Tag: ICLEI

Localising the Sustainable Development Goals for Bristol

Posted on by janet.crompton

In 2015 the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were ratified by 193 of the UN member nations. These goals set ambitious targets to address worldwide issues of sustainable development, such as social inequality, responsible and inclusive economic development and environmental protection. They were created for everyone, everywhere and have been described as ‘the closest thing the world has to a strategy’.

Who will be responsible for ensuring we achieve these goals and how will they be achieved?
In the realm of international agreements, national governments have traditionally been responsible for local implementation. But a combination of profound global demographic shifts and a sense that national governments are increasingly incapable of tackling complex global challenges due to domestic political wrangling has given rise to a global movement to place cities at the heart of efforts to tackle both local and global challenges.  This movement, which is coalescing around a constellation of city-to-city networks (such as ICLEI, C40 and the Global Parliament of Mayors), is now grappling with the challenge of ‘localising the SDGs’. How can we usefully translate this global agenda into local practice in a way that meaningfully transforms lives?

This is the question we are working to answer through a new University of Bristol funded project on Localising the SDGs for Bristol, in partnership with the Bristol Green Capital Partnership (BGCP), Bristol City Council and Overseas Development Institute (ODI).

Bristol is a city of great wealth and has strong environmental credentials as the former European Green Capital in 2015. The city is also home to a vibrant cluster of ‘green economy’ companies and environmental charities. However, Bristol also faces many challenges. Homelessness is twice the national average; nearly 16% of Bristolians live in England’s 10% most deprived areas; and Bristol health outcomes are worse than the national averages for many indicators (e.g. life expectancy, suicide, childhood obesity, smoking).

These are precisely the kinds of challenges that the Sustainable Development Goals are encouraging us to confront and tackle by 2030. Importantly, ‘sustainability’ isn’t just about the environment; it is also about building a prosperous and inclusive economy that leaves no one behind. Inclusion, equality and opportunity are essential to achieve sustainability.

Our research seeks to identify and support mechanisms for embedding the SDGs in local planning and governance processes by engaging with a wide range of stakeholders in the city.

Bristol City Council, a pivotal stakeholder is currently working to bring partners together for a new One City Plan. This Plan seeks to use the collective power of Bristol’s key organisations to achieve a bigger impact by supporting partners, organisations and citizens to help solve key city challenges and improve the lives of Bristolians across the city. The core themes behind this plan align with the SDGs and it provides a great opportunity for Bristol to lead nationally and internationally on the SDGs. As this plan comes together we aim to input insights from other cities around the world that are also working to implement the SDGs.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti committing to the SDGs for LA

To that end Allan Macleod, the Cabot Institute SDGs Research & Engagement Associate, recently attended the Global Ambition–Local Action Conference hosted by the Occidental College in Los Angeles. The conference focused on what cities can and are doing to address the SDGs and how they can mobilise data and resources to further their work. It was a very informative experience, but was it was also inspiring to see how Bristol compares to some of the largest and most important Global Cities. It was clear that Bristol has developed a solid foundation for SDG localisation and has a real opportunity to become global leader in implementing the SDGs. In doing so the city will both confront the need to develop a more inclusive and sustainable local economy while contributing to global efforts to tackle transboundary problems together with other cities.

This is a particularly exciting time to be working collaboratively on implementing the SDGs in Bristol as the city will be hosting two major conferences in 2018: the Data for International Development Festival at the end of March and the Global Parliament of Mayors Annual Summit in October. Both these events provide Bristol with an opportunity to showcase its leadership and demonstrate its credentials as an important international city that is working to improve the lives of all its citizens.

What experiences do you have of the SDGs abroad or in Bristol? Do you have an ideas or lessons that can be applied to Bristol? If you have any further questions or comments, feel free to get in touch at Allan.macleod@bristol.ac.uk.
———————————————-
This blog is written by Dr Sean Fox, a Lecturer in Urban Geography and Global Development at the University of Bristol and Allan Macleod, Cabot Institute SDGs Research & Engagement Associate.

