Tag: policy

Global Goals, Local Action: Bristol and the SDGs

Posted on by janet.crompton



This week is the #GlobalGoalsWeek which is a campaign to improve awareness about the UN Sustainable Development Goals (Global Goals or SDGs). The 17 Global Goals cover everything from Ending Poverty, to Climate Action and they have been called the closest thing the world has to a strategy. This week we’ll be publishing some of the SDG activity that’s been happening in Bristol. To follow what’s going on check out #BristolSDGs or #GlobalGoalsWeek we’re planning blog posts from amongst others the Mayor of Bristol, Bristol City Council’s SDG ambassador and other members of the Bristol SDG Alliance.
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As the Global Goals week commences we consider how the work towards localising the SDGs in Bristol has developed in the last 9 months and look to share some lessons on the process of localisation.

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 University of Bristol funded project on Localising the SDGs for Bristol, in partnership with the Bristol Green Capital Partnership (BGCP), and Bristol City Council.

To date the project has involved engagement locally and internationally. Our previous blog post came after the Global Ambition, Local Action conference, held in Los Angeles which Allan Macleod, the Cabot Institute SDG Research and Engagement Associate, attended. Just over a month later he was also part of the hundred of delegates who gathered in Bristol for the Data for Development Festival. During three days of plenaries, breakouts and workshops the role and use of data and technology in achieving and monitoring the SDGs was discussed. Additionally, Mayor Marvin Rees showed his local support and commitment to the SDGs by announcing an SDG Ambassador in his Cabinet (Councillor Anna Keen).

The strong leadership and commitment to the SDGs from Bristol’s mayor has been complimented by many stakeholders across the city. Bristol boasts an SDG Alliance consisting of members from organisations across Bristol including some of the city’s anchor institutions with both universities, the City Council and the Bristol Green Capital Partnership represented as members of the Alliance. The network has been growing and now consists of well over 50 stakeholders from diverse backgrounds looking to mobilise SDG activity in Bristol. Through a series of interviews with key city stakeholders and alliance members, a Bristol Method+ report was released during the UN High Level Political Forum in July 2018. This report detailed the initiatives and actions that have occurred locally towards making the SDGs more mainstream in the city.

Another way the SDGs have been made locally relevant is through the One City Plan. 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 persistent 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 a result, the Goals were integrated into the plan and mapped onto Bristol’s local priorities. By building on the work in ‘Hacking the SDGs for US Cities’, 75 of the 169 SDGs targets were found to be directly relevant to Bristol. These targets are being blended together with locally-developed priorities to form the One City Plan goals to result in ‘Bristol’s SDGs’.

Our work with Bristol city council has shown three important features of localisation. Firstly, the SDGs largely overlap with the remit of most city councils. As a result of this, the most cost effective, and beneficial method of localisation is a translation of local priorities onto the goals and the integration of the goals into the local priorities of the city. Lastly, the SDGs provide an opportunity for city leaders to engage in discussions around the same topic. They provide a global language for city leaders to share learning and best practices across contexts and borders. This is especially important as cities are increasingly aiming to take a more prominent role in international leadership.

During our project, it has become clear that Bristol has developed a solid foundation for SDG localisation and has begun to be a global leader in implementing the SDGs. However, it is a particularly exciting time to be working collaboratively on implementing the SDGs in Bristol as the city will be hosting the Global Parliament of Mayors Annual Summit (GPM) in October. The GPM will provide Bristol with an additional 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, while also working to tackle the challenges that we face as a global community.

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.

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This blog is written by Allan Macleod, SDG research and engagement associate working across Bristol Green Capital Partnership, Bristol City Council and the University of Bristol Cabot Institute for the Environment.

Allan Macleod

What makes cities more environmentally sustainable: A comparative study of York and Bristol

Posted on by janet.crompton

Over the summer of 2017 I conducted 25 interviews with policymakers and key stakeholders – 17 in York and 8 in Bristol. The interviews involved wide ranging discussions on the three pillars of sustainability – environment, social and economic – in the city of the interviewee.

Some background to the study and why I chose Bristol to compare with York – coming from the Leeds/Bradford conurbation, York seems like such a pleasant place to me: incredible preservation of its heritage, affluent, with very few of the economic and social problems experienced in some other parts of Yorkshire. However, having lived in York for a couple of years, I’ve realised when you scratch the surface a little, it’s not perfect. There are quite interesting dynamics in the city that prevent it from achieving its potential, particularly environmentally…

Enter Bristol as a comparison city!

Having won the European Green Capital 2015, Bristol was an obvious choice. Although initially my concern was there are stark differences between York and Bristol in terms of size, culture etc., it soon became apparent that these differences only highlighted the dynamics within each city that I was trying to uncover.

My research found that York’s two largest challenges in trying to be a more environmentally sustainable city are its political flux – due to finely balanced politics based on geographic location within the city – and heritage. Because of the flux, there is a lack of long-term vision for the city in addition to large political risks to parties that seek to enact less salient environmentally sustainable policies. When the flux is combined with the city’s conservatism – due to a culture of preservation – York can lack ambition.

Furthermore, York lacks economic sustainability, which is due to several reasons: the relatively recent loss of many of its large anchor employers, such as Rowntree’s, Terry’s and the Carriage-works; a focus on the low value-added tourist industry; high-office costs; high-living costs for employees; and a difficulty in accessing government infrastructure funding due to being on the edge of two Local Enterprise Partnerships. Additionally, whilst York has many small to medium sized enterprises – who reinvest a higher portion of their income into the local economy than large companies – it lacks the alternative business models, such as those found in Bristol, that can bring wider benefits. Therefore, due to economic unsustainability and a lack of alternative business models, the city’s business focus is on job growth as opposed to wider societal and environmental benefits, such as was found in the business focus of Bristol. Many of the positives that York possesses are due to the natural advantages that result from its built environment. The lack of ambition and vision, however, is preventing York from achieving its full potential. Being a city rich in heritage does not mean that it cannot also have a strong environmental sustainability focus, as discussed by Paul McCabe, Strategic Manager – Sustainability and Transformation, City of York Council:

“Other cities around Europe have shown that the two things are not incompatible: old architecture, green architecture, big public spaces, bold things can work together and compliment older areas.”

