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ABSURDITY AND THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC CRISIS

Albert Camus published his novel, The Plague, in 1947, and there are many similarities with our current response to the pandemic. Camus describes the ineffectiveness of the authorities; the complacency of the citizens in the early days and the challenges and dilemmas forced on individuals. The novel highlights the powerlessness of individuals to affect their destinies, the very essence of absurdism. Some of the psychological impacts have a resonance with citizens today, leading them to display behaviour patterns – like mass civil unrest on beaches, illegal raves and street parties – resulting in violence and murder.

One interpretation of such behaviour is that the threat of death displaces the meaning of life and what it means to be human. This, coupled with the ambiguous communications from government and health officials, can seem like an experience of absurdity. Citizens end up feeling powerless against an impersonal, but authoritative force, and the Government is incapable of resolving the civil unrest which ensues.
As one resident in Bournemouth (where half a million people flocked to their sandy beaches) watched aghast as groups of revellers took drugs and drank their way through countless crates of beer he thought “There was a Lord of the Flies vibe about it. The atmosphere was ugly”.
Litter picking groups described the sight and smell as “horrendous, like nothing they had ever come across before. There was the smell of weed, urine, and excrement: empty beer cans and bottles ,wet wipes and even underpants covered the ground”.
Absurdity can be used as a term to criticise any actions the government takes, such as a social distancing system, that does not make sense. As described in Camus’ novel, it can arise spontaneously when individuals are faced by an external world that removes the meaning they seek to create.

References to absurdity in our daily life can be seen in newspaper headlines highlighting false news and confused messaging. This, coupled with those in power overtly disobeying their own advice and rules and lacking any sense of humility and authenticity, gives rise to a growing mood of defiance and frustration.
Should we question to what extent absurdity is a relevant concept for criticising how Governments around the world have responded to the pandemic? We might accept that governments are struggling with absurdity as best they can. More critically, perhaps is the question of whether politicians deliberately seek to invoke absurdity, and if so why?
Is chaos and civil unrest the likely outcome of other crises, like climate change, social inequality, or further pandemics? The UN and WHO are predicting more pandemics because they are one of the dire consequences of the dramatic decline in biodiversity across the planet.

EDUCATION BEYOND THE HUMAN

We live in a moment of epochal precarity, amidst irreversible environmental catastrophe that is impacting all life on Earth. Signaling the end of human exceptionalism, this era calls for an urgent redefinition of what it is to be human and a reconfiguration of the relationship between human and Earth. How should education respond to a world of shifting planetary boundaries and collapsing ecosystems? What education policies, practices, and pedagogies can help re-situate the human within the relational flow of life where everyone and everything – both human and non-human – are deeply interconnected? How can we learn to responsibly encounter and fully engage with a more than human world?

This is the opening statement from a recent virtual conference, hosted by the COMPARATIVE & INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION SOCIETY in Miami: Education Beyond the Human
And, this is the powerful opening video from its president-Professor Iveta Silova, Arizona State University: https://cies2020.org/

This is the reality of our relationship with our planet. It asks the fundamental question:what does this mean for our global education and learning systems. Collectively and cooperatively we need to reflect and urgently act on its message

MAKE UNIVERSITIES MATTER

The text below is the opening page of a short and powerful guide on how universities can empower their students make a difference. I was really impressed by its argument and its 12 reasons why universities should address their purpose. Universities can help people step out of their comfort zone to make a difference. Its author is Titus Alexander who wrote Practical Politics: Lessons in Power and Democracy, a textbook for learning and teaching the practice of politics. He founded Democracy Matters, the UK Alliance for Learning Practical Politics in 2009, and is an Honorary Fellow of the Sir Bernard Crick Centre for Understanding Politics at Sheffield University.

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Universities say “We’re changing lives. Creating a better world”.

Learn skills “essential for future leaders and decision makers”.

We “equip students to be critical investigators and ‘change makers’”.

But do they equip students to be change makers?

From the evidence in this paper: not nearly enough.

Humanity is in a race against time. In 2003 Professor Sir Martin Rees published Our Final Century, A Scientist’s Warning: How Terror, Error and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind’s Future. Since then our knowledge of problems has grown exponentially. Our ability to deal with problems may have declined.

Disease, a nuclear armed dictator, or the climate crisis could wipe out vast numbers of people. At a local level people struggle with countless problems, from domestic violence, high rents and mental illness to poverty and lack of opportunity or social care. Universities analyse these problems and even develop solutions. But they do not teach people advocacy and campaigning skills to become effective change makers and put solutions into practice.

Universities do teach practical business, now their biggest subject area. They help academics exploit the commercial potential of research.

