Tag: University of Bristol

Black Lives Matter

Posted on by janet.crompton

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

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

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

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

First steps

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

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

Actions, not words

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

Read our public statement on Black Lives Matter.

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

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

Let’s not wait

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Innovating for sustainable oceans

Posted on by janet.crompton



University of Bristol’s Cabot Institute researchers come together for the oceans’ critical decade

World Oceans Day 2020 – the start of something big

Since 1992, World Oceans Day has been bringing communities and countries together on 8 June to shine a light on the benefits we derive from – and the threats faced by – our oceans. But this year, there’s an even bigger event on the horizon. One that may go a long way to determining our planet’s future, and which researchers at the Cabot Institute for the Environment intend to be an integral part of.

From next year, the United Nations launches its Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, a major new initiative that aims to “support efforts to reverse the cycle of decline in ocean health”.

Oceans are of enormous importance to humans and all life on our planet – they regulate our climate, provide food, help us breathe and support worldwide economies. They absorb 50 times more carbon dioxide than our atmosphere, and sea-dwelling phytoplankton alone produce at least half the world’s oxygen. The OECD estimates that three billion people, mostly in developing countries, rely on the oceans for their livelihoods and that by the end of the decade, ocean-based industry, including fishing, tourism and offshore wind, may be worth $3 trillion of added economic value.

A decade to decide the future of our oceans

But ocean health is ailing. The first World Ocean Assessment in 2016 underlined the extent of the damaging breakdown of systems vital to life on Earth. As the human population speeds towards nine billion and the effects of our global climate crisis and other environmental stressors take hold, “Adaptation strategies and science-informed policy responses to global [ocean] change are urgently needed,” states the UN.

By announcing a Decade of Ocean Science, the UN recognises the pressing need for researchers everywhere and from all backgrounds to come together and deliver the evidence base and solutions that will tackle these urgent ocean challenges. At the Cabot Institute, we kicked off our support for that vision a year early by holding our first Ocean’s Workshop.

Cabot Institute Ocean’s Workshop – seeing things differently

From our diverse community of hundreds of experts seeking to protect the environment and identify ways of living better with our changing planet, we brought together researchers from a wide range of specialisms to explore how we might confront the challenges of the coming decades. The University of Bristol has recently appointed new experts in geographical, biological and earth sciences, as well as environmental humanities, who are experienced in ocean study, so, excitingly, we had a pool of new, untapped Caboteers to connect with.

During a fast-paced and far-reaching workshop, we shared insights and ideas and initiated some potentially highly valuable journeys together.

Biogeochemists helped us consider the importance of the oceans’ delicately balanced nutrient cycle that influences everything from ecosystems to the atmosphere, biologists shared their work on invertebrate vision and the impact of anthropogenic noise on dolphins and other species, and literature scholars helped us understand how the cultural significance and documentation of the oceans has evolved throughout history, altering our relationship with the seas.

We highlighted how Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) deliver mixed results based on regional differences and outdated assumptions – individual MPAs are siloed, rarely part of a more holistic strategy, and rely on data from the 1980s which fail to account for much faster-than-predicted changes to our oceans since then. Our ocean modellers noted the lack of reliable, consistent and joined-up observational data on which to base their work, as well as the limitations of only being able to model the top layers of the ocean, leaving the vast depths beneath largely unexplored. And the fruitful link between biological and geographical sciences was starkly apparent – scientists measuring the chemical composition of oceans can collaborate with biologists who have specialist knowledge about species tipping points, for example, to mitigate and prioritise society’s responses to a variety of environmental stressors.

Collaboration creates innovation

One overriding message arose again and again though – the power of many, diverse minds coming together in a single mission to engage in pioneering, solutions-focused research for our oceans. Whether it’s the need for ocean scientists to work more closely with the social scientists who co-create with coastal communities or the interdisciplinary thinking that can resolve maritime noise and light pollution, protecting our oceans requires us to operate in more joined-up ways. It is the work we conduct at this intersection that will throw new light on established and emerging problems. We can already see so many opportunities to dive into.

So, as we celebrate World Oceans Day and look ahead to a critical Decade of Ocean Science, it’s our intention to keep connecting inspiring people and innovative ideas from many seemingly disparate disciplines and to keep doing so in a way that delivers the research we need for the oceans we want.

