Tag: covid-19

Life after COVID: most people don’t want a return to normal – they want a fairer, more sustainable future

Posted on by janet.crompton
Jacob Lund/Shutterstock

We are in a crisis now – and omicron has made it harder to imagine the pandemic ending. But it will not last forever. When the COVID outbreak is over, what do we want the world to look like?

In the early stages of the pandemic – from March to July 2020 – a rapid return to normal was on everyone’s lips, reflecting the hope that the virus might be quickly brought under control. Since then, alternative slogans such as “build back better” have also become prominent, promising a brighter, more equitable, more sustainable future based on significant or even radical change.

Returning to how things were, or moving on to something new – these are very different desires. But which is it that people want? In our recent research, we aimed to find out.

Along with Keri Facer of the University of Bristol, we conducted two studies, one in the summer of 2020 and another a year later. In these, we presented participants – a representative sample of 400 people from the UK and 600 from the US – with four possible futures, sketched in the table below. We designed these based on possible outcomes of the pandemic published in early 2020 in The Atlantic and The Conversation.

We were concerned with two aspects of the future: whether it would involve a “return to normal” or a progressive move to “build back better”, and whether it would concentrate power in the hands of government or return power to individuals.

Four possible futures

Back to normal – strong government
“Collective safety”

    • We don’t want any big changes to how the world works.
    • We are happy for the government to keep its powers to keep us safe and get back on economic track.

 

 Back to normal – individual autonomy
“For freedom”

  • We don’t want any big changes to how the world works; our priority is business as usual and safety.
  • We want to take back from governments the powers they have claimed to limit our movements and monitor our data and behaviour.
Progressive – strong government
“Fairer future”

  • What we want is for governments to take strong action to deal with economic unfairness and the problem of climate change.
  • We are happy for the government to keep its powers if it protects economic fairness, health and the environment.
 Progressive – individual autonomy
“Grassroots leadership”

  • What we want is for communities, not governments, to work together to build a fair and environmentally friendly world.
  • We want to take back from governments the powers they have claimed to limit our movements and monitor our data and behaviour.

In both studies and in both countries, we found that people strongly preferred a progressive future over a return to normal. They also tended to prefer individual autonomy over strong government. On balance, across both experiments and both countries, the “grassroots leadership” proposal appeared to be most popular.

People’s political leanings affected preferences – those on the political right preferred a return to normal more than those on the left – yet intriguingly, strong opposition to a progressive future was quite limited, even among people on the right. This is encouraging because it suggests that opposition to “building back better” may be limited.

Our findings are consistent with other recent research, which suggests that even conservative voters want the environment to be at the heart of post-COVID economic reconstruction in the UK.

The misperceptions of the majority

This is what people wanted to happen – but how did they think things actually would end up? In both countries, participants felt that a return to normal was more likely than moving towards a progressive future. They also felt it was more likely that government would retain its power than return it to the people.

In other words, people thought they were unlikely to get the future they wanted. People want a progressive future but fear that they’ll get a return to normal with power vested in the government.

We also asked people to tell us what they thought others wanted. It turned out our participants thought that others wanted a return to normal much more than they actually did. This was observed in both the US and UK in both 2020 and 2021, though to varying extents.

This striking divergence between what people actually want, what they expect to get and what they think others want is what’s known as “pluralistic ignorance”.

This describes any situation where people who are in the majority think they are in the minority. Pluralistic ignorance can have problematic consequences because in the long run people often shift their attitudes towards what they perceive to be the prevailing norm. If people misperceive the norm, they may change their attitudes towards a minority opinion, rather than the minority adapting to the majority. This can be a problem if that minority opinion is a negative one – such as being opposed to vaccination, for example.

In our case, a consequence of pluralistic ignorance may be that a return to normal will become more acceptable in future, not because most people ever desired this outcome, but because they felt it was inevitable and that most others wanted it.

Two people talking on a bench
We think we know what other people think – but often we’re wrong.
dekazigzag/Shutterstock

Ultimately, this would mean that the actual preferences of the majority never find the political expression that, in a democracy, they deserve.

To counter pluralistic ignorance, we should therefore try to ensure that people know the public’s opinion. This is not merely a necessary countermeasure to pluralistic ignorance and its adverse consequences – people’s motivation also generally increases when they feel their preferences and goals are shared by others. Therefore, simply informing people that there’s a social consensus for a progressive future could be what unleashes the motivation needed to achieve it.The Conversation

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This blog is written by Caboteer Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, Chair of Cognitive Psychology, University of Bristol and Ullrich Ecker, Professor of Cognitive Psychology and Australian Research Council Future Fellow, The University of Western Australia

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

Why I’m mapping the carbon stored in regrowing Amazonian forests

Posted on by janet.crompton

As we navigate our way out of the global medical pandemic, many are calling for a “green economic recovery”. This green recovery should be at the forefront of many discussions as world leaders, policy makers, scientists and organisations are preparing for the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) due to take place in November this year in Glasgow, UK. This conference will once again try to unite the world to help tackle the next and even larger global emergency, the Climate Emergency.

In recent years, the conversations around the Climate Emergency have increased dramatically with many individuals, groups, companies and governments aiming to tackle this emergency, in part, through replanting, restoring and reforesting large areas of land.

But what if we let forests regrow back naturally? How much carbon can they absorb from the atmosphere? 

As part of my PhD research at the University of Bristol, I have been looking at naturally regrowing forests in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. These forests are known as “Secondary forests” and regrow on land that has previously been deforested and used for agricultural or other purposes and has since been abandoned, allowing the natural vegetation to return.

Figure 1: Secondary Forest in the Tapajos region of the Brazillian Amazon (credit Ricardo Dalagnol)

Secondary Forests in the Brazilian Amazon are expected to play a key role in achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement. They have a large climate mitigation potential, given their ability to absorb carbon up to 11 times faster than old-growth forests. However, the regrowth of these secondary forests is not uniform across the Amazon and is influenced by regional and local-scale environmental drivers and human disturbances like fires and repeated deforestations.

I worked with numerous scientists from Brazil and the UK to determine the impact of different drivers on the regrowth rates of the secondary forests, using a combination of satellite data. The key datasets we needed were:

What we did

We combined the satellite data maps and overlayed them to extract information on the carbon stored in relation to the forest age to model the regrowth rate with increasing age. We overlayed the information of key environmental drivers and human disturbances to see if and how these factors impact the regrowth rates.

