green heroes – Cabot Institute for the Environment blog

University of Bristol’s Green Heroes: Rich Pancost

Posted on August 27, 2015April 13, 2023 by janet.crompton

In the run up to the Bristol Post’s Green Capital Awards, we thought we’d highlight some of our key Green Heroes and Green Leaders at the University of Bristol. As part of a four part blog series this week, we will be highlighting some of the key figures behind the scenes and in front of the limelight who are the green movers and shakers of our university. There are many more Green Heroes across the University that we would like to celebrate. To find out more about who they are and what they are doing to make our university and city a better place, please visit our Sustainability Stories website.
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Rich Pancost

With a background in Geology, Rich has steered his academic progress through a career straddling a range of disciplines from oceanography to isotope geochemistry, but all of which has been focused on understanding environmental change and its impact on life.

Rich has now been based in Bristol for the last 15 years and became Cabot Institute Director in 2013. The Cabot Institute engages interdisciplinary approaches to address the major environmental challenges of the 21st century. Rich’s work within the Institute has incorporated an assortment of current topics relating to how we live on the planet including natural hazards, climate change and food security.

One of Rich’s primary goals for the institute is to stimulate a dialogue between contrasting academic communities, particularly between the social and physical sciences, in combination with communication between the university and the city of Bristol. His modern vision of progress comprises a union of thoughts and ideas as he explains: “There are very few Newtons, Keplers and Darwins. I think that relatively few breakthroughs in the next century will be because of some genius sitting in a room by themself. Ultimately, those who come up with exciting new ideas will do so because they have been exposed to a cocktail of different interactions and stimuli, that will challenge us to think in very different ways.”

Under Rich’s direction, the Cabot Institute is trying to link up academics to create new communities within the university that can reach out into the public. It is this process that Rich identifies as a fundamental issue for our community to overcome: “The biggest challenge facing our city is inclusion and this is also true of Bristol 2015. We need to show how this is relevant to everyone’s lives; it is about carrying everyone along for the journey”. Additionally, he believes in maintaining the long term benefits of Bristol 2015:

“Being Green Capital isn’t a one year thing- it’s a long term legacy. We will always be the UK’s first Green Capital and that will always carry obligations and opportunities.”

This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Keri McNamara, a PhD student in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol.

If you would like to nominate your Green Hero or Green Leader in the upcoming Bristol Post Green Capital Awards, please visit the official Green Capital Awards website. Entries close on 18 September 2015.

To learn more about the University of Bristol’s activities and commitments during the Bristol 2015 European Green Capital year, please visit bristol.ac.uk/green-capital.

University of Bristol’s Green Heroes: Martin Wiles

Posted on August 26, 2015April 13, 2023 by janet.crompton

In the run up to the Bristol Post’s Green Capital Awards, we thought we’d highlight some of our key Green Heroes and Green Leaders at the University of Bristol. As part of a four part blog series this week, we will be highlighting some of the key figures behind the scenes and in front of the limelight who are the green movers and shakers of our university. There are many more Green Heroes across the University that we would like to celebrate. To find out more about who they are and what they are doing, please visit our Sustainability Stories website.
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Martin Wiles

Martin Wiles is the head of Sustainability on the University Estate Management team and leads a team of thirteen staff who have been responsible for delivering university-wide sustainability initiatives.

Martin and his team are responsible for designing and implementing green solutions to the University’s energy problems. This has lead them to an array of successes, including reducing CO2 emissions by 2000 tonnes, despite a growth in the University estate and population , through the carbon management plan. Martin and his team have accomplished this largely by the installation of carbon combined heat and power and solar photovoltaics.

Despite this achievement, Martin’s work has not been limited to CO2 reduction; the University now recycles over 80% of its domestic and construction wastes. Additionally, he has made headway in sustainable transport solutions, procurement and construction.

As well as solving practical issues in the University’s sustainability aims, Martin has been closely engaged with the student population, through a food cooperative, cycle schemes and student conferences.

Martin attributes his green-mindedness to a geography lesson in 1980; “we were looking at de-forestation in the Amazon, couldn’t believe what was happening!”. After years of hard work to bring the university this far, his task is far from over as he elaborates; “Making the University sustainable is a long term project, the challenge is to keep everyone engaged with the agenda and taking sustainable actions, the end of 2015 Green Capital year is not the end of our sustainable work”.

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Keri McNamara, a PhD student in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol.

To learn more about the University of Bristol’s activities and commitments during the Bristol 2015 European Green Capital year, please visit bristol.ac.uk/green-capital.

