Tag: Hayley Shaw

Black Lives Matter

Posted on by janet.crompton

Diversity is an issue that the Cabot Institute team discuss a lot. Out of a concern for the lack of inclusion in Bristol’s ‘green scene’, we awarded Innovation Funds to the brilliant Green and Black Ambassadors’ project to support two black women to develop their (already inspiring) leadership and begin to build a more inclusive environmental community. We’ve refused to participate in, or cancelled, events that didn’t have diversity in the speaker list. And we feel proud to have the first female president of the Royal Meteorological Society as the Chair of our Board.

Whilst small, these actions require individual and collective consciousness embedded in everyday decisions.

But for all our caring and progress to date, we know we have not done enough. Not nearly.

The past few weeks have, in honesty, left us reeling. The tragic death of George Floyd, and the widespread #BlackLivesMatter activism that followed have served as a critical and hard-hitting reminder of just how far we have to go – as a society but also as a research Institute. We also know that however much recent events have floored us, it is just a fraction of how our friends of colour, but particularly our black friends, must feel. As an all-white team, we can never fully understand the toll these everyday aggressions and acts of discrimination have. But we can turn our passion and attention to the issue, we can listen and learn, and we can work in earnest to be part of the solution.

First steps

On #BlackoutTuesday we posted the following message on social media.

It felt essential to publicly stand with our black colleagues, friends and role models and note our solidarity. However, we were well aware that this might be perceived as tokenistic, or worse, hijacking a sincere campaign with insincere ‘marketing’ if our statement was made in the absence of action. In posting this, we also committed to discussing what practical steps we might take to make real progress.

Actions, not words

The result of our conversations have now been released in a public statement outlining some of the steps we commit to taking in pursuit of a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable environmental research community.

Read our public statement on Black Lives Matter.

We will soon issue a formal invitation for individuals to join our working group, to which we will particularly encourage participation of BAME, LGBTQ+ and other underrepresented groups. However, we recognise that in doing so we are calling on the time and emotional resources of underrepresented communities to fix a problem that should be ‘owned’ by others. We will strive to get the balance right.

We invite anyone who wants to support our review, or the actions resulting from it, or even to offer feedback, to contact us at cabot-enquiries@bristol.ac.uk.

Let’s not wait

Whilst a measured review will provide the most sensible starting point for meaningful action, we were keen to set a number of balls rolling as quickly as we could. To date, members of the team have:

  • Contacted the leads of the Cabot Project, who have very helpfully sent us some resources on the history of John Cabot.
  • Identified other papers which shed light on John’s history and the implications for environmental justice.
  • Identified scholarships which could specifically support BAME candidates to join our Master’s by Research programme and begun promoting these.
  • Initiated a review of our online communications materials to explore how many projects or news items profile people of colour.
  • Contacted UoB Business Analysts to assess the diversity of our environmental community and provide crucial analysis to inform the working group once established.
  • Our theme leaders for Natural Hazards – Dann Mitchell and Ryerson Christie – have confirmed their support of the ‘Statement on Systemic Racism and Disasters’ from the North American Alliance of Hazards and Disaster Research Institutes (NAAHDRI) condemning violence and systemic racism
  • All University Research Institute Directors have signed an email to the University leadership in addition to the broader ‘decolonise the University’ campaign, calling for a change to the University logo.

We have only just begun, and there will be many holes in the plans we have laid out. Many nuances missed. Many opportunities for us to improve. We welcome feedback and critique from you all to help guide and shape our efforts. With many minds, and many perspectives, we can and will make a difference.

In closing, I want to say two things. First, an enormous thank you to the Cabot Team. Whilst we are realistic that we have a mountain to climb and much to learn, the intense debate and discussion catalysed with you all in these past weeks gives me hope. I’m so incredibly fortunate to work with a team who care deeply about inclusion. Your willingness to be vocal about the need to change, to openly and kindly challenge one another to be better, and proactively consider how you can help build a better and more inclusive research Institute inspires me no end. It has also taught me the importance of that crucial ‘first conversation’. It was Mand (Amanda Woodman-Hardy) who sent an (possibly out of hours) email to the team noting her discomfort with our silence on #BlackLivesMatter that kick-started a sincere and engaged conversation.

So to the second point – be the person who starts the conversation in your team, in your family, in your friendship group. These conversations can be emotive, challenging, and uncomfortable, but they can also be energising and hopeful. Either way, they are crucial, and I for one, will be challenging myself to #BeMoreMand* in the months and years ahead.

