Category: Climate Change (Page 3 of 10)

An update from Jone de Roode Jauregi, King’s Climate Action Assistant

April 1, 2022 / Jone De Roode Jauregi

Hi all!

My name is Jone and I am a Climate Action Assistant in the Sustainability Team. I graduated from King’s with a BSc in International Management in May ’21 and have been working in the Sustainability Team since.

My journey with the Sustainability Team started in my final year at uni when I joined the King’s Climate Action Network. It was a great experience working together with people from across King’s and brainstorming actions to make King’s more sustainable – both on- and off-campus.

It was also during this year that I got the opportunity to learn more about sustainability in my studies, for example through the interdisciplinary Sustainability in Practice module and by writing my dissertation about sustainable behaviour during COVID-19. I also did a year abroad as part of my studies, during which I spent 5 months studying in Brazil and 5 months doing a climate diplomacy internship at the Dutch Embassy in Costa Rica.

Sustainability considerations play a big role in my personal life too. My diet is largely vegan, I mostly buy seasonal and local products and I rarely waste food; I travel as much as possible by train (e.g. from London to my family in the Netherlands or Spain) and I cycle in London; I buy in zero-waste stores when I can (e.g. at the food co-op Fareshares near Elephant & Castle which is run by volunteers); I limit the number of purchases I make (reinventing my grandma’s clothes was a great exercise); I switched to a renewable energy tariff; I use water, electricity and heating sparingly; I’m changing banks to a more ethical one; I raise the sustainability topic with friends and family, sometimes sign petitions and join marches, and I vote for parties which prioritise addressing the climate crisis and other SDGs, etc. For me, the key part lies in doing as much as I can to contribute to a better world through my individual actions, without restraining myself in such a way that it burdens me disproportionately.

In my role as a Climate Action Assistant, I have been supporting the development of the university’s Climate Action Plan, the running of the King’s Climate Action Network, the creation of the KEATS sustainability module and seminar series, and the mapping of climate education and research across King’s. I also support the Sustainability Team’s comms and I look after our blog and newsletter. And I jump in here and there when things come up.

I’ve been enjoying the work so far and I am excited to work on many more sustainability projects with the King’s community. I do not know yet where the future will take me, but I am keen to contribute to finding ways to live more sustainably taking better care of both people and our planet.

An update from Rachel Harrington-Abrams, King’s Climate Action Assistant

March 30, 2022 / Jone De Roode Jauregi

Hello everyone!

I am a Climate Action Assistant in the Sustainability Team and have worked in this role over the past year to grow the climate research community and interdisciplinary strategy at King’s. I am also a second-year PhD student in the Department of Geography, studying multilateral governance and decision-making on adaptation policy, particularly in situations of extreme environmental change where relocation or resettlement may be utilised. As a climate researcher myself, I am personally invested in building stronger connections with researchers across disciplines and scaling our impact as a university. As a result, I have been able to identify areas for improvement based on the experiences of fellow researchers and support efforts to unite the climate research community as part of the Sustainability Team.

Prior to beginning my PhD in 2020, I spent six years working on and studying different dimensions of climate and sustainability policy. After graduating from university, I spent two years in The Climate Group’s New York office, supporting businesses and sub-national to set shared climate action goals, develop renewable and energy efficiency targets, and evaluate their own impacts and those of their value chains. I earned my MA in Environmental Policy in 2019 from Sciences Po Paris, where I continued to explore the dimensions of sustainable transitions, including financing for climate adaptation, decarbonisation of the grid, and sustainable resource governance.

Now through my PhD, I consider the high-level policy decisions that define how governments manage adaptation. As part of the Sustainability Team, I support our research community to connect, inform, and respond to these and other dimensions of the climate crisis. I contribute to the development of the university’s Climate Action Plan and the work of the Zero Carbon Research group within the Climate Action Network. I also help coordinate the Climate Hub, one of our existing interdisciplinary research centres based on SSPP and facilitate networking and interdisciplinary partnerships across departments. I am currently involved in setting up a new network for PGRs studying climate change at King’s and am contributing to the ongoing development process for the university’s climate and sustainability research strategy.

While I primarily focus on climate research, as part of the Sustainability team I have been able to engage with other areas of our Climate Action Strategy and the work of the CAN. I have explored the costs and benefits of offsetting for net-zero emissions, and the decisions made in this area by our peer institutions; I also contributed to our efforts to map our current footprint for climate and sustainability education across the university. I was also incredibly fortunate to be able to attend COP26 alongside a colleague both for my own research and as a representative of the Sustainability team. My time in Glasgow provided a unique chance to connect with climate researchers at other UK institutions and build stronger connections with other Sustainability practitioners working within universities.

