(no title)

Replacing Sustainable Development: Potential Frameworks for International Cooperation in an Era of Increasing Crises and Disasters.

This preprint(full paper in the link below this abstract)written by Professor Jem Bendell outlines his thinking on the impact of the SDGs . It’s not comfortable reading but nor is what’s happening across the globe in terms of fires, floods and huge changes in weather events as well as the increasing evidence of polar melt -all of which say to me we are in an existential crisis.And, do those who are impacted have a voice in this crisis ?

Disasters. Preprints 2022, 2022050180 (doi: 10.20944/preprints202205.0180.v1). Bendell, J. Replacing Sustainable Development: Potential Frameworks for International Cooperation in an Era of Increasing Crises and Disasters. Preprints 2022, 2022050180 (doi: 10.20944/preprints202205.0180.v1).Copy

Abstract

This transdisciplinary review of research about international cooperation on social and environmental change builds the case for replacing Sustainable Development as the dominant framework for an era of increasing crises and disasters. The review is the output of an intentional exploration of recent studies in multiple subject areas, based on the authors’ decades of work in related fields since the Rio Earth Summit 30 years ago (rather than a keyword search of databases). It summarizes the research which documents failure to progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Consequently, the extensive scholarship critiquing the conceptual framework behind those ‘Global Goals’, and the economic ideology they arose from and support, is used to explain that failure. Although the pandemic set back the SDGs, it further revealed the inappropriate strategy behind those goals. This suggests the Global Goals constitute an ‘own-goal’ scored against people and nature. From this conclusion, alternative frameworks for organizing action on social and environmental issues become more important and are therefore briefly reviewed. It is argued that such a future framework must relate a new eco-social contract between citizen and state and engage existing organizations and capabilities that are relevant to an increasingly disrupted world. Therefore, the case is made for considering an upgraded form of Disaster Risk Management (DRM) as an overarching framework. The proposed upgrades include detaching from economic ideologies and recognizing that a wider Meta disaster from climate chaos may reduce the future availability of external support. Therefore, self-reliant resilience and locally led adaptation are identified as important to the future of DRM. Some options for professionals continuing to use the term sustainability, such as this journal, are discussed.

https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202205.0180/v1

EARTH SUMMIT REFLECTIONS

This coming week is the 30^th anniversary of the Rio Earth Summit (which launched the sustainable development paradigm) and the 50^th anniversary of the Stockholm conference (which alerted world leaders to environmental dilemmas). Such anniversaries previously brought much fanfare from the UN. Not this year. The backsliding on poverty and the environment is so shocking and undermining of the efforts and ideologies of our elite institutions, that these milestones might not get much attention. As one of the 600+ signatories of the initial international scholars’ warning from November 2020, I am keen to highlight these milestones so that what we might learn from decades of political failure. #RioPlus30 #Stockholm50 #StockholmAt50 #StockholmPlus50 #sdgFailure.

It’s the Economy Stupid!

2018 and 2019 launched a wide range of dire warning about the fragility of our planetary systems, notably David Attenborough’s speech at COP 24 on climate change and another dire warning about the alarming loss of planetary biodiversity from the UN’s biodiversity chief, Christiana Pascal Palmer. All of which cries out for a global call for action to exert immense pressure on our governments to set ambitious global targets.

Yet our political systems seem incapable of responding at scale and urgency to this existential crisis. Our government was one of the first to sign up to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs or Global Goals) in 2015. The 17 Global Goals and associated targets represent an unprecedented opportunity to tackle the root causes of climate change, biodiversity loss, eliminate extreme poverty and put the world on a more sustainable path. And yet three years after the goals were agreed, the UK government does not have a compelling and coherent plan on how the UK is going to achieve them. The government has made a commitment to report on the UK’s progress at the UN in New York in July 2019. This is closely followed by the UN SDG Heads of State Summit on the 24 and 25 September. The UN SDG Summit will be one of three high-level events taking place in September, along with the 2019 Climate Summit and the High-level Dialogue on Financing for Development. These events will be mutually reinforcing in identifying areas for action to accelerate the progress towards sustainable development.

Growth in all of its forms is one of the greatest conundrums facing humanity in the 21 century. It can improve our living standards and health and well-being. Yet as a recent global photographic competition (www.prixpictet.com) has depicted in graphic detail the dizzying growth of our cities and their dependency on scarce resources along with the relentless growth of the world’s population, all of which now threatens our very existence. We face a global environmental catastrophe in land use, food production and resource use which could undermine existing fragile economies and the sustainability of our civilisation.

