biodiversity’, is framed using a more general language: ‘ensure that the use, harvesting and trade of wild species is sustainable, safe and legal, preventing overexploitation, minimizing impacts on non-target species and ecosystems, and reducing the risk of pathogen spillover, applying the ecosystem approach, while respecting and protecting customary sustainable use by indigenous peoples and local communities.’
There are not only differences between Targets but the wordings of individual Targets themselves is sometimes contradictory, making for complex implementation as conflicting directions are suggested. For example, Target 19 pushes for the marketisation of nature, encouraging the private sector to invest in biodiversity and employing uncritically the language of green bonds and payments for ecosystem services, whilst, at the same, promoting the role of ‘Mother Earth centric action and non-market approaches’. Even if not all targets are rife with internal contradictions, other internal differences may exist, with some objectives expressed in a qualitative rather than a quantitative manner or by reference to concepts that lack unified legal definitions. This makes it more difficult to devise specific indicators, with the consequence that Parties will likely concentrate on the objectives requiring easier interpretative skills. For example, going back to the ‘30 by 30’ Target 3, the quantitative component is followed by references to ‘equitably governed systems’, which could mean very different things to different regulatory actors and there is still much work to be done on the identification of OECMs.
It should be recalled that this is not the first time the CBD employs the language of Targets and Goals. Notably, the CBD Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 included the Aichi Biodiversity Targets structured around 5 strategic goals, though most were not achieved and few partially achieved, as reported in the Global Biodiversity Outlook 5. COP 16’s focus on implementation was therefore crucial to avoid historical failures repeating themselves in 2030.
The spaces and voices of COP 16
COPs are notoriously busy and chaotic events. COP 16 of the CBD did indeed feel busy, with many side events happening simultaneously and in parallel to the formal negotiations of the two Working Groups and plenaries, as well as press conferences and Pavilion events. It was also the largest-ever CBD COP with some 23,000 registered delegates. Yet, the Conference Centre that hosted COP 16 in Cali was very capacious and the horizontal disposition of the spaces facilitated inter-ethnic, inter-generational, inter-disciplinary and of course inter-jurisdictional discussions under a Colombian sky often veiled by clouds.
It was a pleasant surprise to witness the high representation of youth, as well as indigenous peoples and local communities advocating for their rights and the rights of nature, though one may wonder if this was primarily due to the fact that COP 16 was organised in South America where the question of who is indigenous and who is not is not as contested as in other continents (such as Africa) and where youth environmental activism is thriving.
Side events also saw the participation of a plurality of voices, hosting delegates from a myriad of Inter-governmental organisations (IGOs) and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), as well as researchers, Secretariat members and sometimes Parties. Thus, cross-fertilisation of ideas dominated the Conference with the hope that points made in side events by activists, academics, and others could filter through Parties to the negotiation tables. Indeed, many times in side events speakers addressed the audience as if it were an audience entirely made up by Parties’ delegates (seldom the case in practice), encouraging it to report back to the contact groups, which are closed working groups attended by Parties discussing draft texts of decisions.
Human rights as a framing device for different world-makings
The language of human rights pervaded the whole COP 16. This is a recent turn for the CBD, considering that the CBD itself and its instruments pre-GBF do not explicitly refer to human rights. In contrast, the GBF lists among the considerations for the implementation of the Framework a ‘human rights-based approach’. Section C 7(g) states in full that ‘the implementation of the Framework should follow a human rights-based approach, respecting, protecting, promoting and fulfilling human rights. The Framework acknowledges the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment’. There are a few other references to human rights language scattered in the text. For example, in Target 22, reference is made to the ‘full protection of environmental human rights defenders’. The GBF’s explicit inclusion of human rights language and also the acknowledgement of a substantive human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment—which cross references the UN General Assembly Resolution of 28 July 2022—has solidified the link between human rights and biodiversity protection. Thus, it is not surprising that delegates at COP 16 used human rights language extensively.