*Edit: After reviewing this blog post, Mand noted her discomfort at making this about her – a white person. We do need to value the personal leadership of white colleagues in being vocal & challenging the status quo – after all, we simply cannot expect those most affected to be the ones forced to speak up. However, I recognise this discomfort. It is essential that the voices of people of colour are elevated at this time. It is these perspectives that matter, these perspectives we should hear. As such, I include below (with thanks to colleagues at the Centre for Black Humanities for sharing on twitter, and to colleagues at the School of Geographical Sciences for emailing) a small list of inspiring and important resources developed/ written by people of colour. We will aim to share a much wider list of resources in a separate thread.

You may also wish to begin following the those on the ‘powerlist’ of Bristol’s most influential Black and Minority Ethnic individuals (as voted for by the people of Bristol), or connect with the following organisations: Stand Up To Racism, Black Lives Matter UK @BLMUK , Black Lives Matter @Blklivesmatter, Southall Black Sisters, The British Blacklist, Show Racism The Red Card, Runnymede Trust, Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust, SARI: Stand Against Racism and Inequality, 4FrontProject @4FrontProject , Inquest @INQUEST_ORG, The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants @JCWI_UK, United Friends and Family Campaign @UFFCampaign, Black South West Network @BlackSWNet.

I add this edit to reflect the way we are all challenging and learning in real time. We won’t get it right all the time, but through discussion, we will get it right more of the time.

——————————-
This blog is written by Hayley Shaw, Manager of the Cabot Institute for the Environment at the University of Bristol.

How University-city partnerships can help us tackle the global climate emergency

Posted on by janet.crompton

 

Image credit: Chris Bhan 

Climate scientists have made it clear: we are in a global state of emergency. The International Panel on Climate Change report published late last year was a wake-up call to the world – if we don’t limit warming to 1.5 degrees, 10 million more people will be exposed to flood risk. If we don’t, it will be much, much harder to grow crops and have affordable food. If we don’t, we’ll have more extreme weather, which will undoubtedly impact the most vulnerable. If we don’t, the coral reefs will be almost 100% gone.

And yet… National governments are failing to act with the urgency demanded by our climate crisis. The commitments each country made to reduce emissions under the Paris Agreement won’t get us there – not even close.

How can we make progress in the face of political paralysis?

The answer is local action. Specifically, it’s action at the city-scale that has excited and inspired a plethora of researchers at the Cabot Institute in recent years.  Cities are complex places of contradiction – they are where our most significant environmental impacts will be borne out through consumption and emissions, whilst simultaneously being places of inspirational leadership, of rapid change, and of innovation.

City governments across the world are increasingly taking the lead and recognising that radically changing the way our cities are designed and powered is essential to reducing carbon emissions [ref 1; ref 2]. They are standing against national powers to make a change (see for example We Are Still In, a coalition of cities and other non-state actors responding to Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement). And they are forming innovative partnerships to galvanise action quickly – both in terms of lowering emissions and planning for adaptation to climate change (see for example C40 Cities or 100 Resilient Cities).

Bristol is among them. It was a combination of grass-roots leadership and City support that led to Bristol being the first and only UK city to be awarded the title of European Green Capital in 2015. In November 2018, Bristol City Council unanimously passed the Council Motion to declare a Climate Emergency in Bristol and pledge to make the city Carbon neutral by 2030. It was the first local government authority to do so in the UK.

Today, the University of Bristol is the first UK university to stand alongside its city and declare a Climate Emergency. Far from being a symbolic gesture, these declarations reflect strong local political will to tackle climate change, and they are backed up by action at all levels of the University – from committing to become a carbon neutral campus by 2030, to making education on sustainable futures available to every student.

What’s clear, and potentially even more exciting, is that Universities and cities have a unique opportunity collaborate to innovate for change in truly meaningful and cutting-edge ways.

Within the Cabot Institute for the Environment, we’ve been fortunate to build research partnerships with the many inspiring individuals and organisations in our city. Whether it’s collaborating with the City Council to evaluate the economics of a low carbon Bristol, or with We the Curious to create street art on the impacts and solutions to climate change, or with Ujima Radio and the Bristol Green Capital Partnership to improve inclusion in the city’s sustainability movement – we’ve seen that we can achieve more when we recognise and value knowledge from within and outside the walls of the institution, and make progress together.