Sean Fox

 

COP21 reflections: What next for the University of Bristol?

Posted on by janet.crompton

If you have read my previous blogs on my COP21 reflections (see links at bottom of this blog), that brings us to the University of Bristol and the Cabot Institute.  I hope that this year we also have made some steps towards being a trusted participant in shaping our city’s future. I have lived here over 15 years and so I know that has not always been the case.

We must contribute via our role as a business.  With the NHS, we are the largest employer in the city and our behaviour should lead by example.  This is why we have developed a district energy strategy with BCC and the NHS.  This is why we are planting trees all over the city.  That is why we collaborate with Bristol City Council and fund community initiatives. But we do need to do more.  We will be judged on how we build our next buildings.  We will be judged on how we procure our goods. We will be judged on how we engage with the other citizens of Bristol.

We must contribute via our role as an educational institution.  We are already committed to pan-University Education for Sustainable Development (and thanks again to Chris Willmore for championing that). Now we are exploring a new initiative to build sustainability, enterprise and global citizenship across the student experience; those of us in the Cabot Institute are very excited to have been asked to play a role in translating our ambitions for multidisciplinary, challenge-driven, environmental research to our Undergraduates.

Students working with a local organisation in Bedminster, Bristol.

Of course, those students are driving us as often as we are leading them!  In the words of Hannah Tweddell of Bristol’s Student Union:

‘Our students and young people are the future. We’ve seen the amazing work they’ve done in partnership, helping Bristol Green Capital transition towards a more sustainable inclusive city. We’re committed to getting 100,000 hours of student engagement with the city to help make our city more sustainable every year – real action on the ground to tackle climate change, inequality and sustainability.’

And finally, the Cabot Institute will continue to conduct ambitious research in this area. Being at COP21 with Bristol City Council showed me the power of academic contributions.  Our Mini-Stern review and the STEEP Project sit at the foundation of Bristol’s Climate Change and Energy Security Framework.  Bristol is Open was repeatedly cited as an exemplar in Future Cities thinking. These partnerships were embedded in the argument by ICLEI and others that cities must be taken seriously as partners in this endeavour. Our climate change research was also on display and invoked at key stages as ambitions were raised.

It is not all about the Cabot Institute.  Sustainability policy is increasingly linked to health issues, whether it be the benefits of cycling and walking or of cleaner air; as such, the Elizabeth Blackwell Institute is also a central part of this conversation. The Brigstow Institute will explore the role of self, identity and community in the 21st century, issues that will be central to the social transformations that the Paris Agreement requires.  And there is no doubt that Big Data will be key to understanding, managing and navigating the future city; our new Institute (currently the Bristol Institute for Data Intensive Research) is poised to make major contributions.

Our research must continue and become more ambitious because we do not have all of the solutions – yet. So we will continue to innovate, whether it be exciting new functional nanomaterials to underpin the next generation of renewable technology or the mathematical expertise that will help us best extract tidal power from the Severn. We will have to help explore new financing tools to fund a new kind of global development; and there is a role for Bristol in shaping the emerging new forms of governance and economy. But new solutions require an engaged and interested public – and we do not intend to develop them in isolation or in our old disciplinary silos.

As our train pulled into Temple Meads, Alex Minshull told me that what he took from the Conference was a renewed awareness of what he already knew – do not get ‘locked in’ to the future you do not want. We must make the right choices today, choices that do not pile future carbon debt onto the future.  We must invest in our young people today so that they are prepared to lead tomorrow.  We must invest in new technology today so that it is ready when we need it.

It starts today.

—————————————–
Prof Rich Pancost

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 visitbristol.ac.uk/green-capital

Other blogs in this COP21 reflections series include:

What have we achieved and how do we go forward?
What next for our planet?
What next for Bristol?
What next for the University of Bristol?

This blog is part of a COP21 daily report series. View other blogs in the series below:

COP21 reflections: What next for our planet?

Posted on by janet.crompton

After the problems of Copenhagen, the French were keen to avoid surprises, which was the rationale for the INDCs we have heard so much about over the past year – and this they did superbly well. This agreement is consistent with what most of us expected two weeks ago.  Having said that, most of us are still very excited by that achievement given the numerous potential pitfalls.