University of Bristol’s green heroes: Katherine Baldock

Posted on August 25, 2015April 13, 2023 by janet.crompton

In the run up to the Bristol Post’s Green Capital Awards, we thought we’d highlight some of our key Green Heroes and Green Leaders at the University of Bristol. As part of a four part blog series this week, we will be highlighting some of the key figures behind the scenes and in front of the limelight who are the green movers and shakers of our university. There are many more Green Heroes across the University that we would like to celebrate. To find out more about who they are and what they are doing, please visit our Sustainability Stories website.
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Katherine Baldock

Katherine is a NERC Knowledge Exchange Fellow in the School of Biological Sciences and at the Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol.

Katherine has come from a background in Biology, studying in Bristol as an undergraduate. Her subsequent passion for biology and ecology has drawn her to study at various institutions and work all over the world in places such as Costa Rica and Kenya.

Her academic work is focussed on the networks of interactions between plants and their pollinators, particularly in urban environments. Her research objectives aim to improve the value of UK urban areas for insect pollinators; research which hopes to positively impact insects that are essential for maintaining a functioning ecosystem and subsequently our food supplies. Her current role requires her to liaise with policymakers, practitioners and conservation charities to ensure an effective link between research and policy. Her work is essential to Bristol as well as cities across the UK and has resulted in government action, as she elaborates: “The government have published a National Pollinator Strategy and a partnership of organisations has created a local Greater Bristol Pollinator Strategy so that we can promote action for pollinators across the whole city”.

Her work is more than just a job, Katherine is passionate about the research she does and the effects it has on our cities as she explains: “If everyone plays a part and creates a little bit of habitat for bees and other pollinating insects in their own gardens, allotments or window boxes we could really make a difference. I’m passionate about preserving nature, not just for nature’s sake but also because it is incredibly important for our health and wellbeing and provides us with so many essential services – from crop pollination to carbon sequestration to water purification.”

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Keri McNamara, a PhD student in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol.

To learn more about the University of Bristol’s activities during the Bristol 2015 European Green Capital year, please visit bristol.ac.uk/green-capital.

University of Bristol’s green heroes – Chris Willmore

Posted on August 24, 2015April 13, 2023 by janet.crompton

In the run up to the Bristol Post’s Green Capital Awards, we thought we’d highlight some of our key Green Heroes and Green Leaders at the University of Bristol. As part of a four part blog series this week, we will be highlighting some of the key figures behind the scenes and in front of the limelight who are the green movers and shakers of our university. There are many more Green Heroes across the University that we would like to celebrate. To find out more about who they are and what they are doing, please visit our Sustainability Stories website.
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Chris Willmore is the University of Bristol’s Green Academy academic lead, Director of Undergraduate Studies and lead academic for Technology Enhanced Learning.

Growing up in increasingly over-developed London, Chris has since fostered a passion for saving open spaces and built environments. After an early career as a barrister practising environmental and planning law, Chris decided to move back into academia; “being a barrister you tend to get involved in problems when things have gone wrong. I wanted to help prevent problems” she explains.

The transition to academia lead Chris to a position in the university’s Law school. In this time, Chris has used her role to introduce a number of schemes to help educate and encourage students to be involved in green issues. This includes introducing an award-winning interdisciplinary course termed ‘Sustainable Development’. The motivation for the course was inspire students to expand their thoughts on how sustainability is an issue for all, as Chris explains: “the whole aim was to offer students an opportunity to understand sustainable development as a holistic issue – and to see how different disciplines bring different things to the challenges”.

Her work isn’t confined to taught courses, over the last few years Chris has worked with the University’s students union to engage students in informal extra curricular activities such as the ‘switch off campaign’. In her words, this was key for “thinking about how students could change this city – after all they are 10% of the city’s population between the two universities”.

This work has drawn Chris away from pure law issues and into engaging the broader student population, through sustainable volunteering schemes. Chris is also part of a pioneering committee that aims to determine the best sustainable future for the university termed the ‘Green Academy team’. Chris explains why this team, which was formed off the back of Higher Education Academy Initiative, has been such a success: “our low cost, networked approach has attracted a lot of interest as an alternative to top down resource intensive approaches”.

Her ambitions aren’t just for a ‘quick fix’ either – Chris has long term goals for her work with the student population; “Our biggest environmental impact as a university is the thousands of students who graduate each year with a lifetime of footprint ahead of them. We need to skill them to be able to make wise choices”.

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Keri McNamara, a PhD student in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol.

To learn more about the University of Bristol’s activities during the Bristol 2015 European Green Capital year, please visit bristol.ac.uk/green-capital.