Sustainability Month 2022: a true celebration

March 14, 2022 / Jone De Roode Jauregi

What a month! Throughout February, we welcomed hundreds of people to more than 20 social and educational events focused on taking action around the Sustainable Development Goals. Organised by students, staff members, and alumni from across disciplines, this month was a true celebration of the breadth of sustainability and the King’s community’s involvement in it.

We learned to reflect on our stories in the climate and nature crisis and got inspired to take action in the events on volunteering, recycled glass, plant-based diets, and greener ways to grow your veg. We learned how we might address the climate crisis from a policy perspective, what digital start-ups can do to advance the SDGs, and what some of the main inequality issues are in South Korea. The interconnectedness of environmental and social sustainability was highlighted during the panel for climate justice and the event on the climate crisis and refugees, and we learned how we might go about translating that into education. The Shots for Hope exhibition and the Visions for the Future workshop series helped us to stay hopeful in the face of the climate crisis.

The month brought people together socially in events such as the sustainability quiz night, stitch and pitch, and the show the love campaign, as well as professionally in the interdisciplinary sustainability research forum and the London Student Sustainability Conference. The events on careers in sustainability helped students explore the breadth of what this means for their future.

If you missed an event, you can find the event recordings here. Not all recordings have been uploaded yet, but we aim to do so as soon as possible. We will also be posting event summaries and reflections on our blog over the next few weeks, so keep an eye out for those. If you have any feedback you would like to share, please fill out this feedback form. If you would like to write a blog post on an event you organised or attended, feel free to get in touch.

International Women’s Day 2022: Women, climate change, and ecofeminism

March 8, 2022 / Jone De Roode Jauregi

The facts are clear: women and girls are disproportionately affected by the impacts of climate change. This vulnerability has several social, economic and cultural causes, including the fact that the majority of people living in poverty are women, and they are often the ones responsible for putting food and water on the table which is becoming increasingly difficult due to climate change.

However, on this day celebrating the achievements of women, it is important to highlight how women are simultaneously at the forefront of global sustainable development. Women need to be at the heart of climate action, because “women possess unique knowledge and experience, particularly at the local level, their inclusion in decision-making processes is critical to effective climate action” (UN Women, 2022). Studies have shown that women’s participation both at the local level and in national parliaments leads to better outcomes for both people and planet.

“Without gender equality today, a sustainable future, and an equal future, remains beyond our reach” (UN, 2022). Why is this so important? Let’s explore ecofeminism for some potential answers.

Ecofeminism

First of all, what is ecofeminism? It is a social movement bringing together feminism and environmentalism, arguing that the domination of women and the degradation of the environment have the same root causes: patriarchy and capitalism (Buckingham, 2015). The key word in ecofeminism is domination. According to Vandana Shiva, development and globalisation are a continuation of our obsession with domination of the ‘other’, whether this is nature, women, indigenous peoples, or subordinate classes (Clark, 2012).

Therefore, “any strategy to address one must take into account its impact on the other so that women’s equality should not be achieved at the expense of worsening the environment, and neither should environmental improvements be gained at the expense of women” (Buckingham, 2015). For solutions to be impactful they have to address both feminism and environmentalism and this can only be meaningfully done by reversing current values to prioritise care and cooperation over more aggressive and dominating behaviours.

An inspiring example: Mariama Sonko

Mariama Sonko leads the ecofeminist movement Nous Sommes la Solution (NSS) meaning “we are the solution”, which brings together more than 500 rural women’s associations in Senegal, Ghana, Burkina Faso, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea and Mali to promote sustainable agroecology and fight large-scale industrial farming. What ecofeminism means to her? “The respect for all that we have around us.” Doesn’t sound like a too difficult ask to me.

Check out Women4Climate: an initiative aiming to empower and inspire the next generation of women climate leaders.

Get involved in International Women’s Day (IWD) and Women’s History Month at King’s. Check out the events KCLSU is organising throughout the month here, from panel events and movie nights to leadership masterclasses about challenging misogyny and being an ally to women. The chaplaincy is also organising an event to watch and discuss the movie Stranger/Sister. Explore King’s Global Institute for Women’s Leadership and their upcoming events here. Find out more about King’s dedicated Equality, Diversity and Inclusion team, the staff gender equality network Elevate, and KCLSU’s Women’s Network.

At King’s, we are slowly moving in the right direction, but there is of course more to do. In 2021, King’s Gender Pay Gap was 14.8%, down from 17.1% the year before. Read the news article on King’s 2021 Gender and Ethnicity Pay Gaps figures here, and while you are at it, check out how King’s has been awarded the Workplace Equality Index Award in recognition of its commitment to LGBTQ+ inclusion at work.

King’s Climate Action Network: what’s new?

December 20, 2021 / Jone De Roode Jauregi

The King’s Climate Action Network (CAN) is an open, interdisciplinary forum bringing together people from the King’s community who are passionate about climate action. The CAN focuses on solutions to reduce our carbon emissions while also maximising our positive impact on climate action.