Bristol is an example of what a city can achieve in terms of environmental sustainability in a country with a very centralized state whose policies at a national level may be perceived by some as regressive. Additionally, while Bristol does have social problems, many of these may be inherent in large British cities. Bristol’s pursuit of green capital can be seen as a means to identify itself on a wider stage for pride and to attract inward investment – In this context I am using the term ‘capital’ to express the assets that a city has available to itself. In this sense green capital is not only a physical asset of entities such as green spaces for instance, but an asset embedded in urban cultures that has wider consequences – Why Bristol is pursuing green capital may be due to seeing the makings of this within its own culture: Bristol has a notably vibrant culture that is hard to define and account for, but appears to be bringing many social, environmental and economic benefits to the city. This vibrant culture was commented upon by James Cleeton, Sustrans England Director South, “what Bristol does well, is what its people do: there’s still that culture, that socio-cultural drive behind a desire for a really sustainable and green city”. Furthermore, the pursuit of green capital may only be possible in the city due to a long-term vision that emerges from political stability, the importance of which is contrasted with York’s changing administrations and relative lack of political stability. Although Bristol stands to benefit economically from green capital, this pursuit of green capital is perhaps only enabled because Bristol is already economically successful.

Therefore, I found what makes cities more environmentally sustainable revolved around the interaction between four themes: culture, economics, politics and social. These four themes all, in varying forms, influence environmental sustainability in a very individual nature within each city. Perhaps the most important influence, however, was found to be the status and nature of the capital that each city possessed – be that the heritage capital that holds York back, or the green capital that pushes Bristol forward, in this regard.

To read the full study, please see two versions: a shortened version and the full version.

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This blog was reposted with kind permission from Bristol Green Capital Partnership.  View the original blog.

This blog was written by Graham Gill from University of York.  Graham can be contacted by email.

Graham Gill

Finishing my year as a Cabot Institute Masters Research Fellow

Posted on by janet.crompton

In January 2017, I posted my early reflections on sustainability in the UK. Now, 10 months later, I have been living in England for over a year. I submitted my thesis for the MSc Environmental Policy and Management program last month, and I am working for the Environmental Defense Fund in London. This post will have a few parts to it: a recap of my thesis topic, a reflection on my time in Bristol, and a discussion of what I’m doing now and planning for the future.

I titled my thesis “Compensating Environmental Policies’ Victims: Typologies and Recommendations for Success.” By compensation, I mean of those individuals or demographics, companies or industries that environmental protection policy actually hurts. Think coal miners as policy accelerates the transition to clean energy, or low-income households as a carbon tax raises the price of petrol.

Strong environmental policies are wildly important, but often they impart uneven costs, and few (if any) studies discuss compensation for these costs. Reviewing compensation in theory and across ten cases, I developed a typology by which environmental policies’ uneven costs can be classified. I then presented recommendations for compensation, in general and specific to certain typological classifications. Among my general conclusions, I found that fewer, targeted compensatory mechanisms prove more cost-effective and visible than more, broad ones; exemptions dampen policy incentives, hurting environmental performance; and targeted payments or flexible subsidies, financed with related policy revenue, work well. I developed the following chart, which allows a policymaker to trace through certain characteristics of a policy and find a recommended compensatory package.

I won’t drag on through my thesis in this post, but I am happy to share it with anyone wishing to follow up. I was selected to present it at the Oxford Symposium on Population, Migration, and the Environment in December. The Cabot Institute is generously sponsoring my participation, so expect a post from me about the conference soon.

On to my experience of Bristol: the city became a true second home to me. I returned just a few weekends ago for a visit, and the bittersweet wave of nostalgia washed over me. The city is so dynamic, so lively, and so walkable. I arrived on a Friday evening. The sun had set, and Bristol’s abounding student and young adult population pumped through the streets. As I walked up Park Street, two Bristolians struck up a conversation with me. For a few shared minutes fighting Park Street’s incline, we talked about ourselves, the city, our evening plans. Bristol is a city in its offerings—great food, art, culture, parks, but it is a small town in its accessibility. It is walkable, its people are friendly, and it gives you the impression that you can truly get to know it if you spend some time there. I like to think I know Bristol now, and I will continue to miss it immensely now that I’ve gone.

I’m in London in the short term, interning with the Environmental Defense Fund, a US NGO that expanded to the UK/Europe a couple years ago. I focus on methane emission reduction in the oil and gas sector, helping our organisation to develop a strategy that will work in Europe. Methane is the second most abundant greenhouse gas behind carbon dioxide, and it is over 80-times more potent in warming the Earth than carbon dioxide over a 20-year timespan. By some estimates, it accounts for about a quarter of the warming we’ve felt since the pre-industrial age. The oil and gas sector accounts for at least a fifth of Europe’s methane emissions, not accounting for the embodied methane of the bloc’s imports. These emissions come from across the supply chain, from production of a well, storage, and the natural gas distribution networks in our towns. I advocate for stronger methane policy at the EU level, engage with companies to apply pressure, and work with scientific bodies that help to better count and record these emissions. I am learning a lot and making invaluable connections, and I have a fellow Cabot Masters Fellow, Mireille Meneses Campos, to thank. She connected me with the organisation when they were seeking someone for the role.

I will be in London for a couple more months, then I will return to Houston to work with the management consulting firm Oliver Wyman. The firm works in various industries; I will likely work mostly on projects related to energy and electricity, but as a general consultant my project placements may be broader. I am excited for the skills that consulting will help me build, and to be back in Texas for a time. Texas and US environmental protection can only benefit from more supportive voices, and I plan to be loud. I will have been away just a year and a half, but I return with more knowledge and experience to back my advocacy. The Cabot Institute has played a large part in my acquisition of this knowledge and experience, so I am incredibly grateful. I also wish to thank the US-UK Fulbright Program, which brought me to the UK in the first place.
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This blog is written by Michael Donatti in October 2017. Michael is a Cabot Institute Masters Research Fellow.