What we found out

Overall, we found that the environmental conditions in Western Amazon enable secondary forests to regrow faster. Here the land received lots of rainfall and does not experience much drought. In the eastern parts of the Amazon, where the climate is drier and experiences more drought, the regrowth rates were up to 60% lower.

Figure 2: Schematic summary of the main results from the paper, highlighting the spatial patterns of regrowth dependent on both climate and human disturbances. The map in the middle shows the regions of secondary forest in the Brazillian Amazon and the four panels correspond to these regions.

In addition to this, we found that the regrowth rates were reduced even further by as much as 80% in eastern regions if the forests were subject to human activities like burning and repeated deforestations before the land was finally abandoned.

What it all means

Our results show the importance of protecting and expanding secondary forest areas to help us meet the Paris Agreement Targets. Our regrowth models can be used to help determine the contribution of current and future regrowing forests in the Brazilian Amazon in a spatial manner.

We found that in 2017, the secondary forests in the Brazilian Amazon stored about 294 Terragrams Carbon aboveground (that excludes carbon stored in roots and soils). However, this number is equivalent to about 0.25% of the carbon that is already stored in Amazon’s old-growth forests. Limiting carbon emissions through deforestation and degradation through burning of old-growth forests is therefore extremely important to help tackle the Climate Emergency.

We calculated that the annual carbon absorbed by the present secondary forest area in the Amazon is enough to contribute to about 5% of Brazil’s pledged contribution to the Paris Agreement by 2030. This number may seem small, but the area covered by the Amazonian secondary forests is currently equivalent to less than 2% of the whole of Brazil. If the area of secondary forest were to be expanded this would bring with it numerous co-benefits such as generating income to landowners and re-establishing ecosystem services.

In December 2020, many countries submitted updates to their so-called Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC), a country’s individual contributions to the Paris Agreement, this included Brazil. However, Brazil’s updated NDC no longer includes a clear position on reforestation, restoration and eliminating illegal deforestation.

At a time when we have all seen and felt the impacts of a true global emergency such as the COVID-19 pandemic, it becomes easier to imagine the potential impacts of climate change if left at the back of politician’s agendas. In the run up to COP26 it is now more important than ever to raise, not lower ambitions as we continue to tackle the global Climate Emergency.

You can read the full paper and download the data here: https://rdcu.be/cg4um.

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Viola Heinrich, School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol.

Viola Heinrich

Safeguarding sustainable future communities: Lessons from Covid-19

Posted on by janet.crompton
Volunteers packing shopping. Image credit: We Are Bristol
 
The Covid-19 pandemic has brought hardship to many people across the UK, both in terms of the direct health impacts of the virus and the economic and social consequences of lockdowns. However, it has also demonstrated the resilience of our communities, and the importance of strong social infrastructure in responding to crises. Within hours of the first lockdown being announced, community organisations took rapid action, with many completely shifting their models of service delivery to meet the changing needs of their communities. This extraordinary response has been one of the good news stories of the pandemic, as many more people and local governments have realised the value of services provided by community organisations. My research sought to build an understanding of the experience of the community sector in Bristol during the Covid-19 pandemic to determine what allowed them to coordinate such an effective response, and how they can be better supported to respond to future crises.  

Why study community resilience?

Climate change has made it more important to understand how we respond to major shocks and disasters, as they are likely to increase in both frequency and severity in future. While the physical infrastructure required to respond to different shocks – such as floods, heatwaves and pandemics – varies greatly, building strong social and community infrastructure strengthens resilience to many different events. A recent report from the national community network Locality discussed the case of Calderdale Council, which has faced three major flooding incidents in the last eight years. The knowledge, networks and partnerships built through coping with floods in the past made Calderdale more resilient and responsive to the Covid-19 crisis, despite being developed for a different purpose. Understanding the strengths and vulnerabilities of Bristol’s community infrastructure when exposed to a crisis is key to building long-term community resilience.

Community organisations in a crisis

To understand the strengths and weaknesses of community resilience in Bristol, I interviewed thirteen people working across the sector.

I found that community organisations were very well-placed to respond to this crisis. Those interviewed discussed how they could act quickly to meet community needs because their decisions weren’t subject to the same bureaucracy or hierarchical decision-making structure as local governments. The highly localised nature of community organisations also meant that they could deliver solutions and services that were tailored to the needs of the populations they served, like culturally appropriate meals or shopping for older residents.

Community organisations also had access to informal networks within their localities which allowed them to coordinate with local businesses, residents, and other voluntary organisations to deliver necessary services. In Easton, for example, there was coordination across community groups and businesses which allowed each organisation to focus on the service they were best placed to deliver, even if it meant ceding responsibility for their normal functions to another organisation who could deliver it more effectively. Up Our Street, for example, focused on providing resources for children, such as milk, nappies, and activity packs to their communities, identifying that this was a necessary role that they were well-placed to fill.  Community alliances were particularly effective at this coordination, especially those who had access to physical spaces to use as community hubs for service delivery.

There were, however, a number of barriers which community organisations faced. Every single interviewee from the community sector raised the importance of funding sources. Due to central government cuts in recent years, many organisations became reliant on traded income and fundraising to deliver their services, sources of income generation which disappeared quickly during the lockdown. This meant that community organisations had to furlough staff and work on reduced incomes when the need for their services was at an unprecedented high. In contrast, those organisations with access to flexible, long-term grant funding emphasised how valuable it was to  their response. A key message was that many organisations  may not survive to respond to the next crisis without more resilient funding models.

Effective communication with local government was also cited as a challenge. Many Bristolians, particularly vulnerable members of the population, did not have direct access to information about the evolving crisis and relied heavily on community organisations. Improving communication between local governments and citizens, particularly through faith-based organisations, such as gurdwaras, mosques, and churches was recommended. More generally, many organisations felt communication and coordination with local government needs to be improved in future, given the depth of local knowledge and networks such organisations can offer to help improve services.