And our politicians search relentlessly for solutions which will re-energise economic growth, with little evidence to date that their interventions are making any fundamental difference. So it’s not surprising that some of the worlds’ so – called sustainability experts have also found it impossible to reach any consensus on whether sustainable consumption and economic growth are compatible

But some recent analysis of the UK’s Material Flow Accounts for 2001-2009 suggest we are using less stuff now than the previous decade (Guardian 1/11/11- The Only way is Down http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/nov/01/peak-stuff-consumption-data ).

It seems that the grand total of stuff we use (minerals, fuel, wood etc) in the UK amounts to roughly 2 billion tonnes per year about 30 tonnes for each and every one of us. For our former London Mayor’s benefit that’s as heavy as 4 Route Master buses!

This data is potentially good news because it implies at least as I read it that we may have “decoupled “economic growth from material consumption. Genuine decoupling has been seen by many of us as unachievable. But is this really de-materialisation and hence the emergence of a Green Economy or as others have suggested is it the dawn of de-growth?

Whatever the answer our unsustainable lifestyles and commitment to perpetual economic growth are major political and social obstacles because they have become the major drivers of climate change on Earth. Jason Hickel recently suggested that the solution is “about changing the way our economy operates” (Guardian: 5 March-2020).

Climate breakdown: ‘It’s the economy, stupid!’ | Guest blog, Stephen Martin and Stephen Sterling

EU PLANS to ACCELERATE RENEWABLES

Europe’s plan to slash Russian fossil fuel imports and accelerate renewable energy production will test its ability to find the minerals, metals and other components that are needed for a dramatic shift to clean power.

The plan, outlined by the European Commission, would speed the continent toward a historic transition to wind and solar energy, while diversifying its sources of natural gas and expanding energy efficiency.

But it could come at a high cost. The rapid switch to renewables will depend on Europe’s ability to mine or import the materials that are needed for clean energy technology, like copper, lithium, and cobalt. And it comes as supply chains strain against rising demand for renewable energy globally.

“What we’re talking about doing is going from variable cost volatility on hydrocarbons to fixed-cost volatility on transition metals and minerals, going from the limitations on European domestic capacity to produce hydrocarbons to limitations on European domestic capacity to manufacture and deploy full value-chain renewables,” said Kevin Book, managing director of ClearView Energy Partners LLC.

“These are risk-shifting choices, and a lot of the details will matter,” he added.

The plan builds on a package of legislation that would reduce Europe’s greenhouse gas emissions 55 percent by 2030 and reach net zero by mid-century. It aims to accelerate renewable energy to 45 percent of the E.U. energy mix by 2030, up from 40 percent now. That would bring total renewable energy generation to more than 1,200 gigawatts within eight years.

If the E.U. achieves its near-term targets, the European Commission estimates that it would cut two-thirds of its current gas imports by the end of this year, with a goal to end them completely well before the end of the decade.

“Today, we are taking our ambition yet to another level to make sure that we become independent from Russian fossil fuels as quickly as possible,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Some experts say more details will be needed to determine whether those plans are achievable. Europe could face shortages of the materials needed for its clean energy transition, or risk forming new dependencies on unsustainable suppliers, according to a report commissioned by the metals industry group Eurometaux and written by the Belgium-based research university KU Leuven.

It found that the E.U. target of zeroing out emissions by 2050 would require around 35 percent more copper and aluminium than it consumes today, and around 45 percent more silicon — a key component in solar panels. At the same time, lithium demand could grow by 35 times, to more than 800,000 tons, and as much as 26 times more rare earth elements will be needed. Cobalt and nickel demand could rise by 330 percent and 100 percent, respectively.

Those materials are needed to produce electric vehicles, batteries, wind turbines and solar panels — all of which are key to meeting Europe’s ambitious emissions-cutting targets.

An international energy strategy, recently released , acknowledged those supply chain risks.

THE CLIMATE CRISIS-THE KIDS ARN’T ALRIGHT

Commentary from Dr Wim Thiery

Scientists predict about 2.4°C of global warming by the end of this century under current policy pledges, compared to preindustrial times. In our studies, we calculated the meaning of that level of warming, in terms of how many extreme climate events a real person in a real location will face across an entire lifetime. Compared to their grandparents, children born today will face 1.5 times more tropical cyclones, 2.6 times more droughts, 2.8 times as many river floods, nearly 3 times as many crop failures, 2 times the number of wildfires, and 7 times the number of extreme heatwaves under current pledges. These numbers illustrate unprecedented increases in lifetime extreme-event exposure for today’s young generations. Without doubt, the increased numbers of lifetime extreme climate events will significantly impact not only people’s lives but also whole societies and economies.