Bristol City Council has been working closely with both academics and students at the University of Bristol to explore ways to deliver the highly ambitious target of carbon neutrality by 2030. Cabot Institute researchers have also been working alongside the City Office to embed the UN Sustainable Development Goals in the recently launched One City Plan, which reflects a unique effort to bring together partners from across the public, private and non-profit sectors to collectively define a vision for the city and chart a path towards achieving it. There are many organisations and citizens working to make Bristol more sustainable. The One City Plan is designed to amplify these efforts by improving coordination and encouraging new partnerships.

The good news is that Bristol has already begun reducing its carbon emissions, having cut per capita emissions by 1.76 tonnes since 2010. However, we need to accelerate decarbonisation to avert a crisis and make our contribution to tackling the climate emergency.

We can achieve this in Bristol if we work together in partnership, and we must. We simply cannot wait for our national governments to act. We look forward to standing with our city to meet this challenge together.

This blog is written by Dr Sean Fox and Hayley Shaw with contributions from Dr Alix Dietzel and Allan Macleod.

Dr Sean Fox, Senior Lecturer in Global Development in the School of Geographical Sciences and City Futures theme lead at Cabot Institute for the Environment.

Hayley Shaw, Manager of Cabot Institute for the Environment.

CONNECTED – a new network to tackle vector-borne crop disease in Africa

Posted on by janet.crompton

 

Last week I was immersed in the world of African crop diseases, specifically the vector-borne kind, as part of the launch of CONNECTED. For those, like me, who aren’t an expert in the field – vector-borne diseases are those which are carried around by an organism (like a fly or insect) from one plant to the next.

This major new network brings together UK scientists with colleagues from across Africa to co-produce innovative new solutions to vector-borne crop diseases. And it turns out, there are a lot of them.

Africa has over 100 years of history with plant viral diseases. In 1894 cassava mosaic disease hit, followed by maize streak virus in 1901, and cassava brown streak in 1936.  Each had caused devastation, and in many cases, death.

Standing in the room and listening to presentations led by our African colleagues, there was a clear desire to work together – across disciplines and continents – to make a significant and lasting impact on crop disease reduction in Africa.

In this blog, I share just a handful of the things I learnt, alongside my thoughts for CONNECTED’s role in innovating for the future.

What are the challenges?

Almost every major crop in Africa is affected by disease

Yams, cassava, boy bean, cocoa, maize, coffee, bananas and many more of Africa’s key crops are affected by vector-borne disease.

That creates an ENORMOUS burden for the continent. Estimates shared by Prof Emmanuel Okogbenin suggest that yield losses due to plant disease cost $30 billion annually. In addition, it seriously affects food security and malnutrition in a continent where around 160 million of its population are already deemed food insecure.

As a result, demand is outstripping production for many crops (like maize), and Africa is heavily reliant on imported goods. These are undoubtedly more expensive than locally grown produce, and remain inaccessible or affordable to many.

Crucially, people have died as a result of every major outbreak.

When disease hits, it can cause severe losses

Sweet potato virus disease (SPVD) can lead to a 70-100% yield loss in infected plants.  The level of loss greatly exacerbates the issues described above.

So which crops are the most important ones to protect?

Well, it depends how you ask the question. 500 million people depend on cassava as a staple crop, and 158 million tons are produced in Africa by smallholders.

By contrast, 54 million tonnes of yam is produced annually, but 95% of this is produced in what is known as the ‘yam belt’, meaning it is considered critical in those regions. It also draws a value of c. $13.5M.

But it was clear from discussions today that we need to move beyond this idea of protecting a single crop. It turns out to be a lot more complicated than that.

In many cases, it’s not a simple case of a single vector and a single virus causing a single disease

Disease spread is highly complex. A single vector can carry many types of virus, and many viruses can be transmitted by multiple vectors. Additionally, some viruses affect a number of crops. This means it’s extremely difficult to know which vector/ virus to focus on tackling, or which crop to focus on treating, if you want to make a difference.

Perhaps surprisingly, some diseases only appear to ‘present’ when multiple viruses affect the same plant. In fact, around 69% of diseases in yams appear to be caused by 2 or more viral infections occurring at the same time.

To top it off, the vectors can often live on a number of different host plant species. This means that even if you create a crop that is resistant to a particular virus, it may still be present and spread between other plants.