Indeed, the most effective community responses were achieved where Bristol City Council sought to enable and support the existing work being undertaken by community organisations. For example, the City Council’s Can Do platform and  “We Are Bristol” helpline become important mechanisms for urgent recruitment of volunteers. BCC also removed a lot of superfluous red tape and bureaucracy, trusting organisations to act in the best interests of their communities and take greater responsibility. The Council became more reliant on the efforts of the community sector than before, and the trust built between them has provided community organisations with more “soft power” to influence decision-making. Continuing this trusting and enabling relationship will be key to recovery, and ensuring that community resilience is enhanced moving forward.

Key lessons

Building resilient community and social infrastructure is key to safeguarding Bristol’s sustainable future. Community organisations are vital first responders in a crisis and have the necessary networks and knowledge in their communities to understand and deliver what their communities need. By supporting these organisations, through promoting their long-term financial stability and including them in community decision-making, it is possible to create a more resilient Bristol which will be able to respond to any future shocks.

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This blog is written by Environmental Policy and Management MSc graduate Eveline Hall.

Eveline Hall

 

 

Toward an age of low tech for a more resilient and sustainable society

Posted on by janet.crompton

The various restrictions that have been imposed to tackle the COVID-19 crisis have led many of us to reflect on what might be our response to other pressing issues that we face, especially inequalities in our societies and the major ecological issues of climate change, biodiversity collapse and resource depletion. What has the crisis told us about the state of our planet and societies, and are there wider lessons that can be learned from our response?

Even before the pandemic, we had begun to talk in public debate in ways that would have been unimaginable ten years ago: about the climate crisis and resilience to ecological disruption, questioning the dogma of growth at all costs. The pandemic has reinforced concerns about globalisation and challenged beliefs about the role of the state and the possibility of printing money in a real emergency, while showing that we could do very well without certain things, such as shopping trips to Dubai or cruise ships. Many of us have learned to value nature more, to seek conviviality and escape from the incessant pressures of modern life, while seeking to build societies that are more resilient to disturbances.

The crisis has further also exposed our societal inequalities in the contrasts between those who were confined in pleasant conditions and others in less fortunate circumstances, between those who could work from home and those who had to stay in their workplaces in order to keep healthcare, food supplies and other essential services operating, and between those who kept getting paid no matter what and those whose earnings dried up.

It is also clear that in many ways the response to the pandemic was rather ‘low tech’, based largely on modifying behaviour rather than on technology. We were treated to a few articles on surveillance drones and robots disinfecting the streets in China, but in the end we addressed the crisis through regulation and behavioural changes: staying at home, wearing masks, washing our hands, keeping a distance. This low-tech remedy is one that could be applied to the environmental challenges that we face.

Using a detailed analysis of humankind’s relationship with resources through history, I suggest, in The Age of Low Tech: Towards a Technologically Sustainable Civilization, an alternative perspective on how we should be marshalling our resources to preserve the planet and secure our future. I believe ‘high’ technology will not solve global problems and propose a different ‘low tech’ approach to building a more resilient, equitable and sustainable society.

How might this be done? We must reinvent our modes of production. In questioning the race for productivity and economies of scale in mega-factories, we should review the place of people in our economies, the degree of mechanization and robotization, and our way of choosing between manpower and resources. It is not about returning to the spinning wheel and draught animals, but about relocating workshops and businesses on a human scale to manufacture durable goods. Equipping these with a few simple and robust machines, we should be able to maintain a good part of current productivity, while reducing energy demand. Such manufacturing units, less productive but more labour-intensive and closer to locations of consumption, would be coupled with arrangements for the recovery, repair, resale and sharing of everyday objects.

With a few priorities – to eat well, take care of ourselves, to find proper accommodation – our ambition should be to produce locally, to be able to manufacture and repair tools, clothes, shoes, everyday objects, to value meaningful work. We will achieve resilience through a variety of actions and behaviours at different scales by individuals through their lifestyle choices, by businesses and public authorities through their purchases at all levels, setting an example and supporting initiatives to develop and support local economies.

In many areas we can drastically reduce our resource and energy needs, for example, in transportation, smaller, lighter and slower cars would have significantly reduced impact, public transport and bicycles even more so. We could reduce the environmental impact of digital systems by over 90% by avoiding duplicated networks and redundant systems; by favouring wired access, which consumes much less energy; by properly designing data centre software and architecture; by giving up the race for speed, real time and immediacy, which consumes a lot of equipment and generates additional traffic; reducing unnecessary functionality and performance; by working on the service life of the equipment, through modularity, ‘repairability’, compatibility and interoperability.

I believe that an alternative exists to our society hell-bent on extraction, production and consumption. What might make people want to contribute to a general movement with conviviality as a priority, with DIY, zero waste, repair shops, local agriculture and regenerated nature? It will be necessary to give the population some immediate compensations, as well as meaning and hope, not just ’blood, sweat and tears‘ or ’belt tightening for future generations’. One avenue is to move towards a post-growth system (economic, industrial, commercial, etc.) of full employment, or full activity, which is perfectly achievable. Power will come from people with convictions that want to make the change, but we also need to convince the public authorities, and businesses at every level, of the urgency of the situation. But it will take a profound rethinking of existing practices, economic models, regulatory approaches, cultural patterns and educational methods to reflect on our real needs and successfully implement intelligent sobriety. We are very far from it.

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This blog is written by Philippe Bihouix, an independent author and engineer, and Cabot Institute member Professor Chris McMahon.

If you enjoyed this blog, you can also read the book The Age of Low Tech https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/the-age-of-low-tech

 

A ‘fresh’ start: Exploring the social dimensions of the food systems that supply Bristol

Posted on by janet.crompton
A chard seedling attempting to grow on Lydia’s patio garden

For many years now, I have been researching work in food production ‘out there’: beyond the reach of a day trip and in languages that are not my own. I found the Moroccan tomato so interesting that I wrote a thesis on it. Now though, I want to know what’s occurring closer to home. What of the food produced in the UK? Who is working in the fields? Who is taking the risk that the supermarkets will buy their produce or not? Who is footing the bill, personally, socially, emotionally, for keeping the food coming into cities despite Covid 19, and despite Brexit? After farm work was recognised as ‘essential’ during the pandemic, have workers gained status, or simply more health and safety challenges?