Will children across the world face the same impacts of climate change?

Very strong intergenerational inequities exist, in terms of exposure to climate extremes. The younger people are and the higher the warming level, the greater the number of extreme events they will experience. If 3.5°C of global warming occur, children across the world will face, on average, 44 times more extreme heatwaves compared to people living in a world without climate change. In the Middle East and North Africa, people under 25 will face at least a 7-fold increase in lifetime exposure to all categories of climate extremes which we considered, and new-borns will face a 9-fold or greater increase relative to those in a world without climate change.

In addition to this intergenerational injustice, we also see international injustice. Young people in low-income countries will face, by far, the strongest increase in lifetime extreme event exposures, followed by young children in lower-middle income countries. From 2015–2020, 64 million children were born in Europe and Central Asia, and those children will face a 4-fold increase in lifetime extreme event exposures. In the same period, 206 million children were born in sub-Saharan Africa and those children will face a 6-fold increase. So, not only does the average child in sub-Saharan Africa face a much stronger increase in exposure, but there are also many more children born into that situation. As African countries contribute only minimally to global-scale emissions, these children bear a disproportionate burden of the impact of global warming. Finally, these children are among the most vulnerable. Often, their survival depends on agriculture and their homes are not well protected against climate extremes like tropical cyclones or heatwaves.

There has also been a recent surge in climate litigation, in which people around the world are suing governments and fossil fuel companies for contributing to negative climate impacts or for expressing insufficient ambition in terms of mitigating these impacts. In many cases, these lawsuits are spearheaded by young people, who believe that current policies violate their rights under the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child. Together, youth protests and climate litigation are game changers. Young people have, and will continue to play, a key role in the actions taken to protect their own futures.

https://policylabs.frontiersin.org/content/wim-thiery-climate-crisis-kids-are-not-alright?utm_source=sfmc&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NL+04+2022&utm_term=https%3a%2f%2fpolicylabs.frontiersin.org%2fcontent%2fwim-thiery-climate-crisis-kids-are-not-alright&utm_id=185

COHORT 2040 CHALLENGE

How Can Future Leaders be Better Prepared for a Future of Worsening Environmental Crisis (https://www.ippr.org/files/2022-01/cohort-2040-jan-22.pdf   )

This report from the Institute for Public Policy research(IPPR) is yet another wake up call for all of those who are asking where the leadership will come from to tackle a worsening environmental and social crisis created by humanities unsustainable lifestyles?

According to this timely report many scientists, experts and communities on the front line are warning of this worsening outlook. But these warnings are often treated as projections of a future that can be definitively avoided; and as interventions tactically deployed to spur action in the present. This is particularly the case when they are expressed in intergenerational terms: “Act now to save our children’s future.” But what if these warnings increasingly indicate the future conditions under which the struggle to overcome the environmental crisis will be fought?

Less attention has been paid to another intergenerational perspective: What burden is being placed on the shoulders of future decision-makers by a far more environmentally destabilised world – and how can they be better prepared? The average age of world leaders is 62, dropping to the early 50s across Europe (Asrar 2021); many parliaments have an average age in the high 50s (Watson 2020, CRS 2021). Emerging millennial-age leaders in their early 30s – the median age of the global population is 31 years (CIA 2021) – will reach the age range of contemporary leaders in the 2040s and 2050s. If the inadequate action of today continues, theirs could be a tomorrow of 2C of heating, severe and persistent environmental shocks, and the knock-on destabilisation of societies across the world.

Many of the defining features of this report’s systemic approach to issue of future leadership recognises the huge challenges future cohorts of students will face in a potentially destabilising world. Without building the capacity of future leaders and change agents to enhance their understand the necessity of fundamental change to societies and economic systems to create and unlock a global response that avoids non-linear environmental change and enables an ongoing process of restoring and restabilising the natural world -then growing destabilisation of societies will dominate their future. Focus must be maintained on making a better future as the present gets worse. Hence those cadres of university graduates who aspire to become transformative leaders must be capable of embracing complexity and developing a sophisticated, systems analysis of the causes, evolution, and consequences of growing destabilisation in and between human and environmental systems to navigate the coming decades. Mechanisms are needed to identify, monitor, and better understand complex and rapid change across systems and to collaboratively respond to threats and opportunities.