Between 2020 and 2021, the network brainstormed more than 50 actions to be taken forward by the university. This year, the CAN has grown to more than 300 members who are working on implementing these actions.

What has the King’s Climate Action Network been up to these months? From research and responsible investment to our estate and travel, we have been discussing our priorities for the year ahead in our sub-group meetings. Members have signed up to smaller working groups to start implementing actions.

Zero Carbon Estate

In the Zero Carbon Estate group, we heard about the progress the Energy Team and others have been making on a range of actions. We discussed setting up an ‘Energy Champions’ scheme where people could work on energy projects and receive formal recognition for them. This volunteering programme would include energy audit training, encouraging students to report issues and ideas throughout the year. We also brainstormed how we could get more creative with our communications to better engage our community.

Responsible Investment

In the Responsible Investment group, we explored the best ways to get student and staff input into a refresh of King’s Ethical Investment Policy. During the CAN plenary, we had a fruitful discussion with King’s Finance Team about the Ethical Investment Policy they have been working on. Key suggestions that were made by CAN members included increasing transparency and participation, developing clear definitions, embedding more ambitious wording and targets, and collaborating with the wider sector. If you missed it, you can watch the recording here.

Community & Engagement

In the Community & Engagement group, we have started planning a listening campaign to explore how King’s can best support/work with our local communities around climate action. We also discussed an exciting opportunity to shape the Science Gallery’s strand on climate change which will open next year. Moreover, a group has started working on a plan to engage with secondary school audiences by educating them on science-based climate research and offering them climate-related research opportunities. We are also looking into how we can strengthen collaboration with our local councils around climate action.

Zero Carbon Research

In the Zero Carbon Research group, we brainstormed ideas to get climate researchers from across disciplines together. Following these conversations, the CAN is organising a panel event together with KBS on interdisciplinary climate research with academics from across King’s. A future event could also include ‘sandpit’ exercises where cross-disciplinary researchers come together for a short time to create projects around a given theme.

Travel

In the Travel group, we discussed encouraging active travel by implementing a cycle bank system to pass on cycles within the King’s community and organising ‘cycling inductions’ at the start of the term. The new King’s Travel Manager will also drive action around business travel, for example by defining a scoring system to help identify what business travel is essential and what is not, and by creating guides on how to travel sustainably to some key destinations. A group is also working on estimating emissions from student end-of-term travel and brainstorming how we could promote slow travel.

Students & Education

In the Students & Education group, we have been discussing the pilot KEATS sustainability module and the SDG curriculum audit we have started on. We also discussed creating an interdisciplinary toolkit to show how climate relates to each field and developing a ‘Spotlight on Sustainability Careers’ event series. A group of students is also working on a climate careers podcast.

Find out more about sustainable education at King’s here.

Procurement & Waste

In the Procurement & Waste group, we discussed among other things how we could draw people’s attention to the importance of this area – it does represent the biggest part of our emissions after all! We have started to work on improving our methodology for estimating supply chain emissions, starting with food. We are also looking into opportunities for supplier engagement events, waste projects and communications, and developing feedback sessions with King’s Food about climate-friendly food.

The CAN sub-groups meet every 6-8 weeks, and the entire network comes together twice per term. Smaller working groups meet in between to carry out actions. Members are welcome to join one or more subgroups.

Sign up to the King’s CAN to be part of this journey and work together with students and staff from across the university to drive climate action! Find out more here or email Maria Rabanser or Jone de Roode Jauregi if you have any questions.

Sustainable education at King’s: what’s new?

December 20, 2021 / Jone De Roode Jauregi

What is King’s doing to strengthen sustainable education? Find out about three key projects we are working on at the moment below.

KEATS Sustainability Module

King’s Sustainability has launched an online, open-access, interdisciplinary KEATS sustainability module, aiming to offer everyone, no matter their field, a broad understanding of sustainability. The module is being put together by a team of incredible students, staff and King’s alumni. This year will still be a pilot, but with the involvement and support of this year’s enrolled students, we hope to officially launch it as a finalised module in the new academic year. This pilot year, we have been releasing a new content section every two weeks.

So far, content on “what is sustainability”, the climate crisis, and sustainable food are live. There is also a section with tips on how to take action and an overview of our favourite sustainability resources. The contents include engaging short videos, text, and padlets to encourage discussions. There is also a short quiz at the end of each section to test participants’ knowledge, and evaluation forms to continue to shape the module according to people’s feedback.

Boost your knowledge of sustainability and help shape sustainable education at King’s by enrolling via this link. By signing up, you will test the sustainability module and shape it with your feedback and ideas.