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This blog was written by Chris Parsons on behalf of the Oceans Research Group at the Cabot Institute for the Environment.

Coronavirus conspiracy theories are dangerous – here’s how to stop them spreading

Posted on by janet.crompton

 

Conspiracy theories increase the likelihood that people won’t follow expert advice. Shutterstock

The number of coronavirus infections and deaths continues to rise at an alarming rate, reminding us that this crisis is far from over. In response, the global scientific community has thrown itself at the problem and research is unfolding at an unprecedented rate.

The new virus was identified, along with its natural origins, and tests for it were rapidly developed. Labs across the world are racing to develop a vaccine, which is estimated to be still around 12 to 18 months away.

At the same time, the pandemic has been accompanied by an infodemic of nonsense, disinformation, half-truths and conspiracy theories that have spread virally through social networks. This damages society in a variety of ways. For example, the myth that COVID-19 is less dangerous than the seasonal flu was deployed by US president Donald Trump as justification for delaying mitigation policies.

The recent downgrading of COVID-19 death projections, which reveal the success of social-distancing policies, has been falsely used to justify premature relaxing of social distancing measures. This is the logical equivalent of throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because it’s kept you dry until then.

The new conspiracy theory that blames COVID-19 on the 5G broadband system is one of the most bizarre pieces of misinformation. There are several strains of this theory, ranging from the claims that 5G alters people’s immune systems to the idea that 5G changes people’s DNA, making them more susceptible to infection. Then there’s the idea that secret messages about 5G and coronavirus were hidden in the design of the new £20 note in the UK. In reality, 5G relates to viruses and bank notes as much as the tooth fairy relates to zoology – not at all.

The 5G conspiracy theory originated in early March when an American physician, Thomas Cowan, proposed it in a YouTube video (which has since been taken down by YouTube according to their new policy). Some people have taken this conspiracy theory so seriously that it led to people setting 5G towers in the UK on fire and threatening broadband engineers.

The conspiracy theory has begun to penetrate mainstream society. Among other celebrities, UK TV personality Eamonn Holmes and US actor Woody Harrelson have given fuel to the idea.

Inoculating against conspiracy theories

As we document in our recent Conspiracy Theory Handbook, there is a great deal of scientific research into why people might be susceptible to conspiracy theories. When people suffer loss of control or feel threatened, it makes them more vulnerable to believing conspiracies. Unfortunately, this means that pandemics have always been breeding grounds for conspiracy theories, from antisemitic hysteria during the Black Death to today’s 5G craze.

An effective strategy for preventing conspiracy theories from spreading through social networks is, appropriately enough, inoculation. As we document in the Conspiracy Theory Handbook, if we inoculate the public by pre-emptively warning them of misleading misinformation, they develop resilience and are less likely to be negatively influenced. Inoculating messages can take several forms. As well as giving people the right facts, inoculation can also be logic-based and source-based.

Questioning the sources

The source-based approach focuses on analysing the people who push the conspiracy theory and the cultural infrastructure from which they emerged.

For example, the 5G theory began with Thomas Cowan, a physician whose medical licence is on a five-year probation. He is currently prohibited from providing cancer treatment to patients and supervising physician assistants and advanced practice nurses. So we can question his credentials.

His 5G video was from a talk he presented at a pseudo-scientific conference featuring a who’s who of science deniers. One of the headliners was Andrew Wakefield, a debarred former physician and seminal figure in the anti-vaccination movement who promotes highly damaging misinformation about vaccination based on data that he is known to have falsified.

Another attendee of this meeting was the president of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness, an organisation famous for bestowing awards onto fossil-fuel funded climate deniers and for giving a platform to a speaker who denied the link between HIV and AIDS, claiming that the link was invented by government scientists who wanted to cover up other health risks of “the lifestyle of homosexual men.”

For the public to be protected against the 5G conspiracy theory, it is important to understand its emergence from the same infrastructure that also supports AIDS denial, anti-vaccination conspiracies and climate denial.

