Tag: George Ferguson

COP21 daily report: Setting a more ambitious agenda – Bristol’s Transformative Action Plans

Posted on by janet.crompton
Cabot Institute Director Professor Rich Pancost will be attending COP21 in Paris as part of the Bristol city-wide team, including the Mayor of Bristol, representatives from Bristol City Council and the Bristol Green Capital Partnership. He will be writing blogs during COP21, reflecting on what is happening in Paris, especially in the Paris and Bristol co-hosted Cities and Regions Pavilion, and also on the conclusion to Bristol’s year as the European Green Capital.  Follow #UoBGreen and #COP21 for live updates from the University of Bristol.

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On Monday, the Bristol Team arrived in Paris for the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference (COP21).  The Bristol cohort includes not just the Mayor and Bristol City Council, but also representatives from the Green Capital Partnership and an independent group from Love the Future (15 stalwarts who cycled from Bristol to Paris through typically British November weather). I’ll be joining them on Sunday… but some of the most exciting activity will happen today.

Bristol’s primary engagement with COP21 will be via the Cities and Regions Pavilion, hosted by Paris and Bristol and facilitated by ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, with support from over 40 partners.  It is testimony to the stature of Bristol as 2015 Green Capital that it is able to share this venue with Paris. Moreover, the Pavilion is a fantastic opportunity for Bristol to share, connect with and learn from hundreds of cities from across the globe.

Bristol is one of 88 cities and regions in 42 countries to present innovative projects aimed at placing local and regional governments at the heart of positive and long-term climate action.  These Transformative Action Plans (TAPs) represent a 10-year initiative that aims to transform the lives of their citizens.  They arise from ICLEI’s recognition that local entities must take the lead in delivering but also extending the commitments emerging from the national-scale negotiations.  Bristol is pitching two projects, one on energy efficiency and one on smarter future planning of cities. The University of Bristol, including its Cabot Institute, has been closely involved with the development of both and former Bristol Professor Andy Gouldson will be sharing the stage with Mayor George Ferguson today.

George Ferguson, Mayor of Bristol, said: 

“Bristol’s innovative plans, boosted by our year as European Green Capital, have been rated amongst the very best across cities and regions around the world thanks to their potential to transform the lives of our citizens. We’re proud to be among the world’s pioneering sustainable thinkers at COP21 and we look forward to bridging the gap ahead of the expected 2020 agreement with immediate actions that help reduce emissions, tackle poverty, improve lives and create new jobs through investment in low carbon projects.”

The first proposal, entitled ‘Energy efficiency for everyone’ (or Bristol Billion), is for a $1B (or £700m) investment to make Bristol’s buildings more energy efficient, thereby achieving significant carbon, energy, economic and even health savings. It will involve refurbishing 56,000 homes in Bristol – 30% of the city – and crucially it will not only make our city more sustainable but it will lift these homes out of fuel poverty and reduce health costs.  This proposal is based in part on a Cabot Institute-commissioned report that has also been released to the public today: The Economics of Low Carbon Cities: A mini-Stern Review for Bristol. This research shows that Bristol can achieve marked reductions in its emissions while saving money; in fact, the whole project could pay for itself in under a decade.  However, such a bold endeavour requires bold financing and hence the Bristol Billion proposition.

The Economics of Low Carbon Cities – report commissioned by the Cabot Institute

The Bristol Billion should achieve the energy efficiency gains necessary for the city to meet its 2015 to 2025 emissions reductions targets, but Bristol must also establish a foundation for the more challenging emission reductions to occur beyond 2025 and especially 2030.  Whether it be transforming the South West energy supply chain via the Bristol Energy Company or transforming its transport system, these changes will be more challenging and controversial. And that is the basis for the second project, the ‘Bristol Brain’, which seeks to reimagine how citizens and planners can work together to shape a sustainable future for the city. The Bristol Brain is ‘a physical and digital city model, on top of which, real-time data and sophisticated analytics can be projected and visualised, creating environments that can be explored through virtual and augmented reality. This will allow different scenarios for future developments to be explored as if they are real, and for the impact on energy, transport, air quality and other factors, to be fully understood.’