It is to these questions that I am now turning. I want to know who is working to feed Bristol and how they are getting on. More specifically, I want to know about fruit and veg; that food group that we all eat. Vegan, vegetarian, meat eater or flexitarian; we all eat some fruit and veg. Even if it is highly processed into a form with higher ‘added value’: perhaps a smoothie or the filling in a pre-prepared lasagne. What’s more, the UK government want us to eat a specific quantity: five portions a day. Scientists also estimate that if everyone in the UK ate these recommended portions, then our average carbon emissions would go down because fruit and veg have, in many (but not all) ways, a lower impact on ecosystems than other food groups.

How workers and farmers are getting on isn’t just important in its own right, but it also affects food security overall. This is particularly so in regards to exactly those foods which we need more of in this stressful, challenging climate, when it is all too easy to reach for the beer, or the chocolate or the ice cream. Not that I want to get into the business of identifying good and bad foods, they all feed us. Nevertheless, dealing with the coronavirus epidemic and the news that obesity is a major risk factor in suffering badly from the virus, brings fruit and veg into the policy arena again. In the new plan to tackle growing rates of obesity, adverts for fast food will be curtailed before 9pm and there will be a ban on ‘buy one get one free’ offers on sugary and fatty foods, with new encouragement for shops to promote fruit and vegetables. Yet while the focus is on consumers and their needs, the availability of fresh ingredients for this pro-health recipe goes unquestioned. OK, apples do grow on trees, but they must still be picked.

Some people will have seen other news stories. Of crops rotting in the fields last autumn, of seasonal workers flown to the UK from Romania and Bulgaria in the middle of a pandemic, working when everyone else is asked to stay at home. Putting their own lives at risk when white collar workers are ushered inside. More stories, of a lack of seasonal workers and of British workers signing up when for a long time such work has fallen disproportionately to migrant and European workers [1]. These stories alter as we draw back from the pandemic and its outbreaks, through Brexit, and prior to Brexit. Yet the question of who feeds us and how, at what costs and taking on what risks, remains for many of us, out of sight and out of mind.

So this is my new project, and I start this week. In my kitchen, because we’re in a pandemic and that’s where I have a garden table standing in as a desk. I do want to reach out though. So, if you are, or know a farmer or worker in this sector, please get in touch, I would love to listen to your experiences and your challenges. Or even come and see them. I’ve taken flights and chased questions about food to places that look like they will produce answers, simply through their seductive difference to my own normality. Now I am interested in the everyday difficulties in the details faced by farmers and workers in the UK. I’m not looking for heroes and villains, but simply for people who work in the food system.

To be specific, my project focuses on the conventional (not organic) side of the sector. This is simply because it feeds the majority of our country and the city I live in. That could be those who produce vegetables that end up in packaging branded with union jacks, but which otherwise, are just normal. Just simple apples, or tomatoes, or cucumbers, with lots of plastic and stickers, or none at all. I want to consider conventional scale production as close to home as possible and marvel at its successes, struggles and contradictions. Considering ONS data and recent analysis we can observe that only 1-2% of workers in the UK works in agriculture, yet nearly 50% of food consumed in the UK is produced here [2]. How is this done? At what cost? Who is helping and making sacrifices so that the apples keep coming and the carrots arrive fresh and looking perfect.

1. See, Scott, S. (2013), Labour, Migration and the Spatial Fix: Evidence from the UK Food Industry. Antipode, 45: 1090-1109. doi:10.1111/anti.12023

2. The estimate depends on the interpretation of data and could be considered as much as 60%, see, Lang, T. (2020). Feeding Britain: Our Food Problems and what to Do about Them. Pelican. p., 26

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This blog was written by Cabot Institute for the Environment member Dr Lydia Medland, it was originally published on her blog Eating Research and has been re-published here with her permission.  Lydia has a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the British Academy to research food systems in the UK. 

 

Dr Lydia Medland

 

Coronavirus: have we already missed the opportunity to build a better world?

Posted on by janet.crompton

 

Chad Madden/Unsplash, FAL

Many people like to say that the coronavirus is teaching us a lesson, as if the pandemic were a kind of morality play that should lead to a change in our behaviour. It shows us that we can make big shifts quickly if we want to. That we can build back better. That social inequality is starkly revealed at times of crisis. That there is a “magic money tree”. The idea that crisis leads to change was also common during the financial crunch over a decade ago, but that didn’t produce any lasting transformations. So will post-COVID life be any different?

At the start of lockdown, in the middle of the anxiety and confusion, I started to notice that I was enjoying myself. I was cooking and gardening more; the air was cleaner, my city was quieter and I was spending more time with my partner. Lots of people started to write about the idea that there should be #NoGoingBack. It seemed that we had taken a deep collective breath, and then started to think about coronavirus as a stimulus to encourage us to think how we might address other big issues – climate, inequality, racism and so on.

Being an academic, I decided to put together a quick and dirty book on what life might look like after the crisis. I persuaded various activists and academics to write short pieces on working at home, money, leadership and lots of other topics. The idea was to show that the world could change if we wanted it to. The book is out now, but it already feels, only four months after I imagined it, like the document of a lost time. The city noises are back, and jet trails are beginning to scar the sky. Has the moment been lost?

The second lesson of coronavirus, it seems, is just how stubborn the old structures are. Wanting the world to be different does not translate into making it so. Slogans do not produce change when power, habits and infrastructure remain substantially the same. So what can we learn now about crisis and making enduring change?

Aerial view of beach with sun umbrellas.
Getting back to ‘normal’.
Alex Blăjan/Unsplash, FAL

Think about holidays in Spain and Portugal. Sunny beaches, cold drinks and cheap food. For many people, getting back to normal means going back to what they had before, and they don’t want to hear some killjoy – whether a head of state or spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion, telling them that they can’t have it. To add to the problem, there are thousands of jobs at stake in the various industries that take people on holiday – manufacturing and servicing planes, working in airports and hotels, selling duty free, aviation fuel and tourist special lunches.

The world that we live in now has a kind of stickiness to it, both in terms of the expectations of people and the infrastructure that already exists and that reinforces those expectations. The pre-COVID world was sculpted by flows of money and trade, motorways and shipping containers. As we gradually begin to stir from lockdown, these channels are already waiting, ready to be refilled with people and things.