It is therefore unsurprising that the rhetorical techniques that are deployed against the seriousness of climate change are similar to those used to mismanage the COVID-19 crisis.

Yale Climate Connections, Author provided

 

Questioning the logic

Another way to neutralise conspiracy theories is through logic-based inoculation. This involves explaining the rhetorical techniques and tell-tale traits to be found in misinformation, so that people can flag it before it has a chance to mislead them. In the Conspiracy Theory Handbook, we document seven traits of conspiratorial thinking. Spotting these can help people identify a baseless theory.

Conspiracy Theory Handbook, Author provided

One trait that is particularly salient in the 5G conspiracy theory is re-interpreting randomness. With this thought pattern, random events are re-interpreted as being causally connected and woven into a broader, interconnected pattern.

For example, the introduction of 5G in 2019 coincided with the origin of COVID-19 and hence is interpreted to be causally related. But by that logic, other factors that were introduced in 2019 – say, the global phenomenon of Baby Yoda – could also be interpreted as a possible cause of COVID-19.

Correlation does not equal causation. The 5G conspiracy theory is also immune to evidence, despite having been debunked extensively. To illustrate, some of the countries worst affected by the pandemic (such as Iran) do not have any 5G technology.

Of course, 5G has nothing to do with a virus. In the US, T-Mobile’s low-band 5G data is transmitted using old UHF TV channels. UHF TV did not cause coronavirus and neither does 5G.

John Cook, Author provided

 

The crucial role of social media platforms

Social media platforms contribute to the problem of misinformation by providing the means for it to quickly and freely disseminate to the general public. Given that 330,000 lives were lost in relation to AIDS in South Africa during the presidency of Thabo Mbeki, when denying the disease’s link to HIV was official state policy. Given that people in the UK are now vandalizing potentially life-saving communication infrastructure, social media companies should not aid and abet the life-threatening disinformation that is spewed by a nexus of science deniers and conspiracy theorists.

To their credit, these firms are making an effort to be part of the solution to the problem of misinformation. For example, YouTube has announced that it will take down any video that espouses the 5G conspiracy theory. This is a move in the right direction.

There is considerable room for improvement, however. A recent test by the non-profit Disinfo.eu laboratory found much conspiratorial content on various social media platforms, and we were able to find hundreds of YouTube videos promulgating the 5G nonsense with a few keystrokes.

Much remains to be done.The Conversation

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This blog was written by Cabot Institute member Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, Chair of Cognitive Psychology, University of Bristol and John Cook, Research Assistant Professor, Center for Climate Change Communication, George Mason University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Professor Stephan Lewandowsky
Dr John Cook

Predicting the hazards of weather and climate; the partnering of Bristol and the Met Office

Posted on by janet.crompton
Image credit Federico Respini on Unsplash

When people think of the University of Bristol University, or indeed any university, they sometimes think of academics sitting in their ivy towers, researching into obscurities that are three stages removed from reality, and never applicable to the world they live in. Conversely, the perception of the Met Office is often one of purely applied science, forecasting the weather; hours, days, and weeks ahead of time. The reality is far from this, and today, on the rather apt Earth Day 2020, I am delighted to announce a clear example of the multidisciplinary nature of both institutes with our newly formed academic partnership.

This new and exciting partnership brings together the Met Office’s gold standard weather forecasts and climate projections, with Bristol’s world leading impact and hazard models. Our partnership goal is to expand on the advice we already give decision makers around the globe, allowing them to make evidence-based decisions on weather-related impacts, across a range of timescales.

By combining the weather and climate data from the Met Office with our hazard and impact models at Bristol, we could, for instance, model the flooding impact from a storm forecasted a week ahead, or estimate the potential health burden from heat waves in a decade’s time. This kind of advanced knowledge is crucial for decision makers in many sectors. For instance, if we were able to forecast which villages might be flooded from an incoming storm, we could prioritise emergency relief and flood defenses in that area days ahead of time. Or, if we projected that hospital admissions would increase by 10% due to more major heatwaves in London in the 2030s, then decision makers could include the need for more resilient housing and infrastructure in their planning. Infrastructure often lasts decades, so these sorts of decisions can have a long memory, and we want our decision makers to be proactive, rather than reactive in these cases.