Michael Donatti

 

More blogs by Michael Donatti:

My Reflections on COP23 – challenges, inspiration, and hopes for the future

Posted on by janet.crompton

I had the great pleasure of attending COP21 in Paris, 2015. The air was full of anticipation, hope and a clear sense of urgency. The achievements of the conference were remarkable and as a climate scientist I felt a degree of reassurance (albeit uneasy reassurance) that there was now a serious global commitment that may lead to a turning point in climate action.

Two years on, I was therefore excited to attend COP23 in Bonn as part of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) delegation, to see how things were progressing.

I was immediately struck by the difference. The negotiations here were largely focussed on how to implement the Paris Agreement. The discussion were necessarily more technical, but less awe-inspiring, ‘nuts and bolts’. Without the big deadline and the huge public pressure to sign a global agreement, it seems things in the negotiations moved slowly, and there was an air of frustration amongst some negotiators and campaigners.

Despite the slow pace in the negotiations, this blog shares some real highlights from the week, as well as some low lights, alongside my thoughts on proceedings.

Last one out

COP23 started with an announcement from Syria that they would sign the Paris Agreement, leaving the USA isolated as the only country that will not be part of the Agreement – Trump’s announcement to withdraw from the Agreement offers a stark reminder of the impact of domestic political change on international initiatives.

The #wearestillin campaign has caught
the imagination of  businesses and civil
society alike.

It was however encouraging to go to the launch of the US #wearestillin campaign – a collection of states, cities, businesses, NGOs, civil society etc that are willing to make a commitment to climate change despite Trump pulling out of the Paris Agreement. With Bloomberg having offered to cover for the USA’s climate finance and on our side of the pond, Macron offering to cover their commitments to the IPCC (with a little top up also from the UK government).

Despite anticipating that the US delegation might join Saudia Arabia and others to stall progress, they sent the usual negotiators who were being helpful in the side-lines, if quiet during decisions. China, on the other hand, were not being as constructive as they could have…..

Climate finance, historical responsibilities and ability to pay.

Finance is always one of the biggest sticking points of negotiations, and this year was no different. China (and others) want America to put up large sums of climate finance (to fund adaptation and mitigation in other countries), taking historical responsibility for their emissions, but America will not do this. Even Obama, who strongly supported Paris, would not agree to take responsibility for emissions before there was widespread acceptance of on climate change being anthropogenic.

In the past, developed and developing countries had differentiated responsibilities for mitigation of climate change, reflecting their different historical contributions and capabilities. Only “Annex I” (“developed”) countries such as the EU, USA and Canada had mitigation targets and financial opbligations under the Kyoto Protocol. Economies in Transition (such as China) and developing countries did not. Moving forward in Paris, the process of countries setting their own targets (Nationally Determined Contributions) gave all countries responsibilities but also control over their own action, reducing the need for formalised differentiation.

China remains keen to retain formal differentiation, but many at the conference began to question the legitimacy of China’s appeals for finance and differentiation when they have become the largest pollution nation (albeit with lower per capita emissions that America) and one of the most rapidly growing economies.

Reconnecting with the lived experience of climate change 

There was an overwhelming number of science talks at a huge verity of side events. For me though, the best thing about COP was the opportunity to mix with people, hear stories and go to talks that I wouldn’t normally get the chance to. It takes me away from my number crunching to hear how people are experiencing climate change, to talk about the realities of adaption and mitigation, to remind us how the world really works outside of computer models.

Talking to a young African man and an indigenous Guatemalan woman about how people are experiencing climate change now, they explained that people often don’t really know that that is the reason their crops have failed three years running, or there are more regular storms of higher intensity, or their houses are washing away. They are worrying how to feed themselves and pay for their kids to go to school. They are not concerned with how they can mitigate climate change, but how they can live.

Developing countries and indigenous groups attended in force, raising awareness of how climate change is affecting them now, and demanding action. These groups reconnected us with the urgency of the task at hand, and with the talks under the Presidency of Fiji this year, there was a loud and passionate voice from the Pacific Islands. Many islanders are already having to leave their homes due to sea level rise, salt water inundation of crops and drinking water aquifers – not to mention the series of increasingly frequent and devastating storms. One of the Island country negotiators told me that many other countries were keen to gain the favour of the Pacific Islands as the many countries (and therefore many votes) could lead them to become a powerful influencer.

A triumph or misfortune of participation? 

One news article noted the five largest delegations were from African countries (nearly 500 from Cote d’Ivoire). While on the surface this is a major accomplishment, there were mutterings in the conference from younger African delegates that some senior colleagues had little interest in proceedings. While the importance of gender issues and climate was a major issue on the table at COP23, the proceedings also reflected other revelations of sexual misconduct with complaints of senior powerful male figures taking advantage of young female staff.

Some final thoughts 

All in all, I have not come away from COP23 with the sense of achievement and exhilaration at the end of COP21 Paris, but a sense of urgency of the need to make it happen faster.

‘Young and future generations day’. Image credit: UNFCC

As Kevin Anderson from Tyndall said to me – we have known about this for some time now and yet we are failing, every one of us, to make anything happen at the scale and rate it needs to.

As I claw for answers on how to achieve this, I’m reminded that this year at COP there was a focus on youth. I saw some amazing youth speakers and participants, including one of our 3rd year undergraduate geography students. I also met two of our recent MSc graduates, one who was on the Mexican Delegation and one working for and NGO Climate Action Network.

I take great inspiration from these hugely talented young people, and they, alongside the impassioned and increasingly powerful voices of developing nations, offer hope. Whilst the responsibility for dealing with the implications of climate change should not rest solely in their hands – the devolution of power/ resource to those with fresh ideas and approaches could be exactly what we need to catalyse change.

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This blog is written by Jo House: Reader in Environmental science and policy, Department of Geographical Sciences, and Co-Chair of the Cabot Institute‘s Global Environmental Change research theme.

Jo House

Global Environmental Change mini-symposium

Posted on by janet.crompton

At the end of June, the Cabot Institute hosted the Global Environmental Change mini-symposium – a one hour whistle-stop tour showcasing the breadth of research within this theme of the Cabot Institute. Speakers represented different schools from the University that actively work on the spectrum of Global Environmental Change challenges, such as environmental law and policy, biodiversity conservation, biogeochemical cycles, environmental justice and environmental history.