There was one surprise, however. As I wrote  a few days ago, the Conference was stunned by the emergence of a large and diverse group that demanded (and somewhat achieved) a more ambitious overall global warming limit – well below 2C rather than 2C. This is an achievement for science in that it acknowledges the impact of 2C warming on small island states and nations with extensive low-lying areas. Jonathan Bamber of Bristol’s Glaciology Research Centre was part of the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative and Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research session on the Irreversible Impacts of Climate Change on Antarctica, a session that acutely underscored the implications of 2C warming just as the ‘Coalition of Ambition’ was preparing to reveal its agenda.

However, this increase in ambition and the surrounding rhetoric disconcerted many in the community.  As I wrote on Friday, the disconnection between these agreed limits and the INDCs and between the INDCs and national policies has led many to claim that the agreement represents ambitious grandstanding without concrete actions.

Strikingly, the Agreement makes no direct mention of negative emissions nor carbon capture and storage – although that is clearly implicit in directives for carbon neutrality and in the adopted limits themselves. We will need to sequester carbon out of the atmosphere to limit warming to this degree.  We will need new aviation and shipping technology to achieve this limit.  It is the gap between aspirations and technological capacity, social behaviour and political will that has caused some to disparage the Paris Agreement.

We will need new aviation and shipping technology to achieve the 2C limit.

It is too soon to say, but I don’t think that captures the complete picture of what happened in Paris over the past two weeks and it does not capture what this Agreement could eventually achieve.  In many senses, this Agreement is about empowerment, confidence and united commitment. No other COP has had such a deep engagement from non-national actors. It was not just the usual NGOs, but also a huge range of businesses from Coca Cola to New Holland to BMW to exciting new kids on the block that you’ve likely never heard of (like Gogoro!). Crucially, investors were also present – Moody’s and Santander but also a plethora of green bond developers and other alternative financiers. And more so than ever before, the cities were out in force, both collectively via groups such as ICLEI, C40, and the Covenant of Mayors (and the Compact of Mayors) and individually.  In our Pavilion alone, over 70 cities presented their plans for climate action.

The highlight of the cities initiative was when Anne Hidalgo, Mayor of Paris, launched and hosted the Climate Summit for Local Leaders at Paris City Hall.  Attended by 640 Mayors, thought to be the largest such gathering, the Summit presented its ambitions to UN Secretary General Ba Ki-moon. It is a great credit to Paris that not only did it host COP21 but that it did so with such a spirit of hope and optimism so soon after the tragic events of 13 Nov.

Throughout, the message was that the world is at tipping point between the old fossil-fuel based economy and a new economy – and most are ready.  Cities, regions, businesses, investors are already working together.  They are already reconfiguring for this new world. What they demanded of the Agreement was that it formally recognise their involvement and that the Agreement be an ambitious and unambiguous statement of intent.  They wanted confidence to act boldly and a role in accountability.  They got both.

Unlike the Kyoto protocol, this Agreement formally recognises the role of sub-national governments as partners in this process.  This was one of the major goals of ICLEI, and I am very proud that via the Bristol co-hosted Cities and Regions Pavilion, Bristol’s prominent presence as European Green Capital, and the concrete aspirations of our Transformative Action Plans, our city and our University helped ensure the inclusion of such recognition in the final document.

In the words of Gino Van Begin, “Pavilion co-hosts, Paris and Bristol, along with ICLEI, made possible an unprecedented show of unity by local actors at a COP.”  The City of Bristol, via George Ferguson but also via Bristol City Council and numerous partners, was everywhere at COP21 – and the University of Bristol was central to that, our contributions highlighted dozens of times.

As for a statement of intent?  That’s we got. When I spoke with Sir David King about the UK’s goals for the negotiations, he emphasised the need to emerge with the clarity to build confidence and support cooperation.  He went further by arguing that one of the UK’s main contributions will be via its Aid Budget, which will prioritise green growth and in turn, through technology development and scale-up of manufacturing, drive the global price of renewables below that of fossil fuels.