But courses on how to lobby and improve public policy, social conditions and our environment are still rare.

The challenge for universities is to close the gap between understanding problems and developing the political abilities needed to solve them.

Some university leaders and academic boards will say this is not their problem. Most will say they need more research and money to investigate it.

The pioneers are challenging conventional thinking and equipping people to become effective change makers within existing courses and resources.

We have a shared responsibility for humanity by using knowledge to create a better world. As educators, we can learn and teach how to do it better.

To download a copy of Titus Alexander’s guide: https://www.practicalpolitics.global/can-universities-make-a-difference/

Consciousness and Climate Change

Guest blog by Emma Hickling

Amidst all the doom and gloom of Covid-19, I decided to read a recently published book about the philosophy of consciousness, which has the engaging title of “Galileo’s Error”. The author, Philip Goff, is an academic who manages to make a complex subject very accessible to the lay reader. The nature of consciousness is a fascinating topic for reflection upon in these turbulent times, when all we can do is sit and think.

We are all conscious and experience feelings, emotions, and thoughts: we all have a subjective inner life. Consciousness is fundamental to us as human beings. But what is consciousness? And how do we integrate consciousness into our scientific story of the universe?

Goff discusses in depth the two predominant world views on consciousness, namely Materialism and Dualism. Dualism states that reality is made up of physical things and immaterial minds; it is the mind that bears consciousness and it is the mind, not the brain, that thinks and feels. Materialism states that everything is physical and that ultimately consciousness can be explained by physical processes (although this has not yet been done).

In 1623 Galileo declared that mathematics was to be the language of science; this enabled all the physical properties of matter to be quantified. But he left the subjective qualities, such as emotions, feelings and senses out of this, as they could not be quantified. Yet these are the components of consciousness. Describing nature as a set of equations has enabled us to predict how matter operates and has enabled us to manipulate the natural world and ultimately brought about the technological revolution. Physics has been extraordinary successful in telling us what matter does, but not what matter is. It does not tell us about the intrinsic nature of matter.

Goff goes on to promote a third view: that consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality – it is the intrinsic nature of matter. In academic circles this view is given the fancy name of “panpsychism”. It describes a world view where we are conscious creatures embedded in a world of consciousness. We live in a physical universe whose intrinsic nature is constituted of consciousness.

So, what is the link to climate change? One of the knotty problems of climate change is that, although many people are now agreeing that it exists, extraordinarily little action has been taken to ameliorate it. Compare this to the Covid-19 crisis where the response has been swift and dramatic. So why? Goff posits that one reason could be that the predominant worldviews of consciousness, which are supported by all major civilisations through their religious, education and cultural systems, promote the view that humans are separate from the rest of the natural world; that we have nothing in common with a tree and that nature has no value in and of itself. All major civilisations promote the view that nature is there to be exploited. Goff argues that if we accept that consciousness is an inherent part of everything, then it has the potential to transform our relationship to the natural world, to the extent that we would want to look after it rather than exploit it. Understanding that we are conscious creatures embedded in a world of consciousness could transform our ability to act upon the threats of climate change.

But, at present, the notion of panpsychism remains a philosophical line of enquiry embedded in the academic system, and thus unlikely to break out into the mainstream world. Panpsychism is also an academic description of an ancient world view supported by many indigenous people, who have always known that all of life is conscious: a worldview that major religions and the scientific community have spent many centuries trying to supress. Maybe it is a time for a change of heart?

Footnote: What was Galileo’s Error? According to Goff, Galileo thought that mathematics could provide insight into the nature of physical reality, and that the nature that it revealed was incompatible with the reality of the sensory qualities (which must therefore reside in the soul). But mathematical models do not tell us anything about the intrinsic nature of matter and nor do they exclude the reality of the sensory qualities. A book well worth reading to get a deeper insight into this

NEW WAYS of THINKING AND ACTING in the ANTHROPOCENE

Guest Blog by Barry Carney: MSc (Centre for Alternative Technology, UK); Change Agents UK research associate.

In the age of the Anthropocene, we urgently need new ways of thinking and acting. Economists are predicting that biophysical limits will determine the post-growth world and, as things stand, this will be characterised by mass migration, profound natural hazards, and huge discontinuities for human and natural systems (Crownshaw et al., 2018). Epidemiologists warn how climate change will create a world of unprecedented new diseases.

The current pandemic is sending disruptive shockwaves through all our interconnected global, environmental, socio-economic, and human systems. With this, we have opportunities to alter current systems at the deepest of levels.

The SDG Transformations Forum (TF), established in 2017, is a growing global community of enablers and transformations initiatives. The forum recognises where large-scale challenges – reflected in the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – call for urgent interventions. By providing and making widely available the necessary resources, practical knowledge and organisational infrastructure for positive transformations, TF aim to support and amplify the efforts of the world’s change agents on their journeys towards a flourishing future.