Sustainability Seminar Series

Alongside this module, we have been hosting a Sustainability Seminar Series which is running throughout the academic year covering some of the biggest topics in sustainability. It offers the entire King’s community an opportunity to learn more about climate science, justice, sustainable agriculture and much more from seminal speakers in the field. Through these monthly 90-minute sessions, participants get the opportunity to fully engage with the subject in the breakout room discussions and Q&As with the speaker. The series aims to be interactive, empowering and motivate everyone to take action!

The first seminar featured climate expert Dr George Adamson on Bringing Climate Change Home. He discussed how we can address climate change at the scale of the everyday by understanding climate change as an interaction between place, personal history, daily life, culture and values. You can watch the lecture here. The second seminar focused on climate, perception framing, and culture. We were joined by Dr Joachim Aufderheide from the Philosophy Department who helped us think critically about the concept of sustainability, understand how different disciplines tend towards different conceptions of sustainability, and consider moral issues around sustainability. You can watch the recording here.

The next seminar on the 25^th of January 2.00-3.30 PM will focus on “Rethinking the Economy for a Sustainable Future”. We will host a very special panel with experts Enrich Sahan (Business & Enterprise Lead at the Doughnut Economics Action Lab), Julia Steinberger (Professor of Ecological Economics at the University of Lausanne), and Vincent Liegey (spokesperson for the French degrowth movement). Save the date to make sure you do not miss out on this special session.

SDG Curriculum Mapping

We are also very excited to have embarked on a new journey: mapping out all modules at King’s alongside the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). All students and staff can sign up as volunteers to support this project. It is a great opportunity to find out where environmental and social sustainability currently sits within the curriculum at King’s while building key skills such as auditing, research, and analysing data.

The first training session led by SOS-UK took place on 13th December, where participants were trained to do a guided audit across programmes and modules and equip them with the knowledge and skills needed to do the mapping. The full volunteer description is available here.

Why are disabled voices needed in climate change discussion?

December 8, 2021 / Jone De Roode Jauregi

This guest blog post was written by Poppy Ellis Logan (she/her) in celebration of the UK Disability History Month running between 18 November and 18 December 2021. Poppy is researching population preparedness for power outages for her PhD with the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Emergency Preparedness and Response, based in the IoPPN. In her spare time, she is Co-President of the KCL Neurodiversity and Mental Health Society. For more information on either, contact k20120570@kcl.ac.uk or president.NDMH@gmail.com.

Why are disabled voices needed in climate change discussion, and how does this link to the disability history month theme of hidden impairments?

The climate change discussion is not just about prevention, but also about the response. The climate emergency is increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather and environmental hazards around the world. The term typically used for the consequent events is ‘natural disaster’, however, there is a growing argument that this terminology fails to reflect the fact that these disasters are governed by human decision-making. This decision-making includes the planning, preparation and response to such events, and influences how extensively the local community are affected.

Disabled people experience marginalisation, inequality, and discrimination in many settings, including during disasters. Around the world, disaster planning and response are often not inclusive, failing to accommodate access and functional needs and thereby placing disabled individuals at a greater risk than others. Although policy progress is being made, with the Sendai Framework calling for disability inclusion in disaster management, we continue to see access and functional needs being overlooked. This applies to the climate emergency; local government associations are often unclear on the impacts of climate events on disabled members of the community and rely on local disability groups to advise them about how to even communicate with disabled people (despite 15% of people living with a disability). Consequently, timely warnings, evacuation routes, public shelters and relief or recovery efforts are often inaccessible.

This is a problem. In a disaster context, information is vital – both in terms of providing a warning for an event, and for ensuring that the public is well-informed about what is happening and what they can do to protect themselves. If this information is not accessible or if accessible formats are disrupted due to an event, people who require alternative forms of communication are left behind. On another level, social support typically plays a vital role in disasters, with mutual aid and altruism as a common theme across a range of events. However, disabled people are more likely to be marginalised, and thus may be less likely to receive social support from neighbours. Moreover, simply a practical level, people with alternative communication needs or hidden impairments are less likely to receive the right support from both their neighbours and emergency responders. The consequence is that disabled people may rely substantially on each other, on assistive technology, or on close personal networks for accessible disaster information.

These issues around communication and accessibility have perhaps been less visible during the ongoing COVID-19 disaster, possibly because we have been locked down in our own spaces, with continued access to online networks and digital devices. However, there is a risk that wider conceptions of disability and of ‘vulnerability’ in a disaster now become shaped by COVID-19, despite widespread criticism of their formulation and usage from disabled communities. The likelihood of this could be decreased by centring disabled voices in planning and decision-making for a range of events. Better representation of the diversity of disability in planning and decision-making could reduce the tendency to categorise disabled people into one homogenous ‘vulnerable’ group. Such makeshift categorisation is both ‘Othering’ and leads to assumptions around presumed vulnerability in a disaster context that fails to recognise the diversity of disability, the role of the environment in ‘disabling’ an individual, and the strengths and resources that disabled people may be able to bring to disaster settings.