In this context, it was interesting to observe that different groups internalised and strategically deployed human rights language to advance different, sometimes, but not always complementary, world-makings. Youth representatives referred to human rights as a tool for achieving inter-generational equity in biodiversity conservation; many indigenous peoples’ representatives employed human rights language to advance substantive claims such as rights to land and resources as well as procedural ones such as participatory rights in conservation decision-making; women representatives employed human rights language to address gender inequalities in conservation; some UN representatives strongly supported a human rights-based approach to area-based conservation as a means to avoid the tragedies brought about by ‘fortress conservation’; others used human rights language to reiterate key objectives of existing international law instruments.
The concept of human rights returned over and over in COP discussions intersecting with other reflections that unwrap the many lines around which biodiversity is framed and practiced by different communities and actors.
Outcomes and beyond
As mentioned above, COP 16 was suspended leaving for a later date, decisions on some critical issues, such as finance mechanisms and monitoring mechanism to measure Parties’ progress in achieving GBF Targets and Goals. Considering the slow implementation of the GBF- only 44 Parties have submitted revised National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs), which are the main national implementation tools under Article 6 of the CBD- it is disappointing that decisions on budget and monitoring mechanisms have been left pending. However, there were also many achievements at COP 16, including:
the launch of the ‘Cali fund’ to operationalise the sharing of benefits from uses of digital sequence information (DSI);
a number of sectoral decisions, including one on the mechanism for identifying ecologically or biologically significant marine areas (EBSAs), which had been the subject of legal and political discussion for eight years.
The decisions related to Article 8(j) stand out considering the central role indigenous peoples and local communities play in the protection of biodiversity and the importance of including different epistemologies in biodiversity decision-making. During COP itself, there were arguments in favour and against the creation of such subsidiary body. Concerns revolved around questions such as ‘Why fixating on only one article of the CBD? Why a subsidiary body on this specific article and not others?’, ‘Would the subsidiary body silo indigenous peoples and local communities concerns?’, ‘Should indigenous peoples and local communities still be clustered together?’ Many counter-arguments were raised promoting the establishment of the subsidiary body as a way to legitimise and render more visible indigenous peoples and local communities’ practices turning these actors as policy makers instead of policy takers included in NBSAPs. The new subsidiary body’s modus operandi will be developed over the next two years, and it will be interesting to follow such development.
Outcomes are important, and in a goal and target-oriented environmental law world such as the one the CBD governance infrastructure presents, it is natural and logical to focus on what is achieved and what is not. However, the success of COP 16, like all COPs, should not solely be determined by its outcomes. It is essential to remember the spaces and the conversations that unfolded in between, the sharing of knowledge by a global community coming together for a few days from very different paths of life and with different agendas, a multitude unified by the shared concern of biodiversity loss, which continues at unprecedented rates and deserves everyone attention in COPs and beyond.
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This blog is written by Cabot Institute for the Environment member, Professor Margherita Pieraccini, Professor of Law at the University of Bristol Law School.
Every autumn, the UN holds its international climate summit or “Cop” (Conference of the Parties). Between each Cop, a smaller, lower-profile gathering takes place. Called the SB – short for “subsidary bodies” of the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – these smaller meetings matter but don’t draw as much public attention.
The SB meetings are a world apart from Cops. Held in the same small venue in the German city of Bonn every year, the latest, SB60, had 8,606 participants whereas last year’s Cop28 in Dubai had around 100,000. Observers make up about half of the SB participants, and the atmosphere is less about being there to show you care and more focused on the matter at hand – global negotiations.
In contrast to Cops, there are no pavilions and exhibition spaces. The focus is on negotiations and side events. In June 2024, our team of climate law and policy experts from the Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol attended SB60 as observers. We prioritised going to Bonn instead of the upcoming Cop29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, because SBs offer a chance to see negotiations in flux.
In Bonn, there’s more chance to speak directly to negotiators including diplomats, heads of state, and UNFCCC staff (who are less pressed for time) – and to have an influence on policy outcomes (because positions are not yet as cemented as they are at Cops).
SB60 revealed some important sticking points and challenges for delegates going to Cop29 in Baku, which starts on November 11. The negotiations proved to be particularly difficult in three key areas.
1. A stalled transition
The first is “just transition” – the idea of making society fairer for everyone as we respond to climate change. Negotiations collapsed before the end of SB60 due to disagreements on scope, timelines and implementation planning.