In the social sciences, people often refer to “path dependency”, the idea that our history constrains our present choices. If we have cities that are organised around large numbers of people commuting into the centre, or houses and flats that don’t have workspaces, then it is going to be difficult for large numbers of people to work at home. If you have to park your car on the street, then charging an electric one means running a cable on the pavement. If our pensions funds rely on oil companies making huge profits, then encouraging investment in green technologies is going to be an uphill struggle.

Wind turbines on a green hillside.
A hill we need to climb.
Appolinary Kalashnikova/Unsplash, FAL

No wonder then that it is easier for most people to assume that the future will be like the past because the shape of the present limits how we can think about things to come. This is what worries me most about my book. I think it might be pushing against a door that is already closing. And the people who are pushing it are not stupid or evil, just politicians, businesses and ordinary people who all want to go back to what they had.

If lesson one of coronavirus is that things can change, and lesson two is that they easily slip back again, then lesson three must be about the importance of presenting images of the future that motivate people to imagine change. It is clear that we can’t carry on as we are and need to stop doing things that we were doing, but just saying that is a really bad way to encourage people to change.

Instead, we need to imagine futures which are just as exciting and fulfilling as the high speed, high consumption, high carbon ones we must leave behind. We need to give people good reasons to jump the tracks because it is much easier just to slide back to what you know. So let’s imagine the city quieter, and the air cleaner, less need to fight with traffic jams and more time to spend with family and friends. That seems like a good start to learning from COVID-19.

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This blog was written by Martin Parker, Professor of Organisation Studies, University of Bristol. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Martin Parker

Energy use and demand in a (post) COVID-19 world

Posted on by janet.crompton
Keeping tabs on energy use is crucial for any individual, organisation or energy network. Energy usage affects our bills, what we choose to power (or not) and how we think about saving energy for a more sustainable future for our planet. We no longer want to rely on polluting fossil fuels for energy, we need cleaner and more sustainable solutions, and both technologies and behaviours need to be in the mix.

It seems the COVID-19 crisis may be a good time to evaluate our energy usage, especially since we assume that we are using less energy because we’re not all doing/consuming as much. We brought together a bunch of our researchers from different disciplines across the University of Bristol to have a group think about how we might change our energy usage and demand during and post COVID-19. Here’s a summary of what was discussed.

Has COVID-19 reduced our energy supply and demand?

You may have noticed in the previous paragraph that I mentioned that we assume that we are using less energy during this COVID-19 crisis. We’re not travelling or commuting as much; we’re not in our work buildings using lots of energy for heating, cooling, lighting, making cups of coffee; and for those of us who work in offices, we’re not all sat around computers all day, especially those that have been furloughed. So what actually is the collective impact of our reduced transport, cessation of business and working from home, doing to our energy supply and demand?

John Brenton, the University of Bristol’s Sustainability Manager spoke on the University’s experience during lockdown. During this COVID-19 crisis so far, UK electricity consumption has fallen by 19% and this percentage reduction has also been seen at the University of Bristol too. Thing is, when there is reduced demand for electricity, fossil fuels become cheaper. It makes us ask the question, could this be a disincentive to investing in renewables? John also pointed out that COVID-19 has shrunk further an already shrinking energy market (which was already shrinking due to energy saving).

Even though electricity consumption has gone down by almost 20%, we are still emitting greenhouse gases, though not so much from our commute to school and work, but with the data we are using, now that a lot of us are home all day. Professor Chris Preist, Professor of Sustainability & Computer Systems, Department of Computer Science, said if we continue to embrace these new ways of working, we are going to replace the traffic jam with the data centre. Of global emissions today, 2% to 3% are made up through input of digital technology. Though the direct emissions of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) are an issue and need to be addressed, they have a different impact than aviation. Digital tech is more egalitarian and a little technology is used by more people, than the much fewer privileged people who fly for example.

The systemic changes in society to homeworking can also increase our emissions far more than the digital tech itself, for example, people tend to live further away from work if they are allowed to work from home. Who needs to live in the city when you don’t have an office any more or you don’t have to come in to work very often? You may as well live where you want. You could even live abroad, but those few times you may need to come into the office, you would be travelling further and if abroad you may still have to fly in which would mean that your emissions would be huge, even though you are no longer commuting all year.

Are there positive changes and how might these be continued post-COVID-19?

Chris shared that most people and companies are now considering remote working as standard post-lockdown, which will reduce commuting and potentially improve emissions. Two thirds of UK adults will work from home more often and the benefits of this are that when people do go into work, they will likely be hot desking, this means companies will require less space and can reduce carbon emissions. Working from home will lead to a reduction of traffic on the roads.

We are video conferencing so much more, in fact Netflix agreed to reduce the resolution of their programmes in order to provide more capacity for home working and the ensuing video calls. But how does videoconferencing compare to our cars? One hour of video conferencing is equivalent to driving 500 metres in your car.

COVID-19 has also shown that a dramatic change in policy can be rapidly put in place, so this can be relevant in replicating for rolling out sustainability and energy initiatives.

What are the implications for social justice?

Dr Ed Atkins, who works on environmental and energy policy, politics and governance in the School of Geographical Sciences, spoke on the politics of a just transition. Changes to energy grids have been driven by collapsing demand and a lack of profitability in fossil fuels. Any investment post-COVID-19 will shape the infrastructure of the future, whether it will be clean or fossil intensive. Unfortunately many economic actors are using the COVID-19 crisis to roll back environmental regulations and stimulate investment by the taxpayer into fossil-intensive industry and economic policies.

Although many politicians are calling for a green recovery, which is positive, none of the current policies incorporate a just transition. A just transition would include job guarantee schemes and a rapid investment into green infrastructure as well as social justice and equity. A just transition would also account for the fact that not everyone can work from home, not everyone has a comfortable home to work in or the technology required to do so.

So what do we need to consider? Caroline Bird, who studies the cross-sectoral issues of environmental sustainability and energy in the Department of Computer Science, said that homeworking doesn’t work for everyone and often doesn’t work for the poorly paid. It doesn’t work well for the most vulnerable or least resilient in our society and community support is often needed here. We need to consider how we will educate everyone for a low carbon future. The government needs to take up the mantle and lead and pay for this. Policy change is possible, but we need to consider loss of interest and changing messages from the government that can lead to confusion.

We also need to consider rapid action to reduce the impact of COVID-19 and rapid action to reduce economic harm. But this is where the justice side of things is not well considered.

Can we imagine radical transformations as we emerge from lockdown?