One crucial point underlying this is the understanding that vulnerability is not static. Access and functional needs are very much context-dependent, and the needs (and members) of Priority Groups will vary from one disaster to another. Those deemed ‘clinically vulnerable’ during a pandemic may be very well prepared to cope during a blizzard. The people who may be affected by severe weather events are therefore not the same as those in our current conception of disability and vulnerability during the pandemic.

As an example, people around the UK are currently managing the effects of both Storm Arwen and Storm Barra. Both storms have resulted in power outages. During Storm Arwen, the access and functional needs of people with disabilities that are clearly reliant on electricity for their management were overlooked, despite media attention. The literature on power outages has previously identified that people who use electronic medical devices will be placed at risk by such events. However, there is a gap in the literature about how best to accommodate these needs. Moreover, it is less widely understood that power outages could remove all social support, crisis alert and information sources available to a person with alternative communication needs common to many hidden impairments.

Accommodating for a range of access and functional needs (including needs that are unrelated to disability) in disaster settings is something that has seen improvements, but still has a long way to go. To speak frankly, involving more disabled voices could cut out a lot of steps – there is nobody better to provide knowledge, experience and insight into access and functional needs during an event than the people who actually experience these needs each day. Universal inclusion may be a pipedream, but it might be easier to trust that the response for the next climate-induced disaster will consider the needs of people who use sign language, have unpaid carers, or require controlled medications, if people with a range of disabilities were prominently represented throughout the planning.

Find out more about the KCL Neurodiversity and Mental Health Society here. Also have a look at the Disabled Students Network and the Disability Awareness Society.

Check out Access King’s and the events they have lined up for the UK Disability History Month. This is the Staff Disability Inclusion Network at King’s College London.

Doughnut Economics: Amsterdam’s response to the lack of sustainability in cities

November 24, 2021 / Jone De Roode Jauregi

This guest blog comes from Lou Lefort, a third-year student of BA Social Sciences in the Education, Communication and Society Department (Faculty of Social Sciences and Public Policy).

In 2018, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that the worst impacts of climate change could be irreversible by 2030. In 2021, the COP26 was designated as “the world’s best last chance to get runaway climate change under control”. A strengthening of the global response to the climate threat is urgently needed, by way of combined efforts towards sustainable development.

It is in this spirit that, in April 2020, the College of Mayor and Alderpersons approved the Amsterdam Circular 2020-2025 strategy. Despite the already steep fall of the world’s economies due to the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, the City Council saw the situation as an opportunity for a more sustainable start.

The Amsterdam City Portrait

Towards a sustainable city

Today, the world’s urban population is estimated to be around 4.4 billion people (International Institute for Environment and Development, 2020), and is expected to keep increasing over the years. However, cities are not sustainable. As hubs of consumption, they are connected to supply chains all around the world and their food, transport and energy networks induce a massive ecological footprint.

It is through a circular economy strategy that Amsterdam strives to become sustainable and maintain an ecological balance. Circular economies seek high rates of recycling, refurbishment and reuse in order to reduce the use of new raw materials and avoid waste. The Amsterdam Circular Strategy was approved with the objective of halving its use of new raw materials by 2030 and achieving a fully circular city by 2050. Rather than an obstacle, the slowdown of all activity due to the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing a brief thrive in nature, was considered as an exceptional opportunity to introduce new politics. Working with the Dutch government and the European Union, the City of Amsterdam selected Kate Raworth’s Doughnuts Economics to implement and satisfy the demands of climate change and sustainability.

The Doughnut Economics

Firstly published in 2012, Doughnut Economics thrive for “meeting the means of all people within the means of the planet” (Raworth, 2012). The doughnut represents the “safe and just space for humanity” (Figure 1.). The inner ring is the social foundation, standing for life’s essentials that no one should fall short of, such as food, health, education or peace. The outer ring is the ecological ceiling of the planet. It constitutes the planetary boundaries not to overshoot to remain sustainable, such as air pollution, ocean acidification or ozone layer depletion.

A visual representation of the doughnut by Kate Raworth. It shows the social foundation (e.g. energy, water, food) and the ecological ceiling (e.g. ozone layer depletion, climate change). In between these two, there is "the safe and just space for humanity".

Figure 1

The economist Kate Raworth vouches for a thriving economy, dismissing the contemporary imperative for endless growth. She rejects Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth as a measure of economic success and instead, advocates for this dashboard of indicators based on objective values and grounded in human and ecological flourishing. In practice, the Doughnut must be transformative to shift the long-term dominance of capitalist growth, through the enacting of new regulations and institutions embedded in nature. In addition, it must be regenerative by design. Biological materials need to be regenerated and technical materials restored, in order to close the cycles of use and avoid waste. Finally, the Doughnut in practice must also be distributive. Wealth, education and empowerment should be equally accessible to all and circulated by a bottom-up and peer-to-peer pooling of knowledge. The objective is to redistribute resources, power and control to decentralised networks in ways that address inequality while supporting innovation and representation in the fight against climate change.