The term just transition was only defined and planned for at a global governance level for the first time at last year’s Cop28. There was a real push and pull between developing and developed countries when it came to setting out the aims and scope of this plan.
Developed countries, including Norway, the US and the EU, pushed to focus on jobs and technology. Developing countries, including the UN’s coalition of 77 developing countries known as the G-77, China, small island developing states, and 54 states of the UN’s Africa Group, wanted costs to be shared fairly in a way that recognises existing inequalities between countries, and with compensation for past harms.
There was a sense that developing countries wanted to see broader system changes within the UNFCCC. One of us (Alix Dietzel) noted down how the G-77 plus China stressed that getting just transition right was “key for the future of the Cops and the regime of the UNFCCC”.
Eventually, the developed countries’ version won out at Cop28. But at SB60, it became clear there were still deep disagreements over what a just transition means and how this will play out. Negotiations over how to achieve the targets for a just transition collapsed when states could not agree whether to include wider discussions of systemic inequality and new finance goals, and whether the UNFCCC’s five-yearly global stocktake required a scaling up of ambition.
The outcome document produced on the final day of SB60 stated that parties met and negotiated – but frustratingly, did not capture any views that can be used as a basis for further negotiations.
Co-authors Alice Venn and Alix Dietzel at SB60. Alix Dietzel, CC BY-NC-ND
2. Responding to climate loss and damage
There is increasing urgency to deliver meaningful support to developing countries experiencing the worst economic and non-economic losses from climate impacts. These range from extreme weather and sea level rise to damage to ecosystems and communities. A key priority is funding to support the recovery and preparedness of the most at-risk countries and communities.
A new loss and damage fund, currently hosted by the World Bank, was established at Cop28. So far, it has received more than US$702 million (£540 million) in pledges. At SB60, the debate focused on how best to urgently scale up this funding and make it more easily available to the communities most in need of it.
Many countries and observers called for a more inclusive approach based on human rights, and stressed the need for technical support in less developed countries.
3. Finance is key
Cop29 is all about money. Billed as “the finance Cop”, leaders in Baku must agree on a new climate finance goal. Known as the “new collective quantified goal” (NCQG), this aims to support developing countries with climate action. Industrialised nations have only met the current annual target of US$100 billion once, in 2022. SB60 was meant to lay the groundwork for a finance deal at Cop29. The outcome in Bonn, however, was disappointing.
We observed that developing countries felt frustrated at the dithering of developed nations over who should pay and how much. The Colombian government, for example, is committed to decarbonisation, but in Bonn expressed dismay at the lack of concessionary climate finance to support this process.
Developing countries seemed angry that finance flows prioritise private infrastructure investment over key sectors that are considered non-profitable, such as education, health, coastal flooding defences or landslide prevention. This makes climate adaptation harder, especially in the context of high debt burdens.
The road to Baku
The intimate setting of the SB negotiation space might look like it could deliver better climate outcomes compared to huge Cops. Negotiators at Cop28 were crowded out by lobbyists and industry representatives. In Bonn this year, smaller numbers meant delegates could more easily meet for informal huddles outside the negotiation rooms.
Finance negotiations will be centre stage at Cop29. Alix Dietzel, CC BY-NC-ND
At the Cop climate summits, observers like us normally don’t have a significant voice. But at SB60, interactive workshops and contact groups gave observers opportunities to speak. We held a side event with the global mayors network, C40 Cities, and Earthshot prize winners, the environmental and youth empowerment group Green Africa Youth Organization. Discussions focused on how to make urban climate policy more inclusive, and we later introduced ourselves to the UK negotiation team.
Contributions from civil society observers were recorded by the UNFCCC and incorporated into official SB reports on finance and loss and damage. Nevertheless, big decisions on just transition, loss and damage, and climate finance are constrained by competing geopolitical and economic interests, regardless of the size of the negotiating space.
SB60 set the scene for two weeks of fractious negotiations in Baku. Climate change-induced extreme weather events and changing weather patterns are accelerating. Key climate tipping points could be breached soon.
Developing countries will require trillions of dollars a year to adapt to and mitigate these extreme scenarios. Based on what we experienced in Bonn, a finance deal at Baku that delivers climate action for developing countries seems a long way off.