Expanding global solidarity (relational). Greater connection with communities on the front line of destabilisation is needed around the world, ensuring their experience is foregrounded as part of an explicit strategy of creating a greater shared group understanding of the impacts of destabilisation, minimising perceptions of people as being part of an ‘outside’ group. In turn, considerations of equity are paramount, as is maximising the resources and agency of those who are most vulnerable. The chances of an effective global response are limited under conditions of high inequality and, as a result, low cooperation.

Caring collectively (emotional). The emotional and psychological implications of the worsening outlook are significant, unequal and will have a range of impacts on collective responses. These include elements in social psychology, such as heightening fear or empathy and their consequences for marshalling and maintaining an effective collective response under growing stress, as well as the emotional toll for individuals. Globally, it is essential that leaders can better support communities and entire populations in making sense of what is going on, how it came to this, and what must be done to navigate out, telling stories of focus and hope.

WORLD ENERGY TRANSITION UPDATE

Published today (29 March), IRENA’s 2022 edition of the World Energy Transitions Outlook outlines the priority actions that will need to be taken between now and 2030 to keep the goal of limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5C within reach.

COP26 President Alok Sharma stated earlier this month, in a journal for think-tank IPPR, that the goal to “keep 1.5C alive” was not guaranteed in the long-term by the Glasgow Climate Pact alone. He described the Pact as a “fragile win”. His article warned that “achievements will come to nothing” unless “promises made are promises kept”.

According to the report, keeping the world on a 1.5C pathway will require ensuring that renewables account for at least 40% of the global annual energy mix in 2030, up from 14% at present.

Electrification will also need to happen at scale to tackle energy consumption – the Outlook is predicated on the global electric vehicle (EV) stock being 20 times larger in 2030 than it was in 2021. Also detailed is the widespread uptake of electric technologies for domestic heating.

Additionally, the report highlights historic under-investment in energy efficiency. Global energy efficiency investment was $0.3trn in 2021 but will need to reach $1.5trn annually. This finding was to be expected; the International Energy Agency has stated that the rate of progress on energy efficiency will need to at least double from 2021 levels to deliver a net-zero world.

Rotterdam citizens concerned with air quality form a club

They will be measuring air quality as a citizen-driven science project

Over 400 citizens of Rotterdam have already registered in a special club dedicated to air quality and called Luchtclub. Part of the activities of the club is the measurement of air pollution on the street with particulate matter sensors. The club aligns with a five-decade-old policy of the Dutch port city to measure air quality and will function as a sort of a citizen science project.

Mapping the air quality in The Netherlands

The first members of the air club in Rotterdam have already received their air quality sensors and the rest will get them in the next couple of weeks. With these devices, members will be measuring the levels of particulate matter (PM2.5) on their streets and will be supplying data for a two-year period.

The municipality and the Institute for Public Health and the Environment will use this data as a basis to map out how Rotterdammers experience their environment and what they consider important. The measurements can already be seen live on an online map (fuelled with data from across The Netherlands).

According to the Alderman for Sustainability Arno Bonte, quoted on the city website, the measurements will be a valuable addition to the existing municipal network, which has been functioning for 50 years already and will help it further improve its air quality. Although 400 members is already a very good number, certain city areas are still not represented sufficiently, so new club members are more than welcome.

Other than measurements, the air club members in other city areas like Rozenburg, Pernis, Hoogvliet and Hoek van Holland can already participate in discussions, exchange ideas online on how to improve the air quality in their neighbourhoods.

The first meetings started on 3 June and during the first online sessions, Alderman Bonte, assisted by other health and environmental authorities, will elaborate on the purpose of the Luchtclub, the importance of clean air and the added value of measuring it. They will also discuss sustainable urban development and how to make Rotterdam future-proof.

Finally, Rotterdam is taking various measures to improve air quality, such as installing shore-based power for sea vessels, promoting shared electric transport, and encouraging cycling, walking and public transport. The goal for Rotterdam is to meet the stricter standards of the World Health Organization by 2025 at the latest.