While the examples I give are UK focussed, both the University of Bristol and the Met Office are internationally facing and work with stakeholders all over the world. Only last year, while holding a workshop in the Caribbean on island resilience to tropical cyclones; seeing the importance of our work the prime minister of Jamaica invited us to his residence for a celebration. While I don’t see this happening with Boris Johnson anytime soon, it goes to show the different behaviours and levels of engagement policy makers have in different countries. It’s all very well being able to do science around the world, but if you don’t get the culture, they won’t get your science. It is this local knowledge and connection that is essential for an international facing partnership to work, and that is where both Bristol and the Met Office can pool their experience.

To ensure we get the most out of this partnership we will launch a number of new joint Bristol-Met Office academic positions, ranging from doctoral studentships all the way to full professorships. These positions will work with our Research Advisory Group (RAP), made up of academics across the university, and be associated with both institutes. The new positions will sit in this cross-disciplinary space between theory and application; taking a combined approach to addressing some of the most pressing environmental issues of our time.

As the newly appointed Met Office Joint Chair I will be leading this partnership at Bristol over the coming years, and I welcome discussions and ideas from academics across the university; some of the best collaborations I’ve had have come from a random knock on the door, so don’t be shy in sharing your thoughts.

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This blog is written by Dr Dann Mitchell – Met Office Joint Chair and co-lead of the Cabot Institute for the Environment’s Natural Hazards and Disaster Risk research.
You can follow him on Twitter @ClimateDann.

Dann Mitchell

Teach for the Future: Greening the national curriculum

Posted on by janet.crompton

Do you feel like you learnt enough about climate change in school? Most likely, you didn’t as only 44% in a national survey of students felt like they had. If you think that’s disgraceful than I have good news for you. In the last few months the National Union of Students (NUS) launched a partner charity called Students Organising for Sustainability (SOS). SOS’s first campaign is ‘Teach the Future’ which aims to incorporate sustainability into the wider English curriculum instead of the topic being squeezed into either Geography or Science. The campaign includes the first ever legislation to be drafted by pupils and students: The Climate Emergency Education Bill!

The Climate Emergency Education Bill has extensive demands from students across the UK for sustainability to be included in all parts of their education, as well as a guide for supporting teachers and student voices. There’s even proposed money earmarked for making educational buildings net-zero carbon. Here’s an excerpt from the Bill’s cover that explains all of the demands in a bit more detail:

  1. A government commissioned review into how the whole of the English formal education system is preparing students for the climate emergency and ecological crisis (in the gift of the Secretary of State);
  2. Inclusion of the climate emergency and ecological crisis in teacher training and a new professional teaching qualification (in the gift of the Secretary of State);
  3. An English Climate Emergency Education Act that:
  • obligates education providers to teach the climate emergency and ecological crisis, and to have a member of their leadership team responsible for it;
  • provides new funding for: the upskilling of existing teachers and lecturers; development of teaching resources; vocational centres of excellence on low carbon skills; establishing youth voice climate boards; more youth-led climate and environmental social action; support with eco-anxiety;
  • requires, and provides new funding, to ensure all new state-funded educational buildings are net-zero from 2022, and all existing state-funded educational buildings are net-zero by 2030.

Emma and I were lucky enough to win a competition and get spots on the exclusive guest list for the launch of the Bill at Parliament on the 26 February 2020! We met up with the 46 students aged 13-26 in Parliament Square for photos before heading into the main event at Parliament. The reception was filled with students, representatives from environmental and educational charities, and MPs. We spoke with everyone, advocating for the Bill, before stopping to watch the speeches. Speeches were given by students, Parliamentarians, and educational leaders all emphasizing the urgent need for educating pupils across the nation about the climate emergency and its effects. Interestingly, most of the speakers emphasised the need for the social and economic effects of climate change to be included in the curriculum alongside the environmental. As Emma and I are quite ‘in the know’ about the devastating social effects of climate change it was good to be reminded that not everyone does. We left the event feeling inspired and ready to tackle sustainability challenges in Bristol and beyond!

If you want to support the Teach for the Future campaign write to your MP and ask them to help make the Bill into law.