Around 252 million years ago, the world suddenly heated up. Over a geologically brief period of tens of thousands of years, 90% of species were wiped out. Even insects, which are rarely touched by such events, suffered catastrophic losses. The Permian-Triassic mass extinction, as it’s known, was the greatest of the “big five” mass extinctions in Earth’s history.
Scientists have generally blamed the mass extinction on greenhouse gases released from a vast network of volcanoes which covered much of modern day Siberia in lava. But the volcanic explanation was incomplete. In our new study, we show that an enormous El Niño weather pattern in the world’s major ocean added to climate chaos and led to extinctions spreading across the globe.
It’s easy to see why volcanoes were blamed. The onset of extinction coincides almost perfectly with the beginning of the second phase of volcanism in the region known as the Siberian Traps. This led to acid rain, oceans losing their oxygen and, most notably, temperatures beyond the tolerance levels of almost all organisms. It was the greatest episode of global warming in the past 500 million years.
The world 252 million years ago
Alex Farnsworth
However, there were outstanding questions for proponents of this seemingly simple extinction scenario: when the tropics became too hot, why did species not just migrate to cooler, higher latitudes (as is happening today)? If warming was sudden and rapid, why did species on land die off tens of thousands of years before those in the sea?
There have also been many instances of volcanic eruptions of similar scale, and even other episodes of rapid warming, but why did none of these cause a similarly catastrophic mass extinction?
Our new study reveals that the oceans rapidly heated up all across the world’s low and mid latitudes. Normally, it gets cooler as you move away from the tropics, but not this time. It simply became too hot for life in too many places.
A world prone to extremes
Using a state-of-the-art computer program, we were able to simulate what the weather and climate was like 252 million years ago. We found that, even before the rapid warming, the world would have been prone to extremes of temperature and rainfall.
That’s a consequence of all the land at the time forming into one large supercontinent, Pangaea. This meant that the climates we see today at the centre of continents – dry, with hot summers and freezing winters – were magnified.
Pangaea was surrounded by a vast ocean, Panthalassa, the surface of which would fluctuate between warm and cool periods over the years, much like the El Niño phenomenon in the Pacific today. Yet once the mass Siberian volcanism started and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased, those prehistoric El Niños became more intense and lasted longer thanks to the larger Panthalassa ocean being able to store more heat.
An El Niño far stronger than anything today
Change in sea surface temperature (SST) compared to the long-term average. El Niño conditions are red, La Niña (or its prehistoric equivalent) is blue. Left = modern day pre-industrial Pacific Ocean. Centre = 252 million years ago, before the Siberian Traps volcanism. Right = at the peak of the mass extinction. Alex Farnsworth
These El Niños had a profound impact on life on land, and kicked off a sequence of events that made the climate more and more extreme. Temperatures got hotter, especially in the tropics, and huge droughts and fires caused tropical forests to die off.
This in turn was bad news for the climate, as less carbon was stored by trees, allowing more to linger in the atmosphere, leading to further warming, and even stronger and longer El Niños.
252 million years ago, pre crisis:
Before the Siberian Traps volcanism 252 million years ago, the world was slightly hotter than today. (Animation shows average monthly temperatures according to the authors’ climate model). Alex Farnsworth
These stronger El Niños caused the extreme temperatures and droughts to push outside of the tropics towards the poles, and more vegetation died off and more carbon was released. Over tens of thousands of years, extreme temperatures spread over much of the world’s surface. Eventually, the warming began to harm life in the oceans, particularly tiny organisms at the bottom of the food chain.
…and at the peak of the extinction:
At the peak of the extinction, temperatures regularly soared far above 40°C. Alex Farnsworth
During the peak of the crisis, in a world that was already warming thanks to volcanic gases, an El Niño would boost average temperatures by a further 4°C. That’s more than three times the total warming we have caused over the past few centuries. Back then, the El Niño-charged climate would have regularly seen peak daytime temperatures on land of 60°C or more.
The future of El Niño
In recent years El Niños have caused major changes to rainfall and temperature patterns, around the Pacific and even further afield. A strong El Niño was a factor in record-breaking temperatures through 2023 and 2024.