 
Each speaker had time for a very short talk, with some choosing to focus on specific aspects of their work in depth and others instead covering the breadth of research carried out by colleagues in their school. The audience too came from a wide background, with everyone from undergraduate and masters students up to professors represented. Although with five speakers (plus some words from the theme leaders, Jo House and Matt Rigby) there was not much time for questions during the hour of talks, there was plenty of time for discussion over food and drinks afterwards.

Although it was billed as a miniature event, it set out to address grand, ambitious, global challenges. It was a short, punchy reminder of the huge range of research skills found within the Cabot Institute. We might not have solved the Earth’s challenges in an hour or two, but now that the dust has settled we certainly have a good idea of who to ask and how to start taking them on. I look forward to the mini-symposiums for the Cabot Institute’s other five research themes!

The speakers were:
Kath Baldock – Life Sciences
Alice Venn – Social Sciences and Law
Alix Dietzel – SPAIS
Kate Hendry – Earth Sciences
Daniel Haines – History

The event was hosted by:
Jo House – Geographical Sciences
Matt Rigby – Chemistry

Blog post by Press Gang member Alan Kennedy.

In defence of science: Making facts great again

Posted on by janet.crompton

“We must not let rhetoric or vested interests divert us from what we know is the right course of action.”

From across the Atlantic, the European scientific community is watching warily as our American colleagues endure increasingly politicised attacks on their work and on the very foundation of evidence-based science.

President Donald Trump‘s decision earlier this month to withdraw the United States from the historic Paris Agreement on Climate Change – a decision condemned by heads of state, businesses, mayors and ordinary people in the US and the world over – epitomised this contempt for the facts from some within the political sphere.

We can, to some degree, relate, as many European scientists – and particularly those who research climate change and its impacts, as I do – have been forced to confront the politicisation of their disciplines, the distortion of their research and the promotion of “alternative facts” and vested-interest propaganda.

In fact, just two months ago at the annual General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union, for the first time in the body’s history, we debated issues around existential threats to science in general, the integrity of the scientific community, trust in science and what we can do to ensure that evidence-based science forms the basis for informed decisions and debate by policymakers and the public.

Later this month, we’ll watch as some of our American colleagues gather for the annual Broadcast Meteorology Conference of the American Meteorological Society, which will include in its programme a short course explicitly focused on the communication of climate science.

Never has accurate, fact-based communication of climate science been more urgently needed, and in modern history, it has rarely been so compromised. There is a clear trend, particularly evident in the US, of a growing distrust of “experts” who are branded as intellectual elites, rooted in a populist backlash towards the establishment.

This goes all the way up the rungs of government to the American president himself, who has called climate change a “hoax” and in his first 100 days in office has moved to curb spending on climate and earth science research and is overseeing an agency-wide scrubbing of climate science out of federal websites and publications.

As he announced the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on June 1, Trump also left himself open to accusations of misrepresenting climate science to suit his own political objectives: after the US president quoted a figure from a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) study to support his argument that the Paris Agreement is ineffectual, MIT officials – including one of the study’s authors – declared that Trump had misunderstood their work and that they did not support a US withdrawal from the agreement.

The science of climate change, however, is clearer than ever. We see the fingerprints of human-induced global warming on more and more long-term climate trends. In the US and throughout the world, for instance, warmer temperatures are amplifying the intensity, duration and frequency of many weather events, none more evident than extreme heat. Western states have suffered through record numbers of heat waves since the turn of the century, with overnight temperatures often at historical highs. This is particularly dangerous as it doesn’t give the human body the necessary relief. Already, these heat waves are costing lives, and the scientific link between human-induced global warming and heat waves is crystal clear. The European heat wave of 2003 is estimated to have caused 35,000 premature deaths and was very likely a consequence of human interference with the climate system.

By listening to the best available science on climate change, we can better prepare for its impacts. By ignoring, censoring, or shunning our scientists, we put more Americans at risk. The alternative to informed decision-making is uninformed decision-making. Without evidence-based science, decisions of vital importance to humanity will be made founded in prejudice, emotion and ignorance. That is no way to run the planet. It is no way to plan our future.

Besides helping prepare for the impacts of climate change, science should guide our efforts to minimise them. For these mitigation efforts, the science is telling us that we don’t have much time. In fact, it’s saying that 2020 must be the target for peaking global carbon emissions. We must bend the curve of global greenhouse gas emissions towards a steady decline by the next US presidential election. If emissions continue to rise beyond 2020, the world stands very little chance of limiting global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, the threshold set by the Paris Agreement, and a temperature limit that many of the world’s most vulnerable communities consider a threshold for survival.

The world has four short years to reverse our emissions trends to avoid the very real risk of dangerous and irreversible climate change, but we won’t get the policies we need without trusting and relying on the science that tells us that’s so. Science has no political affiliation, nor can it be bent to your will. You don’t renegotiate with physics and you aren’t about to “win” a deal with chemistry. We must not let rhetoric, vested interests or the blind dismissal of the overwhelming scientific consensus divert us from what we know is the right course of action ethically, scientifically and economically.

By Jonathan Bamber, professor of polar science at the University of Bristol and president of the European Geosciences Union. Blog originally posted on Al Jazeera.

Forest accounting rules put EU’s climate credibility at risk, say leading experts

Posted on by janet.crompton

**Article re-posted from EURACTIV **


Forest mitigation should be measured using a scientifically-objective approach, not allowing countries to hide the impacts of policies that increase net emissions, writes a group of environmental scientists led by Dr Joanna I House.

Dr Joanna I House is a reader in environmental science and policy at the Cabot Institute, University of Bristol, UK. She co-signed this op-ed with other environmental scientists listed at the bottom of the article.

From an atmospheric perspective, a reduction in the forest sink leads to more CO2 remaining in the atmosphere and is thus effectively equivalent to a net increase in emissions. [Yannik S/Flickr]

When President Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement, the EU’s Climate Commissioner, Miguel Arias Cañete spoke for all EU Member States when he said that, “This has galvanised us rather than weakened us, and this vacuum will be filled by new broad committed leadership.” The French President, Emmanuel Macron, echoed him by tweeting, “Make our planet great again”.