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This blog was written by Anya Kaufman, a Sustainability masters student at the University of Bristol.

Lab efficiency: Towards a greener future

Posted on by janet.crompton

The Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework 2020 (LEAF) marks the University of Bristol’s move to a greener future. Following on from the University’s ‘climate emergency’ declaration and 2030 carbon neutrality pledge, we’ve set a new ambition for 100% Green Lab Accreditation and institutional LEAF. This will make us the first University in the world to achieve this.

Labs impact the environment, in fact they have a greater environmental impact than offices by at least five times. They use more water and energy, produce larger quantities of waste and generally use more resources. In order to tackle this ever-growing problem LEAF was created with lab users in mind and sustainable thinking at the forefront. LEAF is an innovative tool used to drive sustainability and efficiency within STEMed labs.

In 2019 the LEAF national pilot took place involving 16 national Higher Education Institutions, including the University of Bristol. To gain LEAF accreditation each participating lab must meet a set of criteria to achieve Bronze, Silver or Gold accreditation. Through LEAF, each lab’s carbon and financial savings can be recorded as they progress.

The LEAF criteria cover all environmental aspects of the lab including circular economy and waste, procurement, business travel, equipment efficiency and chemical management. In addition to this, the criteria also include research quality, addressing international issues regarding the ‘reproducibility crisis’. LEAF differs from the previous Green Labs Initiative as it includes metrics that enable us to quantify tangible environmental and financial savings so that we can measure real time changes in line with the University’s 2030 carbon neutrality goals.

Research councils and funding bodies are also collaborating with the Higher Education Institutions taking part in LEAF with an aim for inclusion in relevant research grant proposals within two to three years.

The LEAF accreditation is designed for academic groups or facilities rather than whole departments and involves the technical community, students and research staff.

Benefits of taking part in LEAF

 

  • Reduces utility costs and our environmental footprint
  • Provides the opportunity for direct savings through our financial incentive schemes
  • Ensures health and safety compliance within labs
  • Increases research efficiency
  • Provides recognition for individual labs and the University on a national stage
  • Enables a bottom-up sustainability movement
  • Aligns with our commitment to the Global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
  • Integrates different labs and departments
  • Strengthens relationships between Estates, lab users and other stakeholders
  • Aligns your research with the University strategy and Bristol Futures
  • Provides chances of gaining additional research funding
  • A selling point for prospective students
  • Inter-lab and inter-departmental benchmarking
  • Provides practice-based learning experiences that improve professional skills and employability
  • Improves student experience via volunteering opportunities as Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Volunteers (LEAVs)
  • Creates a better understanding within our community of our science buildings and operations

 

How LEAF works

After signing-up to LEAF, participants are sent the LEAF Framework – an electronic workbook with a set of easy-to-implement actions.  For each accreditation (Bronze, Silver and Gold), participants need to fulfil certain criteria. The workbook provides useful links to help achieve the criteria and information on why these actions are important for improving lab sustainability.

Completing Bronze accreditation should only take an average of five hours, as most of our labs will already be running to Bronze standards. As you progress through Silver and Gold, criteria become more challenging and include categories such as minimising the amount of single-use plastic your lab uses.

There are also several special awards: Environmental Improvement, Environmental Hero, Innovation for Engagement and Community Action.

Throughout LEAF, participants are supported by the Green Labs Team and student LEAF volunteers (LEAVs), who have received environmental audit training. On submission of workbooks, laboratory audits can be organised, led by LEAVs. LEAF aims to improve student experience by providing volunteering opportunities and training. Alternatively, teams can also be audited by staff from Campus Division, or by peer assessment if they wish. On successful completion of the workbook and audit, labs will receive green accreditation status.

LEAF closes 13 November 2020, but teams can submit workbooks and complete audits at any point during the year, note workbooks can be submitted multiple times.

So, if you’re a Technician or academic and aren’t already actively involved in LEAF 2020, sign up now! If you’re a student and you’d like to volunteer with LEAF then sign up here.

This is an exciting time for Sustainability and especially for our University, being the first institution in the UK to declare a climate emergency and the first in the world to aim for 100% LEAF accreditation in all STEMed labs!

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This blog is written by Rachael Ward and Anna Lewis from the University of Bristol’s Sustainability Team.