In order to satisfy these demands in the context of Amsterdam, the Doughnut Economics Action Lab (DEAL) created the Amsterdam City Portrait, in collaboration with Biomimicry 3.8, Circle Economy, and C40. Analysing the city life and its impact through four lenses – social, ecological, local and global – the portrait presents what it would mean for Amsterdam to thrive as a city. It essentially asks a 21st-century key question:

“How can Amsterdam be a home to thriving people, in a thriving place, while respecting the wellbeing of all people, and the health of the whole planet?”
(Amsterdam City Portrait, 2020, p.3)

The analysis is made through recent and relevant data from official sources to give a holistic snapshot of the current status of the city. The portrait is a result of a cross-departmental collaboration within the city, between its municipality, businesses and residents. It also required input from internal and external stakeholders, such as private and non-profit organisations. The application of Doughnut Economics relies on technological solutions to manage environmental risk, focusing on biomimicry in cities. The plan is to use scientific and technological knowledge to ‘work like nature’ and reproduce healthy local ecosystems. From the use of ‘bee-hotel bricks’ to the incorporation of green roofs, the City Doughnut provides a smoother and achievable transition from the capitalist economy while benefiting the planet, by scaling down ecologically destructive and unnecessary industries.

In order to keep track of the progress and determine the social and ecological impact of the transition, Amsterdam developed a monitor. It will identify the areas which need more work to reach their targets in time and ensure the city keeps its promise to become fully circular by 2050.

Application and challenges

The Doughnut Economics’ motto aiming to “meet the means of all people within the means of the planet” (Raworth, 2012) is an ambitious vision that cannot be fulfilled without active participation across the whole community. The DEAL and its collaborators stressed the importance of bringing together the city stakeholders to bring about change in a thriving manner. To ensure the participation of every willing Amsterdammer, they held workshops in seven diverse neighbourhoods to hear their vision and priorities concerning the city. Everyone is invited to participate and share their ideas, as the emphasis is put on the citizen-led aspect of the city’s transformation. The aim is to empower and connect the citizens while giving greater recognition to the existing community networks. Such collaboration between the residents, the businesses and the municipality enables the identification of common goals, making them co-authors of the Doughnut strategy. One of the Doughnut’s principles is to “nurture human nature” (Amsterdam City Portrait, 2020, p.18) by promoting diversity, collaboration and reciprocity. Such a mindset strengthens community networks and trust, helping to create social and ecological benefits. It can encourage citizens to consume locally, to exchange services, but also to respect each other, and hence, each other’s environment. As a result, the City Portrait was created by and for the people of Amsterdam, including them in each step of the process from decision-making to the sharing of tasks via community-based projects.

However, practical challenges can impede these ideas. Despite the City Doughnut aiming to always engage critically with power relations, the distribution of power can be limited. It is important to acknowledge who came to the Doughnut workshops, but also who did not, and why. Some citizens might not have been able to attend the workshops or to voice their concerns. Different actors present different types of knowledge, and some types of knowledge may be favoured. As a transformative practice, Doughnut Economics seek to enact new laws and regulations, and will consequently work more closely with the political actors. It is vital to keep the citizens in the loop and maintain the idea of distributive responsibility in the context of policymaking. For this purpose, it is crucial that the sources and methodologies to extract data on the city and its ecological footprint remain transparent and critical.

As a developed European capital, another practical challenge will concern Amsterdam’s choice of investment and imports, which can both hinder the social foundations as well as the planetary boundaries imposed by the Doughnut. The port was identified as a major practical issue, being the 4th busiest in Europe and the world’s single largest importer of cocoa beans (ibid. p.12). The labour conditions of cocoa workers are often exploitative, undermining their rights and well-being. The portrait remains optimistic and presents the many innovative companies that have been developed as alternatives, or the civic organisations committed to the defence of human rights.

To conclude, Amsterdam’s response to becoming more sustainable relies on Doughnut Economics which can be summarised as striving to ensure life’s essentials for all people, within the planetary boundaries. Following a transformative, redistributive and regenerative design, the city’s circular transformation seeks to be citizen-led, allowing Amsterdammers to be at the core of the process, from the decision-making to the implementation. Nonetheless, some practical issues remain and must be carefully monitored.
Overall, the adaptation of Doughnut Economics in Amsterdam represents real and hopeful progress for the development of sustainable cities and the fight against climate change.