Place- Based Learning and Climate Emergencies

Cities around the globe have a unique and powerful role to play in mitigating climate change and adapting to its impacts. Estimates suggest that urban activities produce 75 percent of global CO2 emissions, making them major contributors to climate change. Yet their growing populations are also extremely vulnerable to climate change, with climate change-induced heat waves, floods, storms and sea level rise, disrupting their basic services, infrastructure, housing, livelihoods and health. As wellsprings of ideas, innovation, and resources, cities are also potential sources of solutions for addressing climate change.

The prominence of this civic role is prompting many universities and cities like the Canadian city of Toronto and the city of Nottingham in the UK to set bold carbon reduction targets (e.g., net zero by 2050 or sooner like 2028 for Nottingham) that align with the Paris Agreements’ recommendations for keeping global heating below 1.5C as well as identifying resiliency measures for adaptation. In the words of Toronto’s climate strategy: “Achieving these targets will require transformational changes in how we live, work, commute, and build”. It will require Herculean effort across the wide array of sectors, industries and levels of government that shape the urban environment. “

The UKs Civic Universities Network (https://civicuniversitynetwork.co.uk/ ) and the Urban Climate Action Network (UCAN) in the US and Canada (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/urban-climate-action-network-joe-harber/ ) offer tangible evidence that the expertise and capacities of universities can be brought to the table by developing university/city partnerships focused on how cities can best achieve their climate targets. The vision for such a partnership is one of civic symbiosis which leverages the unique capabilities of the university (e.g., students, faculty, research, campus infrastructure) to help the City achieve its climate goals, while university students – future generations of architects, planners, engineers, policy analysts, communications specialists, investments analysts and cultural and social innovators- would become better versed in the concepts and practice of sustainability and climate action.

In the UK- Nottingham is arguably the furthest ahead. The city has reduced its overall CO₂ emissions per capita by 52.3% since 2005 and is on track to be carbon neutral by 2028. It has planted nearly 22,000 trees and installed more than 130 public electric vehicle charging points. Just under a third of council vehicles and nearly half of Hackney carriage taxis are ultra-low emission vehicles, and the city has one of the UK’s largest fleets of electric buses. A workplace parking levy on employers providing 11 or more parking spaces for staff generates about £8m a year, which is ringfenced for renewable transport schemes. It also hosts two of the world’s leading universities which are implementing sustainability across their campuses and across their courses.

For many universities there is a growing understanding that instead of the prevailing siloed curriculum approaches to sustainability, there needs to be an emphasis on influencing individual behaviour and markets. Hence, teaching which is rooted in the day-to-day interaction of social, economic, and environmental systems, and inseparable from issues of social and environmental justice and of governance-would offer a more grounded learning experience. To understand fully the complex interactions which continue to promote unsustainable practices, an emphasis on the real-world lens of ‘place’ can bring together a wide range of academic disciplines – Geography, Biology and Ecology, Economics and Marketing, Political Science, Sociology, Psychology, Earth Science and Philosophy. This could facilitate a critical search of finding ways to work together across very different disciplinary approaches and methods, using the reality of physical places, with all their complexity and ‘messiness’.

The world’s urban buildings, including homes, workplaces, schools, and hospitals, are responsible for a significant proportion of global carbon emissions. By 2050, 1.6 billion people living in cities will be regularly exposed to extremely high temperatures and over 800 million people living in cities across the world will be vulnerable to sea level rises and coastal flooding. Accelerating the transition to net zero emissions for the world’s cities will therefore be vital to achieving the goal of keeping global warming to close to 1.5 degrees.

By 2050 urban areas will be home to two thirds of the world population, with the speed and scale of urbanisation set to lock in high-carbon infrastructure and inequality if we do not act now.

PEDAGOGIES OF TRANSITION

The times call for pedagogies that cultivate integrated knowledge and global citizenship, yet we continue to educate for a world we don’t want. In the long term, we need educational systems aligned with new imperatives, while in the near term offering innovate curricula and teaching within existing systems. The forward-looking educators on this Forum’s panels—Frameworks and Practices—probe each of these fronts.

This essay was originally published on www.greattransition.org as part of the “The Pedagogy of Transition” Forum in May 2021.

This is a short introduction to a suite of outstanding papers from an international and authoritative transformative community.

The question for those of us in the business of thinking, propagating ideas, and equipping youth for lives in a confusing and uncertain world is what do we do? Living in the shadows or the sunlight of our legacy, what would our great-great-grandchildren wish us to have done?