Professor Dale Southerton, Professor in Sociology of Consumption and Organisation, in the Department of Management, initially raised some provocative questions: what has changed and what has remained and/or endured during COVID-19? And respectively, what will endure post-COVID-19? What has become the ‘new normal’ with regards to energy usage and consumption? Our routines and habits underpin our new normality and these routines and habits constitute demand – which is in opposition to how economists define demand. But how do the norms/normality come to be?

For example, how did the fridge freezer in our kitchen become normal? Because of the fridge freezer, it changed the design of our kitchens, we changed how we shopped, moving from small and regular local shopping trips to big weekly shops at supermarkets, all because we could store more fresh food. This drove us to embrace cars much more, as we needed the boot space to transport our fresh goods home and supermarkets were placed outside of local shopping areas so cars were needed to access them. All this together moves to the ‘normality’.

So then, what radical transformations have occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic? We’ve seen more of us move to homeworking, with face to face interactions taking place via video call. Our food distribution systems have changed somewhat away from going regularly to the supermarket or dining out to buying produce online and receiving deliveries, and embracing takeaway culture much more. In a relatively short period of time we have re-imagined how to work and made it happen. However, the material infrastructure and cultural and social elements still need to evolve and change (which includes how the changes might affect our mental health, how we discipline our time at home, etc).

Caroline said that there are lots of other things we could be doing to decarbonise our energy use during and post-COVID-19, such as:

  • Creating good staff with good knowledge. To do that we need to support their mental health, give them education and development opportunities, and strengthen the fragility of the supply chain they might work in.
  • Educating everyone about low carbon and energy efficiency. To do this we need to consider what skills are needed, which of those are transferable, which skills will take more time to develop and what training programmes are needed for individuals.
  • Developing policies which don’t allow resistance from developers, or poor workmanship of properties, which can have co-benefits to health and social justice. A better planned housing estate, home and national infrastructure will improve social justice and energy savings enormously.
The only thing stopping us is bureaucracy and policy. It’s up to us to challenge the pre-COVID-19 status quo and demand fairer and cleaner energy. You can do this by writing to your local MP, share information on social media and with your friends and take part in activism. We could have a positive new future if we get it right.


Follow the speakers on Twitter:
Dr Ed Atkins @edatkins_ 
Caroline Bird @CarolineB293
Professor Chris Preist @ChrisPreist
John Brenton @UoBris_Sust
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This blog was written by Amanda Woodman-Hardy, Cabot Institute Coordinator @Enviro_Mand. With thanks to Ruzanna Chitchyan for chairing the discussion panel and taking the notes.
Amanda Woodman-Hardy

Rebuilding Bristol as a city of care

Posted on by janet.crompton

I was asked to speak at an event organised by the Mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees and the City Office team that brought together academics and other interested in rebuilding Bristol. I was asked to respond to the following question and thought people might be interested in reading the full text here:

‘Bristol, along with cities all over the globe, is facing an unprecedented health, economic and social crisis. This brings both a challenge and an opportunity to rebuild our city. If we do it well, Bristol will be more inclusive, more sustainable and more resilient in the face of future shocks. If we do it without thinking, falling into old assumptions (i.e. badly), the opposite is true. How should we rebuild our city?’

In 5 minutes I can only hope to raise some issues and matters of concern. There are many present here today who will know a lot more than me about aspects of social justice – especially around race, disability and class and I hope they will join in afterwards with comments and concerns. This is intended to be a provocation for ongoing conversations that bring diverse knowledges and expertise together so that we can begin to rebuild our city to be more inclusive, sustainable and resilient.

We knew before this pandemic struck that many communities and organisations were facing an ongoing crisis – a crisis in which inequalities are growing, where austerity and a desire for growth at all costs had pushed cities around the world into a situation where social, economic and environmental justice were comprised.

The pandemic has helped to make visible where people and communities are falling through the cracks in our cities and illustrated more widely that a return to business as usual is not an attractive option for those of us interested in social, economic and environmental justice. It is not an option for those families living in crowded accommodation who don’t have enough food on a daily basis, it’s not an option for those living with disabilities or ill health who rely on inadequate, time rationed segments of care delivered by care workers who are undervalued and underpaid. It’s not an option either if we want to take our responsibilities to the planet seriously.

So what have we seen during this crisis that helps us to understand our challenges as a city and the assets that we have to draw on in rebuilding them.

We have seen the incredible efforts of the community and voluntary sector in the city who have built on established and designed new alliances to tackle their communities’ needs. These initiatives have gone way beyond reactively responding to the everyday, urgent needs of their communities. For instance, Knowle West Alliance, developed over the last two years, brings together large and small community organisations- they have set up a community food bank, coordinated volunteers, communicated through digital and postal service with all community members, used the amazing Bristol Can Do platform to recruit volunteers and assign them to a brand new befriending service and committed to reflecting and learning as part of this discussion. The Support Hub for older people, set up in 2 weeks in order to bring together organisations in the city concerned with the needs of older people, were determined to draw on their collective expertise to provide a range of support for older people including practical and emotional support but also virtual activities. These examples, and many others, demonstrate how through working collaboratively across sectors and alongside our communities we can go way beyond provision of ‘crisis’ support. They have shown the value and strength of the civil society sector in the city in working alongside communities at the margins building on their ongoing, long term work and trusted relationships with the communities that they serve.

We have finally appreciated and valued the key workers who support systems of care in the city – the care workers, teachers, food delivery workers and community development workers. Raising questions around how we might change our systems of value in the city.

Our neighbourhoods and streets have fostered intergenerational and cross cultural discussion and we have made new friends – we have come together in Whats App groups and through socially distant street gatherings to share our concerns, to provide care where this has been needed and, importantly, to laugh and cry together. A question we might want to explore here relates to how we might develop ‘community’ across our neighbourhoods providing the support we all need across generational and cultural difference, in and between hyperlocal areas?

Our green spaces have provided the space for those without gardens to enjoy fresh air and exercise, whilst socially distancing. Roads, free of cars, have provided new found space for children and families to play and cleaner air, particularly in those areas of the city where poor air quality is a particular concern. Lizzi has already suggested the need to capitalize on this in bringing forward environmental change in our city and globally.