References

C40 Knowledge Community. (2020). Amsterdam’s City Doughnut as a tool for meeting circular ambitions following COVID-19. [online] Available at: https://www.c40knowledgehub.org/s/article/Amsterdam-s-City-Doughnut-as-a-tool-for-meeting-circular-ambitions-following-COVID-19?language=en_US

Doughnut Economics Action Lab, Circle Economy, Biomimicry 3.8 and C40 Cities (2020). The Amsterdam City Doughnut. [online] Available at: https://www.kateraworth.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/20200406-AMS-portrait-EN-Single-page-web-420x210mm.pdf.

Gemeente Amsterdam (2015). Policy: Circular economy. [online] English site. Available at: https://www.amsterdam.nl/en/policy/sustainability/circular-economy/.

International Institute for Environment and Development. (2020). An urbanising world. [online] Available at: https://www.iied.org/urbanising-world#:~:text=The%20world’s%20urban%20population%20today,1900%20and%2034%25%20in%201960.

Raworth, K. (2012). A safe and just space for humanity. [online] Oxfam Discussion Paper. Available at: https://www-cdn.oxfam.org/s3fs-public/file_attachments/dp-a-safe-and-just-space-for-humanity-130212-en_5.pdf.

Raworth, K. (2018). Doughnut Economics: seven ways to think like a 21st-century economist. London: Random House Business Books.

THE ALTERNATIVE UK. (2018). Are there holes in “doughnut economics”? Kate Raworth takes on a major critic. [online] Available at: https://www.thealternative.org.uk/dailyalternative/2018/6/28/raworth-doughnuts-critics.

United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (2018). Summary for Policymakers — Global Warming of 1.5 oC. [online] Available at: https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/

King’s Spotlight on Sustainability Podcast

November 23, 2021 / Jone De Roode Jauregi

The brand-new King’s Spotlight on Sustainability podcast aims to draw attention to sustainability at King’s and beyond. The goal is to get you thinking about some of the issues and challenges we face regarding climate change and the natural world by highlighting some of the excellent work surrounding sustainability happening at King’s and on a local, national and global level.

Series 1 focuses on tackling climate change with big and small actions.

Episode 1: What is net-zero carbon and how do we reach it? With Prof Frans Berkhout
Episode 2: What is COP26 and why does it matter? With James Baggaly
Episode 3: Why and how should you eat more veg? With FetchUrVeg
Episode 4: What is the King’s Climate Action Network and why should you get involved? With Maria Rabanser
Episode 5: How can you make your wardrobe more sustainable? With Un/Archived Textiles
Episode 6: What is fossil fuel divestment and how is King’s leading the change? With KCL XR

You can access the podcast on Spotify here.

What is success? COP26 and beyond

November 2, 2021 / Jone De Roode Jauregi

What will “success” at COP26 look like? Glasgow is different from Paris: it is not about signing a single treaty, but about the sum of its parts: the accumulated pledges of each country, the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Dr Tamsin Edwards from the Department of Geography shares her thoughts about the global climate summit.

“What’s COP?”, asked my friend last week. It’s a bit unfair of me to quote him: he lives abroad, where media coverage is likely to be less blanket-like than in the UK; I didn’t use the full acronym “COP26”; and I gave no context (in fact, he was asking about my health).

But it’s a useful reminder that other people’s worlds are not revolving around the two week event that started today in Glasgow. For many of us working in climate change, life is currently consumed by COP26: reading about it, worrying about it, teaching about it; organising and writing talks for events there and elsewhere; talking to the news and recording podcasts; writing blog posts and opinion pieces about…well, what, exactly?

What will “success” at COP26 look like?

So I suppose the obvious reply might be: COP26 will be a success if climate scientists crunch the numbers of the final NDCs and find the predicted warming successfully meets the Paris Agreement target. But this is difficult to define, for a few reasons.

First, there are officially two targets: to limit warming “well below” 2°C, and to “pursue efforts” to limit at 1.5°C. So would success mean a predicted warming of 1.8°C? 1.7°C? 1.6°C?

Second, many would say these targets are not strong enough. We are already seeing changes to our weather at our current warming of 1.1°C. Each further tenth of a degree will make these changes more frequent and severe, and will make it more likely to trigger irreversible, long-term changes such as collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet. A strong narrative has built up that we must limit warming to 1.5°C — rather than “pursuing efforts” to, which implies something higher — to limit the damage as much as possible.

Third, predictions of warming are inherently uncertain. Warming could be higher or lower than the central prediction. So only a central prediction below 1.5°C would have a better than 50:50 chance of limiting warming to 1.5°C.

Fourth, pledges are not the same as policies: the nuts-and-bolts plans of how to cut emissions using tools such as laws, taxes, grants, and encouraging behavioural change. The UK published their long-term strategy just-in-time before COP26, but few countries have plans with as many details. And they must be credible: Australia’s plans, for example, appear to be neither accurate nor physically possible. Without detailed and realistic plans for how to cut emissions by 2030, all talk is just…hot air.