And there are lots of vectors, spreading lots of diseases

Today I heard about so many vectors and viruses it’s impossible to name them all. However, here are just a few key examples that were covered by experts in the room:

  • Vectors: white fly, Aphids, leafhoppers, plant hoppers, mealybugs (my favourite, based purely on the name), thrips, and beetles.
  • Viruses: cassava brown streak virus, cassava mosaic virus, banana bunchy top virus, maize chlorotic mottle virus, yam mosaic virus, badnaviruses (yam, banana and coco), and legume potyviruses

Much disease is also spread by infected seed

In the case of sugarcane mosaic virus (SCMV), a large proportion of transmission is down to aphids, but an even greater proportion stems from the sharing of infected seeds. In a Q&A session on this topic, one audience member asked, ‘what’s the main barrier stopping people from using uncertified seeds?’ The answer? Cost. At present, many people buy seeds from friends, by the roadside, at local markets, or store their own supplies from year to year. These practices carry risk and whilst ‘certified’ (virus free) seeds are available, these are expensive. It was an important reminder that often, the scientific solutions are available, but there are social, political and economic factors to consider in ensuring uptake of these advances.

Over 80% of agricultural production in Sub-Saharan Africa is done by small holders

Whilst this has many benefits (people effectively have ‘control’ of their food production systems), managing disease across such a vast number of smallholder farms represents a major challenge. First and foremost – it’s difficult to engage with such a large number of individual farms to coordinate disease management strategies. Critically, it’s also difficult for smallholders to coordinate responses amongst themselves. In this context, ‘CONNECTED’ seems an entirely appropriate name for an initiative tackling this problem.

Summing up

In summary, day 2 of the CONNECTED conference helped us to share experiences, identify key challenges and research gaps, and decide where, as a network, we should best deploy our resources.

There was also a real sense that CONNECTED could bring far more than collaborative & impact-led research (though this in its own right would be exciting!). There were calls for joint databases, support with equipment purchases, training and capacity building, on-the-ground diagnostic support, e-resources, new technology development, incentivising public-private partnerships, and much, much more.

Through this network, there is great potential to forge important international collaborations and pool resources for maximum impact.

All in all, it has been incredible to see what expertise exists in both the UK and in Africa, hear about the collective ambitions of these fantastic collaborators, and begin to chart a path for CONNECTED.

I for one, am left feeling hopeful, inspired, and of course, ‘connected’.

The CONNECTED project

Our mission

Determined to fight malnutrition, poverty and food insecurity in Sub-Saharan Africa, the CONNECTED project is building a network of researchers to tackle vector-borne* plant diseases that devastate lives.

The challenges we face …

  • Established plant diseases carried by vectors* significantly limit the ability of Sub-Saharan Africa to produce sufficient staple and cash crops.
  • Limited production causes poverty, malnutrition and food insecurity, which in turn prevent economic and social development.
  • A range of new factors are set to compound the situation and raise the threat still further:
    • The emergence of new virus diseases
    • Climate change
    • A growing population
    • Resource limitations.

The solutions we are developing …

  • The CONNECTED** project is bringing together a network of world-class researchers to find and develop practical solutions to control plant disease.
  • We are pump-priming a range of innovative and potentially-transformative research activities, whose impact will be thoroughly evaluated. These research activities focus on five key areas:
    • Control strategies
    • Vector biology
    • New diseases
    • Vector / virus interactions
    • Diagnostics / surveillance / forecasting.
  • We are also providing training and capacity-building opportunities in the region during the three-year project lifespan.

And in the longer-term …

The aim is that the projects with the greatest regional impact can subsequently be grown into larger scale activities to achieve still greater bearing on the battle to control plant disease in Sub-Saharan Africa.

———————————-
This blog is written by Hayley Shaw who is the Manager of the Cabot Institute, and is a Network Advisor to the CONNECTED Network.

Notes
*A vector is a biting insect or tick that transmits a disease or parasite from one plant to another.

Resilience: The power of being bored…together

Posted on by janet.crompton

Louise and Eva belong to a London-based arts programme called Fourthland, which they describe as “A movement. An idea. A place. The handheld. A way of working. A history of projects”.  I’ve had the pleasure of working with them since Tessa Fitzjohn, a local curator, and Aldo Rinaldi, the Senior Arts Officer at Bristol City Council offered us the opportunity to host Fourthland as artists in residence. Together, Aldo and Tessa launched the ‘Resilience Laboratory’ in light of Bristol’s ‘Green Capital’ award – a project that aimed to explore the meaning of resilience from multiple disciplines and create a space to share learning.