World Water Day: Climate change and flash floods in Small Island Developing States

Posted on by janet.crompton

Pluvial flash flooding (otherwise known as flash flooding caused by rain) is a major hazard globally, but a particularly acute problem for Small Island Developing States (SIDS). Many SIDS experience extreme rainfall events associated with tropical cyclones (often referred to as hurricanes) which trigger excess surface water runoff and lead to pluvial flash flooding.

Following record-breaking hurricanes in the Caribbean such as Hurricane Maria in 2017 and Hurricane Dorian in 2019, the severe risk facing SIDS has been reaffirmed and labelled by many as a sign of the ‘new normal’ due to rising global temperatures under climate change. Nonetheless, in the Disaster Risk Reduction community there is a limited understanding of both current tropical-cyclone induced flood hazard and how this might change under different climate change scenarios, which inhibits attempts to build adaptive capacity and resilience to these events.

As part of the first year of my PhD research, I am applying rainfall data that has been produced by Emily Vosper and Dr Dann Mitchell in the University of Bristol BRIDGE group using a tropical cyclone rainfall model. This model uses climate model data to simulate a large number of tropical cyclone events in the Caribbean, which are used to understand how the statistics of tropical cyclone-induced rainfall might change under the 1.5C and 2C Paris Agreement scenarios. This rainfall data will be input into the hydrodynamic model LISFLOOD-FP to simulate pluvial flash flooding associated with hurricanes in Puerto Rico.

Investigating changes in flood hazard associated with different rainfall scenarios will help us to understand how flash flooding, associated with hurricanes, emerges under current conditions and how this might change under future climate change in Puerto Rico. Paired with data identifying exposure and vulnerability, my research hopes to provide some insight into how flood risk related to hurricanes could be estimated, and how resilience could be improved under future climate change.

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Leanne Archer, School of Geographical Sciences,  University of Bristol.
Leanne Archer

Reconnecting the civic university with the climate agenda: thinking globally acting locally

Posted on by janet.crompton

As someone who has spent the last decade leading a research programme encouraging partnerships between universities and communities, I very much welcome the publication of the new Civic University Commission report from the UPP Foundation. There is much in here to applaud: the call for strategic commitment by universities to civic engagement; the demand for a new approach to adult education and widening participation; and the need for sustained national funding for civic collaborations. But it is hard to avoid the fact that there is a glaring blind spot in a report that claims to be making a case about the future of universities. Namely, there is no reference to climate change. This is surprising given the significant and far-reaching implications of a changing climate not only for universities but for the communities in which they are based. For a report on the civic role of the university not to engage with climate change – when issues such as Artificial Intelligence, ageing populations and the ‘Asian Century’ are prominent – is a significant omission.

This gap in the report matters. It matters because it overlooks the significant positive impact that universities could make, working with their partners, to prevent and adapt to a changing climate. It matters because it underestimates the significant negative impacts that are already being felt by communities and cities as a result of disruptive weather events. It matters because it ignores the huge intellectual, social and practical innovation needed to allow our towns, cities and rural communities to live well with a lively planet, a civilizational shift in which universities should play a lively and creative role. Finally, it matters because young people and students across the UK as well as the rest of the world are looking to universities to provide them with an education that recognises the reality and the consequences of climate change.

The concerns of the authors of the report are clearly oriented toward the role of universities in softening the blows of past and future economic and technological changes. This is important. But even if this were the primary goal of the civic university, couching discussion of labour market futures primarily in terms of the fourth industrial revolution is on shaky environmental ground. The huge and currently unsustainable energy costs of artificial intelligence and machine learning, for example, suggest that the shift towards a brave new techno-enhanced future might be somewhat more dependent upon boring matters such as planetary sustainability than even the most ardent Prime Ministerial advisor in search of wacky ideas might imagine.

The entanglement of economy and environment, after all, is something the Stern report pointed out 14 years ago. If one of the agendas of the Civic University report is to rebalance the attention of universities towards the radical economic inequalities at play in their communities, then climate change and its impacts have to play a role in these calculations. Moreover, at a time when the UN Sustainable Development Goals (however flawed) are increasingly making their way into local government decision-making; at a time when many cities and towns are themselves taking the lead in setting ambitious carbon reduction goals, this absence in the report is hard to explain. It ignores what is already a defining challenge for many of the cities and communities in which universities are based.