But as the old saying goes, ‘If you talk the talk, you must walk the walk,’ and what better place to start than the very laws the EU is currently drafting to implement its 2030 climate target under the Paris Agreement. This includes a particularly contentious issue that EU environment leaders will discuss on 19 June, relating to the rules on accounting for the climate impact of forests.

Forests are crucial to limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. Deforestation is responsible for almost one tenth of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, while forests remove almost a third of CO2 emissions from the atmosphere.

In the EU, forests currently grow more than they are harvested.  As a result, they act as a net ‘sink’ of CO2 removing more than 400 Mt CO2 from the atmosphere annually, equivalent to 10% of total EU greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

New policies adopted or intended by Member States will likely drive them to harvest more trees (e.g. for the bioeconomy and bioenergy), reducing the sink. The controversy is, in simple terms, if forests are taking up less CO2 due to policies, should this be counted?

Based on lessons learnt from the Kyoto Protocol, the European Commission proposed that accounting for the impacts of forests on the atmosphere should be based on a scientifically robust baseline. This baseline (known as the ‘Forest Reference Level’) should take into account historical data on forest management activities and forest dynamics (age-related changes). If countries change forest management activities going forward, the atmospheric impact of these changes would be fully accounted based on the resulting changes in GHG emissions and sinks relative to the baseline. This approach is consistent with the GHG accounting of all other sectors.

Subsequently, some EU member states have proposed that any increase in harvesting, potentially up to the full forest growth increment, should not be penalised. This would be achieved by including this increase in harvesting, and the related change in the net carbon sink, in the baseline.

As land-sector experts involved in scientific and methodological reports (including for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC), in the implementation of GHG inventory reports, and in science advice to Governments, we have several scientific concerns with this approach.

From an atmospheric perspective, a reduction in the forest sink leads to more CO2 remaining in the atmosphere and is thus effectively equivalent to a net increase in emissions. This is true even if forests are managed “sustainably”, i.e. even if harvest does not exceed forest growth.

This is further complicated as the issues are cross-sectoral. Higher harvest rates may reduce the uptake of CO2 by forests, but use of the harvested wood may lead to emissions reductions in other sectors e.g. through the substitution of wood for other more emissions-intensive materials (e.g. cement) or fossil energy. These emission reductions will be implicitly counted in the non-LULUCF sectors.  Therefore, to avoid bias through incomplete accounting, the full impact of increased harvesting must be also accounted for.

Including policy-related harvest increases in the baseline could effectively hide up to 400 MtCO2/yr from EU forest biomass accounting compared to the “sink service” that EU forests provide today, or up to 300 MtCO2/yr relative to a baseline based on a scientific approach (up to two thirds of France’s annual emissions).

If policy-related impacts on net land carbon sinks are ignored or discounted, this would:
 

  • Hamper the credibility of the EU’s bioenergy accounting: Current IPCC guidance on reporting emissions from bioenergy is not to assume that it is carbon neutral, but rather any carbon losses should to be reported under the ‘Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry’ (LULUCF) sector rather than under the energy sector (to avoid double counting). EU legislation on bioenergy similarly relies on the assumption that carbon emissions are fully accounted under LULUCF.
  • Compromise the consistency between the EU climate target and the IPCC trajectories. The EU objective of reducing GHG emissions of -40% by 2030 (-80/95% by 2050) compared to 1990 is based on the IPCC 2°C GHG trajectory for developed countries. This trajectory is based not just on emissions, but also on land-sinks. Hiding a decrease in the land sink risks failure to reach temperature targets and would require further emission reductions in other sectors to remain consistent with IPCC trajectories.
  • Contradict the spirit of the Paris Agreement, i.e., that “Parties should take action to conserve and enhance sinks”, and that Parties should ensure transparency in accounting providing confidence that the nationally-determined contribution of each country (its chosen level of ambition in mitigation) is met without hiding impacts of national policies.
  • Set a dangerous precedent internationally, potentially leading other countries to do the same (e.g. in setting deforestation reference levels). This would compromise the credibility of the large expected forest contribution to the Paris Agreement.

The Paris Agreement needs credible and transparent forest accounting and EU leaders are about to make a decision that could set the standard.   Including policy-driven increases in harvest in baselines means the atmospheric impacts of forest policies will be effectively hidden from the accounts (while generating GHG savings in other sectors). Basing forest accounting on a scientifically-objective approach would ensure the credibility of bioenergy accounting, consistency between EU targets and the IPCC 2°C trajectory, and compliance with the spirit of Paris Agreement. The wrong decision would increase the risks of climate change and undermine our ability to “make the planet great again”.

Disclaimer: the authors express their view in their personal capacities, not representing their countries or any of the institutions they work for.

***

Signatories:

Joanna I House, Reader in Environmental Science and Policy, Co-Chair Global Environmental Change, Cabot Institute, University of Bristol, UK
Jaana K Bäck, Professor in Forest – atmosphere interactions, Chair of the EASAC Forest multifunctionality report, University of Helsinki, Finland
Valentin Bellassen, Researcher in Agricultural and Environmental Economics, INRA, France
Hannes Böttcher, Senior Researcher at Oeko-Institut.
Eric Chivian M.D., Founder and Former Director, Center for Health and the Global Environment Harvard Medical School
Pep Canadell, Executive Director of the Global Carbon Project
Philippe Ciais, scientist at Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, Gif sur Yvette, France
Philip B. Duffy, President and Executive Director Woods Hole Research Center, USA
Sandro Federici, Consultant on MRV and accounting for mitigation in the Agriculture and land use sector
Pierre Friedlingstein, Chair, Mathematical Modelling of Climate Systems, University of Exeter, UK.
Scott Goetz, Professor, Northern Arizona University
Nancy Harris, Research Manager, Forests Program, World resources Institute.
Martin Herold, Professor for Geoinformation Science and Remote Sensing and co-chair of Global Observations of Forest Cover and Land Dynamics (GOFC-GOLD), Wageningen University and Research, The Netherlands
Mikael Hildén, Professor, Climate Change Programme and the Resource Efficient and Carbon Neutral Finland Programme, Finnish Environment Institute and the Strategic Research Council, Finland
Richard A. Houghton, Woods Hole Research Centre USA
Tuomo Kalliokoski University of Helsinki, Finland
Janne S. Kotiaho, Professor of Ecology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland
Donna Lee, Climate and Land Use Alliance
Anders Lindroth, Lund University, Sweden
Jari Liski, Research Professor, Finnish Meteorological Institute, Finland
Brendan Mackey, Director, Griffith Climate Change Response Program, Griffith University, Australia
James J. McCarthy, Harvard University, USA
William R. Moomaw, Co-director Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University, USA
Teemu Tahvanainen, University of Eastern Finland
Olli Tahvonen, Professor forest economics and policy, University of Helsinki, Finland
Keith Pausitan, University Distinguished Professor, Colorado State University, USA
Colin Prentice, AXA Chair in Biosphere and Climate Impacts, Imperial College London, UK
N H Ravindranath, Centre for Sustainable Technologies (CST), Indian Institute of Science, India
Laura Saikku, Senior Scientist, Finnish Environment Institute
Maria J Sanchez, Scientific Director of BC3 (Basque Center for Climate Change), Spain
Sampo Soimakallio, Senior Scientist, Finnish Environment Institute
Zoltan Somogyi, Hungarian Forest Research Institute, Budapest, Hungary
Benjamin Smith, Professor of Ecosystem Science, Lund University, Sweden
Pete Smith, Professor of Soils & Global Change, University of Aberdeen, UK
Francesco N. Tubiello, Te Leader, Agri-Environmental Statistics, FAO
Timo Vesala, Professor of Meteorology, University of Helsinki, Finland
Robert Waterworth
Jeremy Woods, Imperial College London, UK
Dan Zarin, Climate and Land Use Alliance

Yangon’s mobility crisis: A governance problem

Posted on by janet.crompton

A mobility crisis has arisen in Yangon, Myanmar, as growth-induced congestion is slowing travel times for the city’s widely used buses, thereby incentivising car ownership and increasing traffic further. The key cause is poor governance, which manifests itself through fragmented planning, low public infrastructure investment, and a ban on motorcycles and bicycles.

Home to more than 5 million people and producing nearly a quarter of Myanmar’s gross domestic product, this metropolis is once again buzzing with activity as it reopens to the world after decades of military rule. But Yangon’s potential to serve as an engine of economic growth for the nation is being severely undermined by a mobility crisis. As the economy speeds up, the city slows down.

Journey times have skyrocketed in the city as the streets become ever more crowded. Some estimates suggest travel speeds at peak times have dropped from 38 km/h in 2007 to 10-15 km/h in 2015. This slowdown matters for several reasons. First, such high congestion places a significant drag on productivity by raising the cost of doing business and generating friction in the greater Yangon labour market. It is harder for workers to commute to the jobs they are qualified for. Second, the worst affected are the poorest. As a group, they spend the highest share of income on transport and the most time in traffic, which impedes poverty reduction efforts and adds to inequality. Third, air pollution has reached dangerous levels. The World Health Organization finds that Myanmar has some of the worst air pollution in the world, due in part to “inefficient modes of transport”.

The proximate causes: liberalisation and economic growth

Yangon’s mobility crisis is a positive indicator insofar as it reflects robust economic growth. Estimating the city’s growth rate is challenging due to a lack of economic data. However, by exploiting satellite images of night-time lights, which can be used as a rough proxy for economic activity, we can get an idea of the pace of growth. Figures 1 and 2 show images of Yangon at night in 2003 and 2013, respectively. Over this period, the level of luminosity nearly tripled, which we estimate translates into an impressive average annual growth rate in output of 8.5%. Growth appears to have been accelerating, given our estimate that the city grew at an average annual rate of 11.2% between 2008 and 2013.

Figure 1: Luminosity in Yangon Region, 2003

 

Figure 2: Luminosity in Yangon Region, 2013

Since 2011 this growth has been accompanied by a large expansion of personal automobile usage. It was virtually impossible to import automobiles prior to 2011 due to heavy restrictions imposed by the military. The relaxation of vehicle import restrictions, as part of a wider range of liberalisation reforms in recent years, has revealed extensive pent up vehicle demand and allowed a precipitous decline in car prices. Yangon’s burgeoning middle class has jumped at the opportunity to acquire newly imported vehicles and escape the deteriorating bus system. Official figures indicate that there was a 153% increase in registered vehicles in Yangon between 2011 and 2014 alone.

The congestion incentive spiral

The surge in automobile ownership has set in motion a “congestion incentive spiral” that has exacerbated traffic. Prior to liberalisation, buses were by far the dominant mode of transport. The bus system was run as a competitive cartel with a restricted number of private bus owners competing for passengers on similar routes. This incentivised overcrowding, reckless driving, and under-investment in bus fleet maintenance — all of which contributed to congestion and a poor passenger experience.

For those who can afford a car, abandoning the buses is rational. Cars are more comfortable and always quicker than buses. The ability to go directly from origin to destination without stops or transfers significantly reduces the overall journey time. There remains a dilemma: the more people abandon buses, the worse traffic becomes, and the greater the incentive to use private transport. It is an incentive spiral that can only be broken by dramatically increasing the costs of individual car use or by providing an attractive alternative.



Fragmented governance as a root cause

There is no ready alternative to buses and cars in Yangon due to a legacy of poor planning, low public investment, and the fact that motorcycles and bicycles are banned in the city. In fact, there has been no significant investment in public transport infrastructure since the colonial era when the city’s Circular Railway was built. The railway is running and affordable, but its slow speed and limited coverage mean it attracts only a small fraction of Yangon’s commuters.

The emergence of the dysfunctional private bus cartel was an organic response to the lack of alternatives, which in turn was a consequence of the systematic lack of public investment in transport infrastructure and services. This crisis of governance persists today despite the energetic efforts of the current Chief Minister of Yangon, who has driven an impressive reform of the bus system by breaking the cartel and introducing proper public oversight.