Fortunately, such events typically only last a few years. However, on top of human-caused warming, even these smaller scale El Niños of the present day may be enough to push fragile ecosystems beyond their limit.
El Niño is predicted to become more variable as the climate changes, though we should note that the oceans are still yet to fully respond to current warming rates. At present, nobody is forecasting another mass extinction on the scale of the one 252 million years ago, but that event provides a worrying snapshot of what happens when El Niño gets out of control.
Climate-driven changes in extreme weather events are one of the highest-risk future shocks to the UK food system, underlining the importance of preparedness across the food chain. However, the CCC’s 2023 report on adaptation progress highlighted that current climate adaptation plans and policies, and their delivery and implementation for UK food security are either insufficient or limited. Through an ongoing Met Office cross-academic partnership activity (‘SuperRAP’) working across all eight partner universities (including Bristol), Defra, the Food Standards Agency, UKRI-BBSRC and the Global Food Security Programme, a recent perspective paper, and associated online workshops and surveys in January 2023have:
Scoped out the direct impacts of weather and climate extremes on the UK food supply chain,
Highlighted areas where weather and climate information could support resilience across time and space scales through decision making and action,
Identified key knowledge gaps,
Made recommendations for future research and funding, and
Scoped out the potential adaptation/policy responses to the direct impacts of weather and climate extremes on the food chain, and the resulting trade-offs and consequences
However, a major gap remains in understanding the changes needed to rapidly increase the delivery and implementation of climate adaptation in support of resilience in the UK food system. A workshop on this topic was held at the University of Reading’s Henley Business School on 13-14 June 2024 bringing together academics across a wide range of disciplines and presented findings back to industry and government stakeholders for their feedback and prioritisation.
The workshop aimed to consider key areas for supporting resilience and adaptation to climate change identified by the January 2023 workshop including innovation and trialling novel management and production approaches, social innovation and enabling behavioural shifts, mutual learning, and underpinning evidence gaps. The workshop was supported by a cross-sector survey on adaptation barriers and priorities.
Overarching themes identified in the workshop included the need for a strategic, system-wide, and long-term approach, underpinned by strong inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration.
Critical evidence gaps include improving understanding of:
Impacts of international dimensions and trade on UK food ingredient and packaging availability, compared to UK-sourced products – and their interactions
Impacts of climate extremes on production and transport and effective adaptation options
Impacts of climate shocks on UK livelihood systems, households and consumers
Broader adaptation and transformation needed to escape existing ‘doom loops’
Application of tech solutions (e.g. GM/gene editing) for climate resilience and adaptation
Other issues raised included thresholds for change, land pressures, substitutability of different foods, impacts of government policy, nutrition, regenerative practices, and interactions with the energy sector.
Recommended ways forward include:
Tools, models, and methods that consider risks across the food chain and system outcomes
A focus on inter- and trans-disciplinary approaches.
Increased international collaboration/cooperation, and stronger government-science interactions
Enhancing food chain data access, use and integration, and a supportive enabling environment
Long-term trials: to provide evidence of impacts of alternative practices
Preparing the transport network for climate extremes.
A refresh of the National Food Strategy, building on latest science
A new funding landscape: long-term, strategic, visionary, systemic, trans- and interdisciplinary, co-designed and coordinated.
Other issues raised included: sharing responsibility and joined-up, transparent approaches across sectors and institutions; risk mitigation tools; use cases and roadmaps; welfare responses; interdisciplinary skills training; and research across a wider range of crops.
We are aiming to produce a peer-reviewed perspective paper on critical research (and practice) gaps, and recommendations for the way forward.
People often underestimate tiny beings. But microscopic algal cells not only evolved to thrive in one of the most extreme habitats on Earth – glaciers – but are also shaping them.
With a team of scientists from the UK and Canada, we traced the evolution of purple algae back hundreds of millions of years and our findings challenge a key idea about how evolution works. Though small, these algae are having a dramatic effect on the glaciers they live on.
Glaciers are among the planet’s fastest changing ecosystems. During the summer melt season as liquid water forms on glaciers, blooms of purple algae darken the surface of the ice, accelerating the rate of melt. This fascinating adaptation to glaciers requires microscopic algae to control their growth and photosynthesis. This must be balanced with tolerance of extreme ice melt, temperature and light exposure.