Similarly, Amber Rudd, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (and therefore, Britain’s senior negotiator in Paris), emphasised that the 1.5C target was about aspiration and sending a clear message of confidence to investors.  Alas, our visit was too fleeting for me to ask her whether that balances the investor confidence lost when renewable subsidies are removed… but she did address that Sunday morning with Andrew Marr.

Arguably, no other international diplomatic effort has had higher ambitions: the COP21 Agreement successfully asked all the nations of the Earth to commit to a fundamental transformation of their energy, economy and society.  The achievement, then, has been about unlocking capital, stimulating investment and establishing confidence.  It is still the same old economic model – the Agreement was never going to deliver the downfall of neoliberalism – but different levers are now being pulled.

Will it work? That rather depends on what your definition of success is. But it is estimated that 10,000 new initiatives were launched in Paris last week.  That is a good start.

—————————————–
Prof Rich Pancost
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 visitbristol.ac.uk/green-capital
Other blogs in this COP21 reflections series include:

This blog is part of a COP21 daily report series. View other blogs in the series below:

COP21 reflections: What have we achieved and how do we go forward?

Posted on by janet.crompton

On Friday, I am helping Alex Minshull, Director of Sustainability for Bristol City Council, wrap up the Bristol and Paris Pavilion with our partners from ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability. It was a great pleasure to be on the stage with Gino Van Begin, ICLEI’s Secretary General, and Yunus Arikan, ICLEI’s Head of Global Policy and Advocacy, both of whom have spent years advocating for the important role of non-state actors – an advocacy that was vindicated beyond all doubt over the last fortnight.

On Friday night, I am on the Eurostar, trying to make up for lost sleep and trying to wade through the penultimate draft of the text. Ironically, I have to buy bottled water at Paddington as there was no place to refill my new COP21 bottle… a reminder of how far we have to go. Ironically, I have to get a lift home from Temple Meads.

And then on Saturday, back home, I am admiring those who took to the streets of Paris with a message of hope, while waiting (and waiting) for the final announcement, following the Guardian and BBC news livestreams as a ‘shall’ became a ‘should’, as text was finalised, as countries read their final statements. And then at around 6:30 the agreement was ratified.

The next morning, Sunday, I am cooking breakfast on our gas hob and thinking: all of these – in tens of millions of UK households – will have to go in the next 30 years, less to limit warming to 2C.

What a challenge but what an opportunity.

*************

The dust is still settling; the full implications of an Agreement built on self-imposed commitments, peer pressure and united messaging rather than rigid and universal targets are not yet clear.

In Bristol we have made bold pledges on multiple international stages, but before we truly embark on realising those, we will hold a Mayoral and Council-wide election.

Nonetheless, every day this week on the Cabot Institute blog, I will offer a few reflections on what has happened and what must happen next – formulated between the agreement of the Agreement on the 12 December and the start of real work on the 14 December.

—————————————–
Prof Rich Pancost
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 visitbristol.ac.uk/green-capital

Other blogs in this COP21 reflections series include:

What have we achieved and how do we go forward?
What next for our planet?
What next for Bristol?
What next for the University of Bristol?

This blog is part of a COP21 daily report series. View other blogs in the series below:

COP21 daily report: Reflections from 9 December

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 and other Cabot Institute members 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.  All blogs in the series are linked to at the bottom of this blog.

—————————–

One of the dominant themes of COP21 has been the crucial role of cities, from the Blue Zone to Paris City Hall to the Sustainable Innovation Forum (SIF) at Le Stade de France.  In fact, on Tuesday at the SIF, Aron Cramer of BSR declared that ‘Cities have been the heroes of COP.’

The Compact of Mayors has grown larger and stronger.  The C40 group continues to set a more aggressive agenda than their respective nations.  And in the Green Zone, the Cities & Regions Pavilion, co-hosted by Bristol and Paris and facilitated by ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability has showcased the ambitions of dozens of cities.  Repeatedly, city leaders have said to national leaders – “no matter what you commit to, we will deliver it; and in all likelihood, we will push further and faster.”