There is, moreover, a clear opportunity to align the civic university and climate change agendas. Not least because civic collaboration of the sort envisaged by this excellent report works best not when it is a vague hand-waving memorandum-of-understanding type endeavour, but when people from different organisations come together to roll their sleeves up, learn from each other and figure out how to work on a shared matter of concern. And working out how to prevent and adapt to climate change is the mother of all shared concerns.

There are at least four clear areas for potential alignment:

  1. Climate change provides a creative motivation for research and education collaborations between universities and communities. Let’s look at what is happening in the city where I am currently working in Sweden. Here in Uppsala, universities, city leaders and business leaders have begun working together to actively reduce their carbon emissions 14% year on year. This sort of hugely ambitious challenge – far greater and faster than anything in the UK at present – brings significant educational and research opportunities from practical partnerships with the community. Elsewhere, in universities and cities in the UK with a similar shared agenda, as in Bristol, we see researchers, business leaders and community leaders coming together to begin to work out what it means to create cities that are carbon positive, create employment and provide housing and energy for everyone.
  2. A changing climate provides a powerful rationale for investing in adult education. Taking climate change seriously also aligns closely with the report’s calls to reinvigorate adult education. Any serious attempt to reconfigure the UK’s energy and infrastructure systems in lines with the Paris agreement, will involve significant shifts in employment. Adults in carbon intensive employment will need to be supported to develop new skills. The university system will need to adapt, welcoming older adults, supporting them to rapidly learn and innovate. Any Green New Deal requires Green New Universities able to respond to the interests and needs of older adults. Irrespective of Brexit, universities seeking to remain part of the European Research Area will need to engage with the challenge of green skills and innovation.
  3. A changing climate brings an urgent demand to re-localise education. Understanding that a changing climate is the condition in which we are now living also has implications for the trend that has seen some British universities detach themselves from the cities that first funded them in order to become finishing schools for wealthy international students. The sort of international travel habits encouraged by this trend (one student I recently spoke to told me of the nine transatlantic flights every year that she and her West Coast American boyfriend take to see each other) is unlikely to be compatible with any university or city seeking to reduce its emissions. In an era in which international travel becomes an increasingly unacceptable choice both for increasingly carbon literate younger age groups and for city leaders with an eye on their carbon budget, understanding what replaces international students will become an increasingly compelling concern for university leaders – a re-localisation that fundamentally connects with a renewed civic role.
  4. A changing climate demands that universities recognise their material and economic role in the local community. Understanding universities as anchor organisations in their communities, as this report recommends, means paying attention to how university money flows, where it flows, who benefits, what is invested in, how buildings are built and how land is used. Universities with landholdings, with investments in student accommodation, with thousands of staff and students everyday moving into and around the city, have the potential to make a major contribution to both preventing and adapting to climate change. Thinking through climate change therefore, only strengthens the commitment to local economies, cultures and communities. It encourages a respectful and careful stewardship of land and resources and of the people in those communities.

Taking climate change seriously, in other words, is not something that detracts from the civic role of the university, it brings a much-needed focus and purpose to this agenda.

Thinking globally, acting locally is an old slogan from the environmental movement but it is one that also captures the essence of a civic university. These two movements for change – the civic university and the university of the climate emergency – need urgently to align to create the universities we actually need today.
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This blog post was written by Cabot Institute member Professor Keri Facer. Professor of Educational and Social Futures at the University of Bristol and Zennström Professor in Climate Change Leadership at Uppsala University. The blog has been reposted with kind permission from HEPI. View the original blog.

Keri Facer

Research and teaching in the midst of climate crisis

Posted on by janet.crompton
Bristol Climate Strike September 2019. Image credit Amanda Woodman-Hardy.

I became a co-convenor of the PSA Environmental Politics sub-group in 2019, against the backdrop of the rise of Extinction Rebellion and the increasing impact of the environmental movement. The convening team decided to reflect this in our workshop on ‘Activism and Academia in an Age of Environmental Breakdown’ at Nottingham Trent which aimed to not only bring together activists and academics but to critically reflect on the intersection between the two and try to explore how to hold academic events in this time of climate crisis.