Our study, published in New Phytologist, reveals how and when their adaptations to live in these extreme environments first evolved. We sequenced and analysed genome data of the glacier algae Ancylonema nordenskiöldii. Our results show that the purple colour of glacier algae, which acts like a sunscreen, was generated by new genes involved in pigment production.
This pigment, purpurogallin, protects algal cells from damage of ultraviolet (UV) and visible light. It is also linked with tolerance of low temperatures and desiccation, characteristic features of glacial environments. Our genetic analysis suggests that the evolution of this purple pigment was probably vital for several adaptations in glacier algae.
We also identified new genes that helped increase the algae’s tolerance to UV and visible light, important adaptations for living in a bright, exposed environment. Interestingly these were linked to increased light perception as well as improved mechanisms of repair to sun damage. This work reveals how algae are adapted to live on glaciers in the present day.
Next, we wanted to understand when this adaptation evolved in Earth’s deep history.
The evolution of glacier algae
Earth has experienced many fluctuations of colder and warmer climates. Across thousands and sometimes millions of years, global climates have changed slowly between glacial (cold) to interglacial (warm) periods.
One of the most dramatic cold periods was the Cryogenian, dating back to 720-635 million years ago, when Earth was almost entirely covered in snow and ice. So widespread were these glaciations, they are sometimes referred to by scientists as “Snowball Earth”.
Scientists think that these conditions would have been similar to the glaciers and ice sheets we see on Earth today. So we wondered could this period be the force driving the evolution of glacier algae?
After analysing genetic data and fossilised algae, we estimated that glacier algae evolved around 520-455 million years ago. This suggests that the evolution of glacier algae was not linked to the Snowball Earth environments of the Cryogenian.
As the origin of glacier algae is later than the Cryogenian, a more recent glacial period must have been the driver of glacial adaptations in algae. Scientists think there has continuously been glacial environments on Earth up to 60 million years ago.
We did, however, identify that the common ancestor of glacier algae and land plants evolved around the Cryogenian.
In February 2024, our previous analysis demonstrated that this ancient algae was multicellular. The group containing glacier algae lost the ability to create complex multicellular forms, possibly in response to the extreme environmental pressures of the Cryogenian.
Rather than becoming more complex, we have demonstrated that these algae became simple and persevered to the present day. This is an example of evolution by reducing complexity. It also contradicts the well-established “march of progress” hypothesis, the idea that organisms evolve into increasingly complex versions of their ancestors.
Our work showed that this loss of multicellularity was accompanied by a huge loss of genetic diversity. These lost genes were mainly linked to multicellular development. This is a signature of the evolution of their simple morphology from a more complex ancestor.
Over the last 700 million years, these algae have survived by being tiny, insulated from cold and protected from the Sun. These adaptations prepared them for life on glaciers in the present day.
So specialised is this adaptation, that only a handful of algae have evolved to live on glaciers. This is in contrast to the hundreds of algal species living on snow. Despite this, glacier algae have dramatic effects across vast ice fields when liquid water forms on glacier surfaces. In 2016, on the Greenland ice sheet, algal growth led to an additional 4,400–6,000 million tonnes of runoff.
Understanding these algae helps us appreciate their role in shaping fragile ecosystems.
Our study gives insight into the evolutionary journey of glacier algae from the deep past to the present. As we face a changing climate, understanding these microscopic organisms is key to predicting the future of Earth’s icy environments.
East Africa has recently had an unprecedented series of failed rains. But some rainy seasons are bringing the opposite: huge amounts of rainfall.
In the last few months of 2023, the rainy season known as the “short rains” was much wetter than normal. It brought severe flooding to Kenya, Somalia and Tanzania. In Somalia, more than 2 million people were affected, with over 100 killed and 750,000 displaced from their homes. Tens of thousands of people in northern Kenya lost livestock, farmland and homes.
The very wet short rainy seasons are linked to a climate event known as a positive Indian Ocean Dipole (known as the “IOD”). And climate model projections show an increasing trend of extreme Indian Ocean dipoles.