The Bristol Brain could facilitate city-scale planning decisions ranging from emergency services, road maintenance, and new public works. It could allow the social and economic impacts of major investments to be assessed and justified. Most importantly, it is a tool for testing and thereby empowering the radical reimagining of Bristol. It is the type of tool that citizens can use to justify maintenance of the M32… or its conversion into a bus-exclusive route… or even closing it and turning it into a city-scale garden.
This type of creative imagining is vital. Professor Colin Taylor, the head of the Cabot Institute’s Future Cities research theme, has argued that robust future city planning requires a city emulator so that we can truly explore the potential costs and benefits of truly transformative change. Crucially, the Bristol Brain would also support the more real-time interactive experiments that will be enabled by Bristol is Open and ensure that Bristol remains at the cutting edge of creative technology.
There remain challenges.  According to Bristol City Council, ‘The critical next step is to ensure these projects receive adequate financial resources to address urgent and evolving local needs to create a sustainable future.’ 

Another challenge is ensuring that such projects, especially the Bristol Brain, create an open and inclusive conversation about Bristol’s future. The University is committed to supporting these efforts.  If the Bristol Brain were to be made available to the public, perhaps via an allotment of the University’s High Performance Computing facility, then it becomes not just a resource for planning and consultation but for citizen-led propositions and inclusive innovation. 

The COP21 ambition, expressed by national governments via their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), is very likely to fall short of the global target of 2 degrees C warming. As such, it is crucial that other actors, including cities, take the lead in driving a more ambitious emissions reduction agenda. Moreover, they must work with universities, industry and civil society to stimulate, incubate and test new innovations. 

Bristol recognises that it can do more than follow an emissions path set by others. It can be a Laboratory for Change.
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Note: This blog is based partly on and includes text from a Bristol City Council press release.

This blog is by Prof Rich Pancost, Director of the Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol.  For more information about the University of Bristol at COP21, please visit bristol.ac.uk/green-capital
Prof Rich Pancost
This blog is part of a COP21 daily report series. View other blogs in the series:
 

The Uncertain World: Question Time

Posted on by janet.crompton
This week we are focussing on our Uncertain World, with a host of events and interactions to meet with new communities, think around new ideas and establish new solutions for what’s in store for us in the future.  We will be posting blogs every day this week on ‘Our Uncertain World’. Join the conversation with us on Twitter using the hashtag #UncertainWorld and contribute your thoughts and concerns to our (virtual) graffiti wall.  
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The current rate of environmental change is unprecedented in Earth’s history and many aspects of climate change are understood. Yet, others are not. Scientists can say with a high confidence that temperatures and sea level rise – but continue to remain uncertain on the scale and speed of such processes. Policy makers are now challenged to make decisions that possess long term repercussions on the basis of information that is deemed uncertain. However, it is not just the science that may appear incomplete – social, economic and regulatory trends also remain unpredictable.
The Question Time panel, left to right: Neha Mehta (Bristol Youth Mayor); Ann Cousins (ARUP);
Peter Macfadyen (Ex-Comic Relief & Frome Mayor); Leo Hickman (Carbon Brief);
George Ferguson (Bristol Mayor); Andrew Kelly (Bristol Festival of Ideas).
It is this relationship between policy and an uncertain environment that was the focus of the Cabot Institute’s Uncertain World: Question Time event on the 21 October 2015. Chaired by Andrew Kelly of the Festival of Ideas, the panel included: Bristol Mayor George Ferguson; Bristol Youth Mayor Neha Mehta; Leo Hickman of the Carbon Brief; Peter Macfadyen, formerly Mayor of Frome and a leader in the Transition Town movement; and Ann Cousins, a Sustainability Consultant at Arup. 
This Question Time event forms part of a wider ongoing dialogue between the Cabot Institute and the Bristol public,  based on making climate-based uncertainty real, relevant and personal for all – whilst exploring what climate change means for this city and its inhabitants.
As George Ferguson said in his opening statement, 

“the stars do seem aligned for Bristol”.  

