UNESCO – Cabot Institute for the Environment blog

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 others 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.

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The main road in Tuvalu in September 2015, photographed by Viliami Fifita a PhD student in Policy Studies, University of Bristol. His travel was funded by an ESRC Impact Acceleration Award to assist the Tuvalu government measure poverty and living standards in the context of climatic change and rising sea levels.

The Climate Change (COP21) conference in Paris is one of the most important gatherings of politicians, civil servants, academic experts, journalists, business and civil society representatives of the 21^st Century – over 50,000 people are expected to attend. The need to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions is clear as in 2015 global temperatures may rise to an average of 1^oC above the pre-industrial level and atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) levels rose above 400 ppm for the first time in the past 800,000 years. Some climate model results show that if greenhouse gas emission were stabilised, which would require a 60% reduction in global emissions immediately, then the World’s climate would still warm up to 1.6^oC above the average pre-industrial level.

The natural sciences have made huge efforts to investigate the problem of climate change; unfortunately, the social sciences have not been so active. This lamentable situation needs to change, so under the auspices of the IASQ (International Association on Social Quality) over 200 social scientists from around the world have signed the Sustainability Manifesto which argues that;

“one-dimensional solutions cannot address multidimensional problems like those we currently face….. environmental change is still viewed primarily in physical science terms, whereby the (interrelationships of) socio-environmental, socio-economic, socio-political and socio-cultural dimensions of sustainability receive insufficient attention”.

Interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary research is needed particularly to fill the current knowledge gaps about socio-political and socio-cultural aspects of sustainability. A lot is now known about the environmental and economic aspects of climate change but this has not been sufficient to persuade many politicians or some sections of the public that major actions are required which may affect their lifestyles. Research is needed into how best to overcome these socio-cultural and socio-political barriers to sustainability.

The Sustainability Manifesto has received the unanimous backing of the executive committee of the International Social Science Council (the World’s governing body for the social sciences under the auspices of UNESCO) and the ISSC president, Alberto Martinelli, has called on all “scientists and colleagues all around the world to support the Initiative”. I have helped to draft the Sustainability Manifesto and have signed it on behalf of the University of Bristol.

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Professor David Gordon. Prof Gordon studied environmental and climatic change for his PhD research and has worked at Bristol for 25 years in the School for Policy Studies. He is the Director of the Townsend Centre for International Poverty Research and was the editor of the European Journal of Social Quality for two years.

Prof David Gordon

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

Monday 30 November: COP21 daily report

Tuesday 1 December: Setting a more ambitious agenda – Bristol’s Transformative Action Plans

Wednesday 2 December: Reflecting on the science of climate change

Friday 4 December: Be brave, work together and involve the next generation

The University of Bristol has signed a UNESCO Global Action Programme commitment, in advance of there launch of the next UNESCO strategy for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD).

As the UNESCO decade for ESD draws to an end, UNESCO has reviewed progress, and will this November launch a new Global Action Programme focussed on four key areas which most urgently need more attention.

My own journey, and Bristol’s very much reflects the picture UNESCO has found. A decade ago ESD was largely below the radar in Higher Education (HE). Lots of great things were going on, but as local initiatives by keen academics. Typical of the time, we won our first Times Higher Award and Green Gown Award for what was then a very innovative interdisciplinary open unit on Sustainable Development, available to any student, whatever their degree. Nearly a decade later, UNESCO has set us all the challenge of moving from hot spots of excellence to whole institution approaches. Bristol has committed to meeting that challenge.

The University of Bristol collects
its 2nd Green Gown Award in
2013.

We changed gear to a whole institution approach about three years ago, when we were selected as one of six Green Academies by HEA. I’ve never been a fan of labels, but in this case it was the catalyst for moving to a whole institution approach – and in 2013 the University was awarded another Green Gown, but this time for whole institution continuous change. The whole University is taking education for sustainable development seriously, every part of the institution is doing something. Our challenge now is to connect all of this is up, to deepen student opportunities to engage with uncertainty, with the challenges of sustainability in their studies, informal activity and in the subliminal curriculum. The key for me is ensuring our students have adaptive capacity – the ability to live with uncertainty and take decisions based on evidence. Without those skills the sirens of cosy avoidance of the crisis facing our planet beckon. We can let the evidence speak for itself, as long as our students have the skills to listen.

Our UNESCO commitment is to ensure all students encounter sustainability through their formal studies, have opportunities to link theory and practice through informal activity or community based projects, learn subliminally about sustainable lifestyles through the way the precinct is run (estates) and understand how central sustainability in its many aspects is to our research. This autumn in advance of the Nagoya launch, all Bristol students will be encouraged to take the Global Sustainability Literacy Test. As one of the launch partners, the Cabot Institute as a research institute is central to this – showing the importance of living with uncertainty and bringing people together on an interdisciplinary basis to address these challenges.

Whether your expertise is in environmental, social, economic or cultural sustainability you have an important part to play in building both the knowledge and skill sets to help achieve the UNESCO aims.

Bristol has pledged to play its part.

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This blog post is written by Cabot Institute member, Chris Willmore, University Academic Director of Undergraduate Studies, University of Bristol

Further reading
– Education for Sustainable Development at the University of Bristol
– Community Based Learning at the Cabot Institute

Tag: UNESCO

COP21 daily report: The politics and culture of climate change

The big commitment: How we’re ensuring all our students encounter sustainability at Bristol