In a new research paper, we set out to investigate what effect more frequent extreme Indian Ocean Dipole events would have on rainfall in east Africa. We did this using a large number of climate simulations and models.
Our results show that they increase the likelihood of very wet days – therefore making very wet seasons.
We recommend that decision-makers plan for this kind of extreme rainfall, and the resulting devastating floods.
How the Indian Ocean Dipole works
Indian Ocean Dipole events tend to occur in the second half of the year, and can last for months. They have two phases: positive and negative.
Positive events occur when the temperature of the sea surface in the western Indian Ocean is warmer than normal and the temperature in the eastern Indian Ocean is cooler than normal. Put simply, this temperature difference happens when winds move warmer water away from the ocean surface in the eastern region, allowing cooler water to rise.
In the warmer western Indian Ocean, more heated air will rise, along with water vapour. This forms clouds, bringing rain. Meanwhile, the eastern part of the Indian Ocean will be cooler and drier. This is why flooding in east Africa can happen at the same time as bushfires in Australia.
The opposite is true for negative dipole events: drier in the western Indian Ocean and wetter in the east.
Under climate change we’re expecting to see more frequent and more extreme positive dipole events – bigger differences between east and west. This is shown by climate model projections. They are believed to be driven by different paces of warming across the tropical Indian Ocean – with western and northern regions projected to warm faster than eastern parts.
Often heavy rain seasons in east Africa are attributed to El Niño, but recent research has shown that the direct impact of El Niño on east African rainfall is actually relatively modest. El Niño’s principal influence lies in its capacity to bring about positive dipole events. This occurs since El Niño events tend to cool the water in the western Pacific Ocean – around Indonesia – which also helps to cool down the water in the eastern Indian Ocean. These cooler temperatures then help kick-start a positive Indian Ocean Dipole.
Examining unprecedented events
Extreme positive Indian Ocean Dipole events are rare in the recent climate record. So to examine their potential impacts on rainfall extremes, we used a large set of climate simulations. The data allowed us to diagnose the sensitivity of rainfall to larger Indian Ocean Dipole events in a statistically robust way.
Our results show that as positive dipole events become more extreme, more wet days during the short rains season can be expected. This effect was found to be largest for the frequency of extremely wet days. Additionally, we found that as the dipole strength increases, the influence on the most extreme days becomes even larger. This means that dipole events which are even slightly “record-breaking” could lead to unprecedented levels of seasonal rainfall.
Ultimately, if positive Indian Ocean Dipole seasons increase in frequency, as predicted, regular seasons of flooding impacts will become a new normal.
One aspect not included in our analysis is the influence of a warmer atmosphere on rainfall extremes. A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, allowing for the development of more intense rain storms. This effect could combine with the influence of extreme positive dipoles to bring unprecedented levels of rainfall to the Horn of Africa.
In the long term it is crucial to ensure that any new infrastructure is robust to withstand more frequent and heavier rains, and that government, development and humanitarian actors have the capacity to respond to the challenges.
These technological improvements are crucial. But better use of the forecast information we already have can also make a big difference. For instance, initiatives like “forecast-based financing”, pioneered by the Red Cross Red Crescent movement, link forecast triggers to pre-approved financing and predefined action plans, helping communities protect themselves before hazards have even started.
For these endeavours to succeed, there must be dialogue between the science and practitioner communities. The scientific community can work with practitioners to integrate key insights into decisions, while practitioners can help to ensure research efforts target critical needs. With this, we can effectively build resilience to natural hazards and resist the increasing risks of our changing climate.
Frank Herbert’s Dune is epic sci-fi storytelling with an environmental message at its heart. The novels and movies are set on the desert planet of Arrakis, which various characters dream of transforming into a greener world – much like some envision for Mars today.
We investigated Arrakis using a climate model, a computer program similar to those used to give weather forecasts. We found the world that Herbert had created, well before climate models even existed, was remarkably accurate – and would be habitable, if not hospitable.
However, Arrakis wasn’t always a desert. In Dune lore, 91% of the planet was once covered by oceans, until some ancient catastrophe led to its desertification. What water remained was further removed by sand trout, an invasive species brought to Arrakis. These proliferated and carried liquid into cavities deep underground, leading to the planet becoming more and more arid.