An improved bus system, however, will not be enough to break the congestion incentive spiral now that so many people have purchased cars. What is required is a comprehensive and financially viable transport plan developed and implemented by a public transport authority with a metropolitan remit. Currently, the delivery of city infrastructure and services is fragmented across three tiers of government and dozens of agencies and offices. This fragmentation of governance is the true underlying cause of Yangon’s mobility crisis.

A path forward: governance then infrastructure

It is important to frame the problem as a mobility crisis, not a traffic congestion crisis. People can move through cities in many ways, and all large cities have traffic congestion challenges. More prepared cities do not suffer from mobility crises because other transport options are available: bus rapid transit systems that are insulated from traffic; cycling infrastructure; rail networks; and pedestrian-friendly mixed-used developments that reduce the demand for vehicular travel.

Relatively modest public investment could help Yangon. Nonetheless, a bus rapid transit plan announced in 2014 unfortunately appears to have been shelved. The mostly flat topography of Yangon is conducive to cycling. Relaxing restrictions on the use of bicycles on key arteries and in the city centre, combined with modest investments in cycling infrastructure, could provide an affordable alternative mode of individualised transport in the city.

These initiatives require significant governance reforms to succeed. Yangon is projected to join the ranks of the world’s mega-cities (i.e. cities with 10 million or more inhabitants) by 2030. With this growth comes physical expansion, which alters commuting patterns and transport demand. Without a concerted and sustained intervention by a metropolitan-scale transport authority with a mandate to maximise urban mobility, Yangon’s transit woes will surely worsen and further undermine the city’s enormous potential to support Myanmar’s economic renaissance.

This blog is written by Dr Sean Fox (Political Economy of Development & Urban Geography) and originally hosted on the IGC blog.

Why cities are crucibles for sustainable development efforts (but so hard to get right)

Posted on by janet.crompton
Figure 1. Rural and urban population trends, 1950-2050.
Fox, S. & Goodfellow, T. (2016) Cities and Development, Second Edition. Routledge.
Sustainable Development Goal 11 outlines a global ambition to ‘make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’. It is arguably one of the most important of the 17 recently agreed Goals, but we’re unlikely to reach it in most parts of the world by 2030.
The importance of Goal 11 stems from global demographic trends. As Figure 1 illustrates, over 50% of the world’s population already lives in towns and cities, and that percentage is set to rise to 66% by 2050. In fact, nearly all projected population growth between now and 2050 is expected to be absorbed in towns and cities, and the vast majority of this growth will happen in Africa and Asia (see Figure 2).

These trends mean that when it comes to eliminating poverty and hunger, improving health and education services, ensuring universal access to clean water and adequate sanitation, promoting economic growth with decent employment opportunities, and creating ‘responsible consumption and production patterns’ (and achieving many other goals) urban centres are on the front line by default.

 

 

Figure 2. Estimated and projected urban population increase by region, 1950/2000 & 2000/2050
Dr Sean Fox, Lecturer in Urban Geography and Global Development, University of Bristol
But cities are complex political arenas prone to the kinds of conflicts that can thwart ambitious visions for transformative development.

To appreciate just how difficult it can be to achieve seemingly obvious and desirable improvements in cities, it is useful to examine some practical challenges. Consider the goal of ensuring access to clean, affordable water for all (Goal 6, Target 1; Goal 11 Target 1). In cities across Africa and Asia, a significant share of households live in informal settlements that lack piped water infrastructure. As a result, most residents rely on water provided by private vendors who sell water by the bucketful from tanker trunks or standpipes that they control. Perversely, the poor often end up paying a significant premium for their water on the open market, while more fortunate residents who are connected to municipal infrastructure pay far less. This perpetuates inequality, both between socioeconomic groups and between men and women (as women generally bear the burden of water collection in such contexts), and it also means that there are groups of people with fairly strong incentives to resist infrastructure investments: the water vendors. And these vendors sometimes take aggressive steps to protect their captive markets and thwart infrastructure development.

A similar dynamic is often at play when it comes to upgrading informal settlements more generally. In many cities poorer households do not have formal (i.e. legally binding) tenure security but rather pay some form of rent to a third party in return for protection against eviction. This form of ‘land racketeering’ is often undertaken by the very politicians and bureaucrats who should be seeking to improve citizens’ lives.
In other words, urban underdevelopment creates profitable opportunities for some, which in turn creates interest groups opposed to change.

But even rich cities, with well-developed physical infrastructure and formal tenure arrangements, often suffer from political gridlock that impedes progress. Consider the city of Bristol in the UK. Bristol was recently voted the best place to live in the UK, yet the city also suffers from dangerous levels of air pollution, which is linked directly to debilitating levels of traffic congestion in the city.

While Bristol’s transport woes have long been recognized, it has proven fiendishly difficult to tackle the underlying problem: a lack of metropolitan-scale transport planning and investment integrated with land use plans. This is due to a legacy of ‘horizontal fragmentation’ and ‘vertical dependence’.
Figure 3. Map of Greater Bristol with council boundaries

Horizontal fragmentation refers to the fact that Greater Bristol—i.e. the functional area of the city as defined by daily commuter behaviour—is home to over 1 million people spread across four different local government areas, each with its own budget, council, transport planning processes, etc. As Figure 3 clearly shows, the local government boundaries (in red) carve up this functional urban region into four artificial parts). Indeed, in some places, such as north Bristol, local government boundaries run straight through clearly contiguous built-up areas (represented as grey). The challenge of coordinating planning and investment across four councils is compounded by the fact that in the past any major infrastructure investment needed to be approved and funded by the UK central government (i.e. the problem of vertical dependence). This support is not necessarily forthcoming. An ambitious plan tabled around the turn of the millennium to integrate city transport with a tram network, and make the whole system more inclusive for low income residents, was rejected by central government. This is a prime example of how political challenges in wealthy countries impede development progress.

In sum, there are significant political obstacles to progress in poor cities and rich cities alike. But this doesn’t mean that progress is impossible. In fact, recognising and understanding these political complexities is helpful in identifying effective courses of action, whether as citizens, activists or policymakers. I doubt we will fulfil the aspirations of SDG 11 in a convincing manner by 2030, but I am hopeful that progress can be made if we approach the challenge with our eyes wide open to the political dynamics that could undermine our efforts.