In the Pavilion, there has been a non-stop buzz of workshops, presentations and debates.  From a Bristol perspective, this has been stimulated by an inspiring and demanding year as the European Green Capital.  From the Paris perspective, it has been stimulated by its role as host. However, a particularly deep and long-lasting contribution to all of COP21 has come from ICLEI.

ICLEI has been leading the mobilisation of sub-national actors for 25 years and is distinguished because it works with a wide range of entities of all scale: small cities, large cities, and regions.  However, ICLEI did not simply come to Paris to represent those groups; it asked them to make and share their own commitments, ambitions and strategies.

These projects are part of the Transformative Action Program (TAP), managed by ICLEI, and in many ways they are the city and region companion to the INDCs.

Bristol committed to finding 1 billion euros of investment to retrofit a third of its houses, a proposition based in part on research conducted by University of Bristol Cabot Institute academics.  It also committed to the Bristol Brain, a city emulator that will empower citizens and leaders to make bolder but more informed planning decisions.  Not to be outdone, Copenhagen committed to carbon neutral energy provision by 2025.

Kaohsiung City. Image from Wikipedia.

Today was East Asia’s turn and they produced some of the boldest proposals, appropriate given the fact that the Mayor of Seoul, Won Soon Park, is also the President of ICLEI.  A recurring theme was the integration of food, water and energy sustainability and the coexistence with nature.  Kaohsiung City, for example, aimed to achieve, among other goals: ‘…Prosperity with Mountain and Ocean and a Liveable Homeland.’  Taichung proposed a TAP for the ‘City Food Forest’ and highlighted the importance of integrating the next generation of farmers into their future city thinking.  Throughout the past week and a half, a recurring theme has been the need for breaking free of silo-ed thinking in order to achieve system change; these Asian cities are doing that.

Comparing these plans to those of European nations illustrates the particular challenge of political boundaries.  Bristol is an urban area of >1 million people, but its Mayor and City Council only govern a ‘city’ of 500,000.   It must find a way to develop integrated sustainability policies that support and include those 1 million people but also the wider hinterland – the surrounding countryside that supports nature, agriculture and wind turbines. 

This is why the TAPs can be so useful.  Many of the 120 publicly available on the ICLEI website are commitments but many are also mechanisms for policy change.  They allow us to compare and contrast, and therefore to learn and reflect. They are invitations to constructive criticism but also opportunities to share knowledge.  

—————————————–
Prof Rich Pancost

 

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
 

This blog is part of a COP21 daily report series. View other blogs in the series below:

COP21 daily report: Reflecting on the science of climate change

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.

———————————

Bristol’s presence at COP21 started with a bang, with some of its most important contributions being showcased as it opened  the Bristol/Paris/ICLEI Cities and Regions Pavilion.  There is a lot to digest from that and that will be the focus of tomorrow’s or Friday’s blog.  Today, however, I am going to take a step back and revisit the climate science that is the basis for the political, entrepreneurial and social actions currently being discussed in Paris.

When I started by PhD in 1992, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere was about 355 ppm and already a huge source of concern to climate scientists.

About one year ago, depending on the station or the season, CO2 levels passed 400 ppm for the first time in human history.  And for the first time in ice core history, extending back nearly 1 million years.  And – based on our recent work using chemical proxies to reconstruct atmospheric carbon dioxide – probably for the first time in about 3 million years.

If we continue burning fossil fuel, even with reduced emissions, we will reach 550 to 700 ppm by the end of this century. Our work and that of others reveals that these are values that the Earth has not experienced for at least 10 million and maybe even 30 million years.

This is causing the Earth to warm.  That relationship is derived from fundamental physics and first articulated by Svante Arrhenius over a century ago.  Our climate models elaborate and clarify this relationship.  Earth history validates and confirms it – when CO2 was higher, the planet was warmer.  And consistent with that, this year is on track to be the warmest in recorded history, with human-induced warming now thought to have warmed our planet by 1C.