This is true – the city is European Green Capital, one of the Rockefeller 100 Resilient Cities, and possesses a vibrant sense of community that previous conversations have drawn upon. Recent surveys have shown that over two thirds of the city’s population are concerned with the effects of climate change – as a local and a global issue. This provides a clear mandate for this city, and its leaders to act. 
Yet, as Ann Cousins and Leo Hickman argued – it is not just the traditional decision makers who must make these changes. The inspiration of figureheads cannot occur in a vacuum. We are all leaders – be it via changing our own behaviour or by engaging with others to change theirs. 
What became particularly evident in discussions at the public dialogue event was the focus on the local community to meet uncertainty. It is this pooling of risk that resulted in some of our most innovative, and important, social institutions – with the NHS providing just one example. In the face of increased social uncertainty today, many have independently set up food banks and swap-shops – resulting in cooperative ventures and the circular economy becoming more commonplace. It is no secret that the effects of climate change will be first felt at the local level – and it is this pooling of risk that provides an important route to adaptation.
As Frome has shown – and Peter Macfadyen voiced – the answer lies at the community level. For meaningful change, policy must move beyond mere nudge theory and towards tipping points. Change can only occur by giving people agency – by inspiring them to embrace individual mitigation and adaptation strategies. From decreased wastage to selling the car and waiting at the bus stop. This cannot occur in isolation – it must embrace the complexity of climate change as a social issue and link it directly to the lives we live. Radical change will be necessary but it will be a quiet revolution, based on information and engagement.
 
Peter Mcfadyen (centre) tells the room that the answer to climate change lies
at the community level.
Although there may be wide agreement that climate change is occurring – there is often a popular disconnect between the phenomena and its consequences for us as societies and individuals. When the media talk about climate change scepticism, they are usually referring to people who are uncertain about the reality or seriousness of climate change. Psychologists at the University of Illinois have found an important discrepancy between how the term ‘uncertainty’ is meant in scientific reports and how it is interpreted by others [1]. This is a problem when the 2013 report of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change used the term over 2200 times – approximately 1.5 times per page of the report of the working group alone [2].
A number of the event’s questions focused on the need for radical change in Bristol – including the pedestrianisation of the M32, Oslo’s ban on cars, and a policies on inter-community recycling and reuse. This struck me – the desire for radical change was near-unanimous. But, how representative of this is Bristol as a whole? Many still posses a tunnelled vision and a drawbridge mentality in their understanding of shifting climates – “it’s not affecting me, why should I care?” Priorities lie elsewhere: securing basic needs, prosperity, health, etc. Sadly, climate change doesn’t possess the minds of many.
Seoul – pedestrianised one of its motorways. Is this on the cards for Bristol’s M32?
Image credit Better Nation.
Climate change continues to feel distant. A question for science, rather than society. We have seen the images of Hurricane Sandy and of sea level rise – but these are from a different world, a great distance from our front doors. The biggest question of the night for me will continue to plague me for a while longer: Has Bristol felt climate change enough to cause this behavioural change on an individual level? And, if not what will it take?

References

[1] David V. Budescu, Stephen Broomell & Han-Hui Poor (2009). Improving the uncertainty in the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Psychological Science, 20(3): 299-308
[2] Stephan Lewandowsky, Timotyhy Ballard, & Richard D. Pancost (2015). Uncertainty as Knowledge, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 373(2055).
 
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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Ed Atkins, a PhD student at the University of Bristol who studies water scarcity and environmental conflict.

Ed Atkins

Other blogs in the Uncertain World series:

The Uncertain World: A public dialogue

 

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