Whenever I meet with Louise and Eva it feels like something profound has just happened, and is about to happen again, if I can only grasp the thoughts for long enough. They have provided a place and a time for us to stop. Think. And dwell on what it means to be resilient. The next few paragraphs are an attempt to capture just one of the many themes I found surprising and interesting at Fourthland’s most recent resilience workshop at the Cabot Institute – boredom (the good kind).

Louise and Eva from Fourthland. Image credit Amanda Woodman-Hardy

I have never (ever) considered boredom as a precursor to resilience, but yesterday I did. When you consider the amount of work we need to do to mitigate the effects of climate change, or tackle inequality and hunger, it’s difficult to argue that we should ever move so slowly that there’s time to be bored. The scale of the challenge is so vast that those who truly engage in the topic can almost be consumed by a constant need for progress.

In yesterday’s workshop we were set a task to work with simple materials – wax, hay, string, and eggshell – in silence. We weren’t given strict instructions on how to use the materials; just that they were ours, and we had twenty minutes to work together using silent gestures. What we learnt is that each group started the task politely – exploring the materials and gently negotiating how they might be used. We were delicate, patient, and searching for rules that might guide our behaviour. We all seemed to feel that there might be actions that weren’t ‘allowed’. After what must have been around 10 minutes there was a surge of creativity. People had become bored with their ‘safe’ tasks and began to be more provocative – breaking materials, tying furniture together, making meaningful products, or reading aloud. In this space, boredom became a catalyst for a change greater than we originally felt comfortable with. We stopped searching for rules and broke the ones we thought existed. Colleagues overcame their discomfort of physical contact, and began to share materials across their workspace. Boredom forced us to create and connect.

In the Cabot Institute workshop, academics from social sciences, arts, engineering
and science worked with simple materials from hay to wax, string to eggshells.
Image credit: Amanda Woodman-Hardy

In the post-event analysis, Louise, Eva and I discussed the possible importance of boredom in resilience and I was taken aback by their ideas. They suggest; “when we are bored, we are seeking something – something stimulating, something interesting. In this state, we become more receptive to learning.” Shima Beiji has previously argued that in order for an agent to become resilient, it must undergo a continuous process of knowledge acquisition and learning. Is boredom a condition that makes us more receptive to learning?

Perhaps, but it’s possible that we’re also open to a different kind of learning. It’s not the reductionist type of analysis that takes place after a disaster (where did the issue originate, what specifically could we have done to make it better, how can we be more resilient next time?) It’s a far more emergent way of creating understanding that intuitively feels more innovative and preventative.
If we took more time to be bored and engage in mindless repetitive tasks, could we actually be far more mindful in the present, more creative, and more resilient in the future?

In the scientific and engineering literature, it is clear that a degree of ‘redundancy’ in a system is critical for resilience. This means having additional resources or capacity that allow you to absorb shocks without compromising productivity or safety (e.g. having a store cupboard full of beans in a food shortage will mean you can avoid hunger). It seems to me that there’s a link between boredom and redundancy.

If boredom arises (in part) from repeating a task beyond the point that we can learn more from it, or enjoy it, then is boredom a form of mental ‘redundancy’? Does it give us time to absorb the mental ‘shock’ of constantly receiving new information every day?

I repeatedly hear people say they crave ‘time to really think’ away from the daily slog of tasks, but have realised that when we create this space it’s often for a defined purpose: “Think through new paper ideas – 2 hours”, or “send thoughts on strategy document to Rich – 30 mins”. Very rarely do we schedule time for unadulterated, unstructured and exploratory learning.

So what did I learn from playing with a bowl of wax this afternoon? That in order for people and communities to become resilient, we need time to be unproductive, together. That boredom can be a precursor, maybe even a catalyst, to a different kind of creation, connection and learning. That we need to trust that the use of this time will surpass our initial expectations. And that I want to work with more artists like Eva and Louise.

—————————
This blog is written by Cabot Institute Manager Hayley Shaw.
Hayley Shaw

 

Images from the Fourthland workshop at the Cabot Institute

 

Fourthland workshop

Sign up to our weekly newsletter for all the latest news, events and opportunities at https://bristol.ac.uk/cabot/news/subscribe. Find out more about our unique Master's by Research in Global Environmental Challenges at https://bristol.ac.uk/cabot-masters.