I would argue that in Bristol’s response to COVID 19 we have seen that our city is a place resplendent with learning, creativity, innovation and care.

I want to pick up particularly on this last word which I think is highly relevant. I want to suggest that if we want to tackle issues of social, economic and environmental justice we need to retain a focus on the role of care in the city. I draw on the feminist scholar Jean Tronto’s definition of care as ‘everything that we do to maintain, continue and repair ‘our’ world so that we can live in it as well as possible. Feminist approaches to care foreground our interdependencies, and encourage us to take notice of peoples’ lived experiences, their existing knowledges and expertise and the stories they tell about them. They encourage us to do what Jane Jacob’s the great American City planner suggested – to take notice of the complexity of our city, to look closely ‘at the most ordinary scenes and events and attempt to see what they mean and whether any threads of principle emerge.’ (Jacobs, 161, p.23). I think we have seen a lot of these ordinary scenes during this pandemic but that we need to work quickly to recognise the threads of principles and new values that might emerge.

My suggestion is that we need to work care-fully together to build on the wide range of vital and lively existing learning, innovation and creativity in our cities. However, a word of caution. We must not make assumptions that there is consensus on what these principles or values might be and we need to recognize that ‘rebuilding Bristol’, especially if we want to challenge concerns around social, economic and environmental justice, will not be easy. We will need to continually ask ‘who is not involved?’ We will need to ensure that we work with others who are ‘not like us’ or with whom we disagree. We will need to design new processes and methods for this and we will have to be open to building new relational capacities in the process, with each other but also with the environment surrounding us.

I want to finish by saying this is a moment that we need to grasp head on drawing on the many assets that we have in the city, many of which have been made more visible through this crisis. We have achieved so much in the city during this pandemic which will support us to work differently to challenge questions of social, economic and environmental justice in the city.

**Watch Helen discuss this subject area in more detail in our Annual Lecture 2019 below**


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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Helen Manchester, Associate Professor in Digital Inequalities & Urban Futures at the School of Education, University of Bristol and a Bristol City Fellow. This blog was reposted with kind permission from the School of Education blog. View the original blog.

Helen Manchester

Coronavirus: flying in fruit pickers from countries in lockdown is dangerous for everyone

Posted on by janet.crompton
Affordable and plentiful fruit and veg will come at the price of violating the strict national lockdowns in Bulgaria and Romania. epic_images/Shutterstock

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, major agricultural companies and charities have chartered flights to urgently bring in tens of thousands of Bulgarian and Romanian agricultural workers. Flights have headed to places like Karlsruhe and Düsseldorf in Germany, along with Essex and the Midlands in the UK.

This comes after farmers in both countries warned there is a real risk that thousands of tons of produce might be left to rot – further affecting food supply chains – if vacancies for agricultural workers go unfilled.

The excessive demand for food during lockdown has meant that farm labourers are classed as key workers, which is why they are being flown to the UK and other Western European countries.

In the UK, up to 90,000 temporary positions need to be filled within weeks. A national campaign has been launched appealing to students and those who have lost their jobs in bars, cafes and shops to help with the harvest. But so far the scheme only has around 10,000 applicants with even fewer having accepted work contracts due to low pay and demanding terms. This is nowhere near enough to ensure the sustainability of food supply chains.

That means that affordable and plentiful fruit and veg in UK supermarkets will come at the price of violating the strict national lockdowns in Bulgaria and Romania.

From ‘go back’ to ‘come back’

As of last year, nearly 98% of fruit pickers in the UK were foreign nationals. The vast majority come from Bulgaria and Romania. Both countries went into full lockdowns earlier in March, banning international travel. Chartering flights when borders are closed and planes grounded is effectively undermining the efforts of the Bulgarian and Romanian governments to manage the current health crisis.

The European Commission has banned non-essential travel while speeding up the mobility of key workers – a recognition of Western European dependency on Eastern European labour. The Bulgarian and Romanian governments have also been lax and have not insisted that Western European employers provide comprehensive health insurance for agricultural workers.

Farmers have said that without the workforce, crops may be left in the ground to rot and be wasted. Ververidis Vasilis/Shutterstock

There were promises of social distancing on planes and hand sanitiser was to be handed out. But photos of overcrowded airport lounges have demonstrated a complete disregard of health and safety. Workers will also not be paid for the mandatory 14 day quarantine period upon arrival.

Key workers to key spreaders

The reason why the lockdowns in Bulgaria and Romania are particularly strict is because both countries have fast-growing ageing populations.

The share of the population above the age of 65 between 2008 and 2018 is 2.8% for Romania and 3.2% for Bulgaria – both higher than the EU average of 2.6%. Many families also live in multi-generational households, which could put older family members at risk when the younger members return back home.

The exodus of doctors, nurses and care workers from Bulgaria and Romania also means access to medical care in smaller towns and rural areas – where most of these workers come from – will be all but impossible.

If returning migrant workers retrigger the pandemic, the consequences for both countries will be disastrous.

Economic dependency

But herein lies another part of the problem, because the national economies of both countries are heavily dependent on remittances – money sent back home from migrant workers.

For most of these people, seasonal work abroad is the only source of income and there is no safety net. They either stay home unemployed, or risk their (and their families’) health by boarding flights to the UK or Germany.

The financial incentive may be great. But so too are the public health risks. A 57-year old Romanian seasonal worker has already died from COVID-19 in Baden-Württemberg, Germany – begging the question of how many more will follow.

Food for thought

For the most part, the British public has long been disassociated from the realities of low-paid manual labour and has grown accustomed to fresh and inexpensive products produced by a disposable army of migrant workers.

And despite Brexit anxieties about EU migrants stealing British jobs, the COVID-19 pandemic has reminded the public that such labour is essential and won’t be automated anytime soon.

Ultimately though, it shouldn’t be down to migrant workers to fix supply chains during a pandemic – especially when evidence indicates that international mobility is contributing to the spread of the virus. Chartering flights during travel bans and national lockdowns is a dangerous reminder of how exploitative labour overrides political and public health responsibility.

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This blog is written by Dr Denny Pencheva, Senior Teaching Associate, Migration Studies and Politics, University of Bristol. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Dr Denny Pencheva

Coronavirus conspiracy theories are dangerous – here’s how to stop them spreading

Posted on by janet.crompton

 

Conspiracy theories increase the likelihood that people won’t follow expert advice. Shutterstock

The number of coronavirus infections and deaths continues to rise at an alarming rate, reminding us that this crisis is far from over. In response, the global scientific community has thrown itself at the problem and research is unfolding at an unprecedented rate.