Likely, they would ask us to overcome our blindness to what is right before our eyes: heat, storms, fires, floods, desecrated lands, extinctions, and injustices and what these portend for their lives. Perhaps, they would ask us to reckon with the possibility that “our ideas are too puny for our circumstances,” and to think more broadly and wisely about what it means to be human.¹ They would surely demand that we stop using the atmosphere as a dump and that we preserve Earth’s forests, rivers, soils, seas, mountains, lifeforms, and grasslands. Certainly, they would ask us to enlarge the democratic vista to include them, their great-great-grandchildren, and other species—an intergenerational, interspecies democracy of sorts. They would expect us to have created a durable foundation of well-considered personal rights and duties, tolerance for differences and dissent, and the wherewithal for truth and reconciliation.

For reasons that Stephen Sterling and others explain, the university as presently conceived is an unlikely source of remedy. It is committed not to transformation, great or otherwise, but more often than not to patching up flaws in the modern paradigm on the wager that it carries the seeds of its own repair and renewal. The educational system with millions of students each year, billions of dollars of research funding, and trillions in capital assets operates with the assurance that goes with its assumed monopoly of solutions to what ails modern societies. It exists unmolested in the world of influence and money as long as it does not threaten the dominant culture and its underlying faith in economic growth and human domination of nature. Its organization often impedes non-trivial conversations across disciplines. Its financial dependency limits serious reckoning with large ideas of justice, peace, interdependence, and ecology. It deals primarily in what E. F. Schumacher called “convergent problems,” not “divergent problems.” The former are linear and thereby amenable to scientific or technological solutions. The latter are more like dilemmas that are, by definition, unsolvable but avoidable with foresight. Increasingly, our basic problems are of the latter sort: they are divergent moral and political questions “refractory to mere logic and discursive reason.”²Too often, colleges and universities have become hives of “busy-work on a vast, almost incomprehensible scale,” and students graduate as careerists, not agents of transformation.

LEVELLING UP WHITE PAPER 2022

I wrote this extract immediately below from a blog in July 2020 and was surprised by what seemed to be its impact.

There is a growing interest in the idea of civic universities. It’s an idea which has a new resonance with many who believe it’s time for a reassessment of what a university is for. I was particularly struck by what is currently happening in the Netherlands to make the connections between a university and its place. They argue that civic universities matter more than ever as “anchor institutions”. They play a critical role in an ageing and automated society in facilitating lifelong learning and will be crucial in helping to deal with both challenges especially in a post Covid world.

The overall performance of universities’ contribution to this agenda in the Netherlands is monitored through a process of Performance Agreements) – now called Quality Agreements . Funding can be withheld if the plans do not meet the criteria. The separate ministries with responsibility for higher education and for city development have recently announced joint funding for “city deals” specifically to support collaboration between universities and municipalities. Most Dutch universities and their municipalities are participating in the programme.

The rationale for such an approach is clear. It is important for a city’s capacity for innovation that it has a strong relationship with knowledge institutes and that researchers, lecturers and students are involved in solving social problems. Not only to strengthen the problem-solving ability of the city, but also because it contributes to the training of the students of the future– who will contribute to shaping society – and gives them a better understanding of social issues. Using the society as a rich learning environment for students is therefore an important theme. The idea is that students formulate the relevant research questions together with researchers and the field (businesses, government, social institutions, citizens’ initiatives), carry out further research into urban problems and evaluate whether assumed problem-solving approaches are effective.

I hope our new Minister of Higher Education is following the Dutch example?
Guess what? This paragraph appears on page197 in the new White Paper on Levelling Up (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-unveils-levelling-up-plan-that-will-transform-uk ):

HE institutions have a vital part to play in supporting regional economies, as significant local employers and through their role as anchor institutions supporting regional collaboration. Examples include Sheffield University and Sheffield Hallam University, working in partnership with Sheffield City Council, on the future design of the city centre around their campuses; or the University of Lincoln’s Institute of Agri-Food Technology which collaborates with the agriculture sector to develop technology which can solve challenges across the food chain in Lincolnshire. In March 2021, DfE part-funded the creation of the Civic University Network through a £50,000 grant to support universities through the creation of Civic University Agreements, placing universities as anchor institutions within their locality to develop the economic, social, and cultural well-being needs of the surrounding community. Innovative new models of skills based HE also have an important role to play in levelling up places. For example, the New Model Institute for Technology and Engineering, opened last September in Hereford, offers a model of skills-based learning drawing from global best practice that emphasises work readiness, as well as self-reliance, community spirit and volunteering.