For the Next Generations | Paula Tiihonen
Part of the Artwork Tulevaisuus (Future), Väinö Aaltonen (1932) To mark her retirement as the Counsel for the Committee for the Future in the Finish Parliament, Paula Tiihonen brought together a group of significant thinkers and doers for an international seminar on...
The courts, the government and air pollution
This week we have seen the UK government lose twice in the courts – once on air pollution and then on Article 50 to formally start the Brexit process. While there are voices questioning why in a democracy the courts should be able to overturn government...
Children, Young People and Flooding: Recovery and Resilience | Report
The acute storms in the UK during the winter of 2013/14 and 2015/16 have revealed a problem that is now understood to be chronic: with climate change materialising more forcefully, severe flooding will become part of life for many communities across the UK....
Switzerland to vote on Green Economy legislation
On 25 September 2016, the Swiss electorate will vote on the popular initiative: ‘For a sustainable and resource-efficient economy (Green Economy)’. The successful adoption of the initiative will oblige the confederation, cantons and communes to ensure that the Swiss...
The UK under a ‘hard’ and a ‘soft’ Brexit | Expert Review
“Brexit means Brexit,” said Theresa May in one of her first public statements as Prime Minister. But what does that mean – for agriculture, fisheries, the environment and climate change in the UK? These were the leading questions in a recent study by Dr Charlotte...
Brexit Britain and the SDGs
One month on and questions are still being asked about how we got here. The only thing that’s clear, it seems, is that Brexit suggests a deep division between inward- and outward-facing worldviews: control our borders and attempt to reduce the strain on our...
Public health in a changing climate
Whether it’s direct or indirect, climate change will have an impact on public health. A recent report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the New Economics Foundation reviews current local strategies by public health institutions to address climate change. In...
Citizens sue their governments for action on climate change
“Global warming is already disrupting the planet’s weather”, a recent New York Times article reads, “now it is having an impact on the courts as well, as adults and children around the world try to enlist the judiciary in their efforts to blunt climate change.” After...
Children, youth and disasters: Listening, learning, and moving towards democratic engagement
In this provocation, Prof Lori Peek, co-director of the Center for Disaster and Risk Analysis at Colorado State University, draws on her work following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 where she interviewed disaster-affected children and youth across the United States. She...
New UK Health Alliance on Climate Change to encourage healthy action on climate change
Many of the key drivers of climate change also cause poor health through air pollution, high saturated fat intake and physical inactivity, argues the recently launched Health Alliance on Climate Change. Responding to climate change, says the group of major health...
Floods, community resilience and the “civic middle”: learning lessons from Leeds
The floods that hit wide areas of the UK at the end of last year were devastating for many communities. In many places local crisis management was found wanting. But in Leeds, the spontaneously self-organised volunteering infrastructures were exemplary in their...
A bold move toward public problem solving on a global scale? | Anne-Marie Slaughter on the Paris Agreement
In her recent blog for the Project Syndicate, Anne-Marie Slaughter, former president of the American Society of International Law, offers an optimistic take on the non-binding nature of the Paris Agreement. As she argues: “its deficits in this regard are its...
Climate change action needs more than scientific evidence | Blog by Simon Burall
Simon Burall is the Director of Involve, a think tank and charity specialising in public participation. Their mission is to inspire, innovate and embed effective citizen engagement, to enable members of the public to take and influence the decisions that affect their...
Managing the Psychological Distance of Climate Change
Climate change is a notoriously ‘distant’ risk for most people. We hear about it in the news, but it rarely seems relevant to our everyday life – “it feels ‘not here’ and it feels ‘not now’”. This sense of non-urgency couldn’t be further away from the actual impact...
COP21 – the sound of the bell for system change
“Habemus consensus!” a Huffington Post article reads, summarising the sanguine diplomatic outcome of the COP21 conference in Paris. It might not be as binding as hoped by the hundreds of thousands of people engaging in the climate march; it does, however, signify a...
People’s Climate March 2015—largest mobilisation in history
On 29 November 2015, hundreds of thousands of people from around the world joined the biggest day of climate change activism in history. 785.000 citizens participated in 2,300 events in 175 countries and thousands of cities to march for a clean energy future, aiming...
Runciman on democratic politics and climate change
How to sustain democratic politics in the face of climate change? This is the central challenge raised by David Runciman, Professor of Politics at the University of Cambridge in this review essay of recent books on climate politics originally published by the London...
JRF evidence review on community resilience to climate change
The concept of community resilience to climate change in the UK is multifaceted and comes with a wide range of associated activities. In order to build the evidence base and help support the development of community resilience to climate change, the Joseph Rowntree...
Summary and footage: EAC conference on the Government’s approach to sustainable development, 10 November 2015
The Environmental Audit Committee, a Select Committee in the UK Parliament, has published the transcript of its first conference, held on 10th November 2015, on the Government’s Approach to Sustainable Development. Following the EAC’s public inquiry from July 2015, to...Sign up for newsletter
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