Blog by Dr Sean Fox, School of Geographical Sciences. Originally hosted by the Policy Bristol blog.


The views expressed here are personal views and do not reflect the views of the funders of our research.

 

Interests in Aid and Development: a talk with Myles Wickstead

Posted on by janet.crompton

Ever wondered what a career in aid and development is like? Or how the world’s current development programmes came into being? Look no further than this blog on Myles Wickstead who gave a Cabot Institute lecture and short interview on his reflections and experiences on a colourful career in aid and development.

Among Wickstead’s notable achievements are a position as head of British Development Division in Eastern Africa, coordinating a British Government White Paper on eliminating world poverty and now being an advisor to the charity Hand in Hand International.

An audio recording of Myles lecture can be found above. His talk focussed largely on the inception of the building blocks of international development; the UN, the World Bank and the International Monetary fund. He began by turning back time towards the end of the second World War, in which the atmosphere of global reconciliation bred the need for trans-border institutions such as the UN that had the oversight necessary for peace to prevail.

Many years later, the UN decided to introduce development goals with the aim of reducing global poverty within a given time frame. The first of these was the Millennium Development Goals which were drafted in the UN head quarters with little external solicitation. In fact, Wickstead reminisced that environmental goals were almost completely overlooked and only added when a member of the committee ran into the director of the UN environment department on the way to the copier room…

Wickstead went on to add that a large parts of the Millennium goals were generally quite successful although there was still plenty of scope to be more inclusive. He also dwelt on the new Sustainable Development Goals drafted by the UN in 2015 and the Paris climate summit which, Wickstead claims, represent a much more integrated approach to propel international development into the future.

Below is my interview with Myles in which I question him on his talk and ask him about his career in aid and development:

You mentioned a fair bit in your talk about the importance of tying in environment sustainability with aid and development. How do you see that working in practice in a developing country when sustainable practices can be sometimes be quite anti-economic? 

Yes, the two things are brought together in the Global Goals for Sustainable Development agreed in New York in September 2015.  Let’s take an example of a country that’s well-endowed with forest resources. They could get rich quickly by chopping down the trees and selling the wood. You can’t expect those countries to simply say ‘we are not going to chop our forest down’. Firstly you need them to realise that for the long-term sustainability of their country they need to preserve the  forest. But second, because maintaining the forests helps protect us all from climate change they rightly expect some compensation from the international community to do so. There are (albeit imperfect) mechanisms in place for this. Despite this I do, on the whole, think they are being successfully implemented: take Brazil for example.

There are also examples where – often without the consent of the government – indigenous forests are being cut down to make way for palm oil plantations, with devastating consequences not only for the trees but the wildlife.  In these situations, governments need to be encouraged to take firm action against the individuals or  companies concerned, again with support from the international community as and if appropriate.

I work on volcanic hazard in Ethiopia and one of the things I’ve noticed is the more wealthy urban areas are developing fast with an expanding middle class, but the more rural areas are still subject to a lot of extreme poverty. What part should external aid play in helping this wealth filter down?

It’s a very important question and one I touched on when talking about the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which were in place from 2000-2015.  That period saw extraordinary progress, including halving the proportion of people living in absolute poverty, but many people (for example, those with disabilities or from ethnic minorities) were left out.  It is also the case that urban areas, with generally better infrastructure and more job opportunities, tended to make faster progress.  A lot of people in rural areas were in very much the same position in 2015 as in 1990. Within Ethiopia, a combination of rapid economic growth – supported both by investment and aid  – and good policies mean that the benefits are now being felt more widely.

The role of Chinese investment in infrastructure, particularly roads, has I think been quite a positive one. The Government of Ethiopia has a very clear five year growth and investment plan and they expect their partners to deliver; I remember one case of former Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles requiring a Chinese company to rebuild a road they had just built as it was not up to standard; I am sure they were equally exacting of other companies from other countries.  Not all African governments have that kind of determination but on the whole I think Chinese engagement has been a good thing.  And the fact that Africa was largely unaffected by the global recession following the crash of 2008 was not only because it was not as connected to the international financial system as other parts of the world, but also because China and other countries in Asia continued to buy its raw materials.

What influenced your decision to have a career in Aid and development?

I had lived and travelled overseas a little.  My father was a marine biologist and as a technical expert worked for the predecessors of DFID and lived and worked overseas in places like Singapore, Tanzania, and Jamaica.  So I probably got some of the wish to live and work overseas from him – though alas didn’t inherit the science gene, which passed me by!

I went through the civil service fast stream process, and having successfully negotiated that had to make a choice about which Department I wanted to join.  It was then the Ministry of Overseas Development; a few years later became the Overseas Development Administration of the FCO; and in 1997 became a fully-fledged Department of State with its own Cabinet Minister. Interestingly, DFID remains the most popular choice of all government departments for fast-steam applicants.

Is there a defining moment in your career you want to mention? 

I have been extraordinarily lucky in the choices that I have made – or have been made for me – in terms of where I was at particular time. To have had the chance to run a regional office in Africa; to have been on the Board of the World Bank; to have worked closely with Ministers both as a Private Secretary and in coordinating the 1997 White Paper (the first in 24 years); and to be Ambassador to Ethiopia and the African Union – it was a huge privilege (and very hard work!) to be given these responsibilities.  I ran the Commission for Africa Secretariat in 2004/5, and I suppose one of the great moments was going to present a copy of the Commission’s Report ‘Our Common Interest’ in 2005 to Nelson Mandela.

Someone asked earlier today- how do you keep positive despite the gloomy state of much of the world? My answer would be that the world has made extraordinary progress over the past quarter of a century in pulling people out of poverty, and that we have a real chance of completing the task, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals, by 2030. Of course there have been setbacks along the way, and there will be more – conflict and environmental challenges to name but two. But with political will, and by maintaining a positive focus, I believe we can aspire to a better world both for ourselves and for future generations.

Blog post by Keri McNamara

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