The new virus was identified, along with its natural origins, and tests for it were rapidly developed. Labs across the world are racing to develop a vaccine, which is estimated to be still around 12 to 18 months away.

At the same time, the pandemic has been accompanied by an infodemic of nonsense, disinformation, half-truths and conspiracy theories that have spread virally through social networks. This damages society in a variety of ways. For example, the myth that COVID-19 is less dangerous than the seasonal flu was deployed by US president Donald Trump as justification for delaying mitigation policies.

The recent downgrading of COVID-19 death projections, which reveal the success of social-distancing policies, has been falsely used to justify premature relaxing of social distancing measures. This is the logical equivalent of throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because it’s kept you dry until then.

The new conspiracy theory that blames COVID-19 on the 5G broadband system is one of the most bizarre pieces of misinformation. There are several strains of this theory, ranging from the claims that 5G alters people’s immune systems to the idea that 5G changes people’s DNA, making them more susceptible to infection. Then there’s the idea that secret messages about 5G and coronavirus were hidden in the design of the new £20 note in the UK. In reality, 5G relates to viruses and bank notes as much as the tooth fairy relates to zoology – not at all.

The 5G conspiracy theory originated in early March when an American physician, Thomas Cowan, proposed it in a YouTube video (which has since been taken down by YouTube according to their new policy). Some people have taken this conspiracy theory so seriously that it led to people setting 5G towers in the UK on fire and threatening broadband engineers.

The conspiracy theory has begun to penetrate mainstream society. Among other celebrities, UK TV personality Eamonn Holmes and US actor Woody Harrelson have given fuel to the idea.

Inoculating against conspiracy theories

As we document in our recent Conspiracy Theory Handbook, there is a great deal of scientific research into why people might be susceptible to conspiracy theories. When people suffer loss of control or feel threatened, it makes them more vulnerable to believing conspiracies. Unfortunately, this means that pandemics have always been breeding grounds for conspiracy theories, from antisemitic hysteria during the Black Death to today’s 5G craze.

An effective strategy for preventing conspiracy theories from spreading through social networks is, appropriately enough, inoculation. As we document in the Conspiracy Theory Handbook, if we inoculate the public by pre-emptively warning them of misleading misinformation, they develop resilience and are less likely to be negatively influenced. Inoculating messages can take several forms. As well as giving people the right facts, inoculation can also be logic-based and source-based.

Questioning the sources

The source-based approach focuses on analysing the people who push the conspiracy theory and the cultural infrastructure from which they emerged.

For example, the 5G theory began with Thomas Cowan, a physician whose medical licence is on a five-year probation. He is currently prohibited from providing cancer treatment to patients and supervising physician assistants and advanced practice nurses. So we can question his credentials.

His 5G video was from a talk he presented at a pseudo-scientific conference featuring a who’s who of science deniers. One of the headliners was Andrew Wakefield, a debarred former physician and seminal figure in the anti-vaccination movement who promotes highly damaging misinformation about vaccination based on data that he is known to have falsified.

Another attendee of this meeting was the president of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness, an organisation famous for bestowing awards onto fossil-fuel funded climate deniers and for giving a platform to a speaker who denied the link between HIV and AIDS, claiming that the link was invented by government scientists who wanted to cover up other health risks of “the lifestyle of homosexual men.”

For the public to be protected against the 5G conspiracy theory, it is important to understand its emergence from the same infrastructure that also supports AIDS denial, anti-vaccination conspiracies and climate denial.

It is therefore unsurprising that the rhetorical techniques that are deployed against the seriousness of climate change are similar to those used to mismanage the COVID-19 crisis.

Yale Climate Connections, Author provided

 

Questioning the logic

Another way to neutralise conspiracy theories is through logic-based inoculation. This involves explaining the rhetorical techniques and tell-tale traits to be found in misinformation, so that people can flag it before it has a chance to mislead them. In the Conspiracy Theory Handbook, we document seven traits of conspiratorial thinking. Spotting these can help people identify a baseless theory.

Conspiracy Theory Handbook, Author provided

One trait that is particularly salient in the 5G conspiracy theory is re-interpreting randomness. With this thought pattern, random events are re-interpreted as being causally connected and woven into a broader, interconnected pattern.

For example, the introduction of 5G in 2019 coincided with the origin of COVID-19 and hence is interpreted to be causally related. But by that logic, other factors that were introduced in 2019 – say, the global phenomenon of Baby Yoda – could also be interpreted as a possible cause of COVID-19.

Correlation does not equal causation. The 5G conspiracy theory is also immune to evidence, despite having been debunked extensively. To illustrate, some of the countries worst affected by the pandemic (such as Iran) do not have any 5G technology.

Of course, 5G has nothing to do with a virus. In the US, T-Mobile’s low-band 5G data is transmitted using old UHF TV channels. UHF TV did not cause coronavirus and neither does 5G.

John Cook, Author provided

 

The crucial role of social media platforms

Social media platforms contribute to the problem of misinformation by providing the means for it to quickly and freely disseminate to the general public. Given that 330,000 lives were lost in relation to AIDS in South Africa during the presidency of Thabo Mbeki, when denying the disease’s link to HIV was official state policy. Given that people in the UK are now vandalizing potentially life-saving communication infrastructure, social media companies should not aid and abet the life-threatening disinformation that is spewed by a nexus of science deniers and conspiracy theorists.

To their credit, these firms are making an effort to be part of the solution to the problem of misinformation. For example, YouTube has announced that it will take down any video that espouses the 5G conspiracy theory. This is a move in the right direction.

There is considerable room for improvement, however. A recent test by the non-profit Disinfo.eu laboratory found much conspiratorial content on various social media platforms, and we were able to find hundreds of YouTube videos promulgating the 5G nonsense with a few keystrokes.

Much remains to be done.The Conversation

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This blog was written by Cabot Institute member Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, Chair of Cognitive Psychology, University of Bristol and John Cook, Research Assistant Professor, Center for Climate Change Communication, George Mason University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Professor Stephan Lewandowsky
Dr John Cook
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