And policies are not the same as reality: they must be successfully implemented, effectively enforced. There can be good surprises too, of course: faster-than-expected improvements in technology, energy efficiency, behaviour change. Future implementation is not necessarily something by which we can judge the success of COP26, but it is important to consider when assessing those Nationally Determined Contributions and any plans to achieve them.

Finally, there are other important aspects to COP26 that I haven’t discussed here (see explainer below): progress on these, or lack of, will also add to the bigger picture feelings of hope or disappointment.

I’m never a fan of binary thinking. The outcomes of COP26 will lie on a sliding scale, where it is unlikely we can reach the end — and the end is not clearly defined — but even a near-miss could be seen as successful in the stated aim to “keep 1.5 alive”. I agree with Christiana Figueres (former Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC and legend of the Paris Agreement) that some people will judge it a relative success and others an abject failure. This is inevitable when different groups are applying, at best, different value judgements and aims, and at worst, simplistic binary thinking, to outcomes that are not completely straightforward to categorise. I also agree with Chris Stark, Chief Executive of the Climate Change Committee which advises the UK government, who has said that COP26 will be seen as successful if people describe it as successful: in other words, if this is the dominant narrative emerging afterwards. We should ask, of course, which groups will determine that narrative?

It’s important to acknowledge that much of the progress of this COP26 has been made well before the meeting itself. Countries have been stating net zero aims and converting these into short-term targets and official Nationally Determined Contributions for the past few years. Without any action, we had been heading for a world 4°C warmer, or more. But given the policies we have already put in place, we are predicted to be heading for just under 3°C, perhaps a little lower. Under the official pledges updated before last month — if successfully translated into effective policies — we would limit warming to around 2.5°C. And since then, another 25 countries have updated their pledges.

Progress, yes, but by the minimum metric of limiting warming to below 2°C, nowhere near enough. Global emissions under the Nationally Determined Contributions are predicted to flatline or slightly increase this decade — China, for example, only aims to peak by 2030 — but limiting warming to 1.5°C requires us to cut global emissions by around half by 2030. By this measure, it is extremely unlikely we will see a prediction of 1.5°C warming for the final NDCs after COP26, though I remain hopeful we can improve beyond the current 2.5°C once they are all submitted and final. Keep an eye on that Climate Action Tracker…

Glasgow is a very important push point, but not the only point at which we can make progress. After COP26, countries can always increase their ambition outside the five year update points of the Paris Agreement (most obviously, when governments change, as for the USA). Countries responsible for around three quarters of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions have adopted, or are considering, targets to reach net zero by 2050 or 2060: if successful, the predicted warming would be around 2°C (and if we were very lucky with the climate, perhaps as low as 1.5°C). This isn’t enough yet either, but it shows that this month’s pledges are not the only part of the story.

Longer-term, I think few people are aware that climate scientists also talk about the possibility of overshooting and then coming back. If could limit our rise above 1.5°C to just a couple of decades, this will be a better outcome than the fixed final temperature that I think most people imagine.

To put it more succinctly:

It’s never too late to do as much as we can.Greta Thunberg, The Andrew Marr Show, 31st October 2021

So 1.5 is still alive, but it’s on life support. We need to bring it out of critical care and into recovery: getting stronger month on month, year on year.

What does success look like elsewhere? I’ve been extremely fortunate over the past three years, with opportunities like co-authoring the first part of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report and a related study, co-presenting the BBC Radio 4 series 39 Ways to Save the Planet, and co-directing an expanding MSc Climate Change.

But it hasn’t been sustainable, especially with the post-chemo fatigue (cognitive and physical) that seems persistently worse since February, so I went part-time in September. It’s been a time of tying up loose ends and passing things on. I think the hundred or so masters students are starting to settle in, with grateful thanks to co-director James Porter for helping them so much. I’ve taught four of my five weeks of climate science this term to them and our first year undergraduates. The King’s Climate Hub research network is going from strength to strength, thanks to incredible support by new coordinator Rachel Harrington-Abrams. The 39 Ways series is done. I’ve talked to interesting groups in the run-up to COP26, ranging from a huge, exciting event hosted by Stowe School (Schools’ Climate Action) to a lunchtime event for general counsel lawyers who want to make their business resilient to climate-related risks, as well as recording podcasts and other interviews (links below). In the next two weeks I’ll finish the teaching, travel to Glasgow to do a few events (also below), then round it off with a talk to a lot of vets.

I certainly haven’t yet been successful in going part-time. But I’m saying no to new events, projects and roles to make up the difference and rest after COP26. Success for me will therefore mean not a flatlining of activities, nor a slight increase, but substantial cuts: though hopefully not year-on-year until 2030.

This post was originally published on the All Models Are Wrong blog. You can read the original post and find a list of Tamsin’s COP26-related activities. She also includes an explanation of what COP26 is, or why it’s particularly important, and if you don’t know your NDCs from your UNFCCCs. It has since also been published on the King’s website here.