This is half of our agreed limit of 2C; and due to the slow response of the climate system, more warming will come.

These are some of the truly eye-opening facts surrounding climate change, the challenge we face and the need for this week’s negotiations.

There are many who will argue that the science of climate change is too uncertain to act upon.  The observations listed above, and many others, reveal that to be a manipulative half-truth.  There is an astonishing amount of knowledge about climate change – and global warming in particular.

Moreover, as Steve Lewandowksy (and Tim Ballard and myself) discussed in an article in the Guardian yesterday, the uncertainty that does exist in our understanding of climate change impacts is cause for mitigative action not complacency.  This was based on our recent volume in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, in which a great diversity of researchers highlight the impact of uncertainty on the economy, cooperation, action and creativity.

This has long been a focus of the Cabot Institute; Living with Environmental Uncertainty is a central tenet of our mission. ]We have hosted consultations and workshops on understanding, constraining and communicating uncertainty; advised decision makers and leaders; produced papers, reports and even handbooks. This year as part of the Green Capital, we framed much of our own activity, as well as our contributions to the Summits, Arts Programme and Festivals, around this theme: The Uncertain World.

A great example of this research is that of the Bristol Glaciology Centre.  Tony Payne was a Lead Author on the IPCC report on ice sheets and sea level rise.  Glacial biogeochemists, Martyn Tranter, Jemma Wadham and Alex Anesio, are studying how surface melting can create dark patches of algal growth which could absorb light and accelerate melting.  Jonathan Bamber led a fascinating expert elicitation study which suggested a wider range of potential sea level rise than previously thought.

All in all, this work is consistent with the most recent IPCC report that sea level rise will likely range from 0.7 to 1.1 m by the end of the century.  However, that range belies deeper and more frightening uncertainty. Professor Bamber spoke about this yesterday at COP21 as part of the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative and Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research session on Irreversible Impacts of Climate Change on Antarctica.  Their presentation highlighted that the IPCC range of potential sea level rise is largely a function of the 2100 time frame applied.  Longer timescales reveal the true magnitude of this threat. The projected ~1m of sea level rise is probably already inevitable. It will be even higher – perhaps several metres higher – if we warm our planet by 2C, and even more so if it warms by the 2.7C that current Paris commitments yield. The geological record suggests even more dramatic potential for sea level rise: 3 million years ago, when CO2 concentrations were last ~400 ppm, sea level might have been 20 m higher.  These changes almost certainly would take place over hundreds of years rather than by 2100.  But their consequences will be vast and irreversible.

Flooding in Clifton, Bristol 2012. Events like these are likely to
become more common. Image credit Jim Freer
This uncertainty is not limited to warming and sea level rise.  Uncertainty is deeply dependent in rainfall forecasts for a warmer world; we know that warmer air can hold more water such that rainfall events are likely to become more extreme.  However, how will that change regionally?  Which areas will become wetter and which drier?  How will that affect food production?  Or soil erosion?

Of course, climate change is about more than just warming, sea level rise and extreme weather.  It is also about the chemistry of our atmosphere, soils and oceans.  Again profound concern and uncertainty is associated with the impact of coastal hypoxia and ocean acidification on marine ecosystems. In fact, it is the biological response to climate change, especially when coupled with all of the other ways we impact nature, that is most uncertain. Unfortunately, Earth history is less useful here.  Even the most rapid global warming events of the past seem to have occurred over thousands of years, far far slower than the change occurring now, a point that emerges again and again in our research and frequently emphasised by the Head of our Global Change Theme Dani Schmidt.

What is happening today appears to be unprecedented in Earth history.

We are creating an Uncertain – but also volatile, extreme and largely unknown world.  Some of that is inevitable.  But much of it is not.   How much will be largely decided in Paris.

But not just by nations.  Also by mayors and councils and LEPs, NGOs, citizens, businesses and other innovation and transformation leaders.  This is why the actions being proposed in the Cities and Regions Pavilion, not just by Bristol but by hundreds of cities and local authorities across the globe, are so very exciting.

—————————————–
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 below:

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.