To see what a large ocean would mean for the planet’s climate and habitability, we have now used the same climate model – putting in an ocean while changing no other factors.
When most of Arrakis is flooded, we calculate that the global average temperature would be reduced by 4°C. This is mostly because oceans add moisture to the atmosphere, which leads to more snow and certain types of cloud, both of which reflect the sun’s energy back into space. But it’s also because oceans on Earth and (we assume) on Arrakis emit “halogens” that cool the planet by depleting ozone, a potent greenhouse gas which Arrakis would have significantly more of than Earth.
The authors gathered information from the books and the Dune Encyclopedia to build their original model. Then they added an ocean with 1,000 metres average depth. Farnsworth et al, CC BY-SA
Unsurprisingly, the ocean world is a whopping 86 times wetter, as so much water evaporates from the oceans. This means plants can grow as water is no longer a finite resource, as it is on desert Arrakis.
A wetter world would be more stable
Oceans also reduce temperature extremes, as water heats and cools more slowly than land. (This is one reason Britain, surrounded by oceans, has relatively mild winters and summers, while places far inland tend to be hotter in summer and very cold in winter). The climate of an ocean planet is therefore more stable than a desert world.
In desert Arrakis, temperatures would reach 70°C or more, while in its ocean state, we put the highest recorded temperatures at about 45°C. That means the ocean Arrakis would be liveable even in summer. Forests and arable crops could grow outside of the (still cold and snowy) poles.
There is one downside, however. Tropical regions would be buffeted by large cyclones since the huge, warm oceans would contain lots of the energy and moisture required to drive hurricanes.
The search for habitable planets
All this isn’t an entirely abstract exercise, as scientists searching for habitable “exoplanets” in distant galaxies are looking for these sorts of things too. At the moment, we can only detect such planets using huge telescopes in space to search for those that are similar to Earth in size, temperature, available energy, ability to host water, and other factors.
Both desert and ocean Arrakis are considerably more habitable than any other planet we have discovered. Farnsworth et al, CC BY-SA
We know that desert worlds are probably more common than Earth-like planets in the universe. Planets with potentially life-sustaining oceans will usually be found in the so-called “Goldilocks zone”: far enough from the Sun to avoid being too hot (so further away than boiling hot Venus), but close enough to avoid everything being frozen (so nearer than Jupiter’s icy moon Ganymede).
Research has found this habitable zone is particularly small for planets with large oceans. Their water is at risk of either completely freezing, therefore making the planet even colder, or of evaporating as part of a runaway greenhouse effect in which a layer of water vapour prevents heat from escaping and the planet gets hotter and hotter.
The habitable zone is therefore much larger for desert planets, since at the outer edge they will have less snow and ice cover and will absorb more of their sun’s heat, while at the inner edge there is less water vapour and so less risk of a runaway greenhouse effect.
It’s also important to note that, though distance from their local star can give a general average temperature for a planet, such an average can be misleading. For instance, both desert and ocean Arrakis have a habitable average temperature, but the day-to-day temperature extremes on the ocean planet are much more hospitable.
Currently, even the most powerful telescopes cannot sense temperatures at this detail. They also cannot see in detail how the continents are arranged on distant planets. This again could mean the averages are misleading. For instance, while the ocean Arrakis we modelled would be very habitable, most of the land is in the polar regions which are under snow year-round – so the actual amount of inhabitable land is much less.
Such considerations could be important in our own far-future, when the Earth is projected to form a supercontinent centred on the equator. That continent would make the planet far too hot for mammals and other life to survive, potentially leading to mass extinction.
If the most likely liveable planets in the universe are deserts, they may well be very extreme environments that require significant technological solutions and resources to enable life – desert worlds will probably not have an oxygen-rich atmosphere, for instance.
But that won’t stop humans from trying. For instance, Elon Musk and SpaceX have grand ambitions to create a colony on our closest desert world, Mars. But the many challenges they will face only emphasises how important our own Earth is as the cradle of civilisation – especially as ocean-rich worlds may not be as plentiful as we’d hope. If humans eventually colonise other worlds, they’re likely to have to deal with many of the same problems as the characters in Dune.