As anyone who’s organised an event knows, finding a convenient date is half the battle. Balancing the start of term dates for myself and the other co-convenors was difficult and the date of 20th September 2019 was one of the few that worked for us all. But surely holding an event on environmental activism on the date of the global climate strike was contradictory? After much discussion, we decided that the fit between the theme of the conference and the strike could provide a rich source of discussion and that we should try and explore this. So we arranged for the lunch break to include time for anyone who wanted to, to attend the demonstration being held in the nearby city centre with directions provided.

Some participants also mentioned that they would be attending the workshop as part of their strike action, with one participant wearing a strike arm-band. Registration was free and we were clear that people could attend for whatever time they could, to further support people coming along as part of their strike activities. Participating in a climate protest, whether by labelling attendance at the workshop as such or briefly joining the main demonstration, while at the same time critically analysing both the protest and the intersection of activism and academia blurred the objectivity of the workshop, to say the very least. But bringing our practice into the workshop and openly discussing how they intersected, in addition to ensuring that no activism was compulsory, grounded our discussions and prompted each participant to reflect on how they experienced the intersection of both their research and their action.

The current wave of climate action and the groups that are spearheading it, such as the school strike movement and Extinction Rebellion, are distinct in the way that they are driven by young activists. Initially, we recognised this through a panel on youth engagement, with excellent speakers such as Dr Sarah Pickard presenting their work on young people’s political activism. However, this felt disingenuous and was not representative of the movement nor the agency of the young activists driving it.

So we reached out to young climate activists around the globe and asked if they would like to record a video to be shown at the conference which explained why they got involved with the climate strike movement and how the networks they were part of were organised. (We took advice regarding data protection and gained the consent of their parents when necessary.) Hearing directly from these activists from across Europe and America brought balance to the panel, ensuring that we weren’t just discussing youth activism, but listening and responding to them and their work directly. This activist engagement was also reflected in the speakers we invited to the conference and the call for papers.

We wanted to ensure that activists and practitioners were included and highlighted this in both the name of the workshop and throughout. For example, the ‘Critical Reflections on Extinction Rebellion’ panel featured activists from the group as well as academics who study it, and representatives from a local wildlife NGO took part in another panel.

The NGOs represented were from Nottingham and the Midlands in part due to proximity to the conference venue but also because we wanted to reflect the context of the area we held the event in, to ‘think global, act local’. We endeavoured to match this with an engagement with the wider context of climate activism, with a discussion of activism and academic globally and in the Global South in particular. Deciding against a specific panel on this topic, we tried to reflect the global context throughout the day, such as including videos from young activists around the world and a specific reflection on this topic at the start of the roundtable led by a scholar of and from the Global South.

However keeping the balance between the local and the global was difficult, raising questions of whose voices are included and whose are heard.

Within the workshop, we wanted to reflect the growing trend of more inclusive academic conferences, a trend that is particularly prevalent within environmental scholarship. The roundtable at the end of the workshop was designed to facilitate this, with activities that paired up activists and academics for discussion and time for the group as a whole to talk together. This turned out to be one of the strongest aspects of the workshop – certainly, it was one of the most commented upon and more space for this discussion, even at the expense of time for the earlier papers, would I think have been welcomed.

Reflecting on the workshop now, while there are changes I would make, the attempt to not only bring together academics and activists but to embed that approach within the format of the day and its priorities was I felt worthwhile. To research and teach on environmental issues in the face of climate denialism and apathy as well as the increasing environmental collapse is a political act and we should recognise that in our forums.

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Dr Ashley Dodsworth, a lecturer in politics in SPAIS at the University of Bristol and co-convenor of the PSA Environment sub-group. Her research explores the intersection of the history of political thought and environmental politics, and environmental rights. She is co-editor of Environmental Human Rights: A Political Theory Perspective (Routledge, 2018). This blog was reposted with kind permission from the Centre for Environmental Humanities at the University of Bristol. View the original blog.

Ashley Dodsworth
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