Wherever harmful and disruptive events destabilise the status quo, they can prompt the critical reflections which lead to new thinking. TF recognises the importance of these discontinuities for triggering systemic change. In a recent newsletter, TF featured two of their current programmes for encouraging transformational responses to such events. One is the “Global Assessment for the New Economy” (GANE) – lead by Jasper Kenter of York University – which will gather insights on and from economic transformations, synthesise the findings and distribute practical knowledge across an emerging new network. GANE will work alongside a second initiative, “Bounce Beyond,” which provides the necessary infrastructure to mobilise and enable actions (for GANE and other transformations initiatives alike). To do this, TF will apply a growing body of knowledge and action research regarding transformations. The shock of Covid-19 could provide the springboard to ‘bounce beyond’ a mere return to the pre-pandemic business-as-usual.

Too often, theory and practice are deemed to be separate pursuits – perhaps best exemplified by academia’s disciplinary approaches. By using approaches based upon a knowledge of systems thinking and practice, in contrast to conventional methods situated within systems, there are better opportunities to explore and resolve wicked, intractable problems, in a more integrated and emergent way (Scoones et al., 2020). The SDG Transformations Forum adopts a three-step approach of seeing ● connecting ● acting: whereby complex situations are better understood ● valuable actors and interventions are identified and brought together ● so that appropriate, context specific actions can occur.

In this way, they can enable change by i) identifying ineffective mechanisms and behaviours; ii) generating new ways of working; and iii) implementing enabling structures. These can be achieved simultaneously: actions from one serving as enablers and agency for all.

Beyond being a network hub, TF works to engage the transformations community in ‘deliberation–action processes.’ This community intrinsically includes citizens as well as the change-makers informing, devising, and driving the initiatives. The plan is to generate local actions whilst holding global scale challenges in sharp focus. Establishing, maintaining and strengthening multi-directional links will be vital – e.g. between TF as a central hub and resource, the TF community as key communication and agency tributaries, and the various localities and citizenry completing the cycle and providing a collective groundswell of actors.

Transformations “require deep innovation in the ways we organize”. The need for unifying diverse approaches raises difficult questions about the transformational learning spaces for co-creation via participatory methods. Effective governance, facilitation, guidance and education (capacity-building) will be needed to yield appropriate value from such inclusive processes. These factors are elucidated by recent experiments in deliberative democracy in the UK via Citizens Assemblies, established to tackle Climate Emergencies (see e.g. Citizens UK, 2020). Further, there is a need to address the acquisition of key sustainability competencies, which underpin social learning processes, and link knowledge and action. These should include, inter alia:

Systems thinking competence
Futures thinking or anticipatory competence
Values thinking or normative competence
Strategic thinking or action-orientated competence
Collaborative or interpersonal competence

Digital competencies are being fast-tracked under the Covid-19 conditions and TF are embracing the complementary power of technology (e.g. developing a Multi-Sided [transformations] Platform). Bounce Beyond will be making use of virtual learning and multilocal collaboration to rapidly up-scale actions.

A primary focus within the TF initiatives is the transformation of mainstream economics. Many alternative, often radical conceptual reworkings of the economy have been emerging in recent decades and the pandemic has now centre-staged their importance. Transformation of current economic models can be hard for citizens to ‘buy into’, in part as understandings of the existing systems offer a fantasy of security.

Powerful narratives will be important: taking root beneath existing biases, nurturing societal understanding of what transformations can look like. It is narrative and communication (between humans and natural systems) which orient us and guide our journey. TF recognise the difficulty in working with heightened levels of complexity and so the story is best created through acting, with both pen- and script-in-hand.

We need to clear away the broken shards of failing systems and identify the best placement for precautionary crash mats. Creating new attractors within our stories can lure our behaviour towards the new, the exciting and the flourishing. In the example of the economy, uncovering its original meaning of ‘household management’ (Oxford English Dictionary, 2009) creates space for innovative stories and fresh understandings of creating new and better. How do we, as humans with active influence and responsibility over systems, transform how we manage our home?

Against our best intentions, it was perhaps easier and often more attractive, pre-pandemic, to approach transformations in a genial way (ambling on rather than bouncing beyond). This approach often lacks impact. ‘Light-impact’ can be easily countered by established structures and world views and their efforts subsumed back into existing systems: e.g. the status quo is re-rebranded using greenwashed packaging.

The SDG Transformations Forum was established in response to the urgent existential needs of our time, and it is identifying the crucial pathways used or imagined by transformations experts. The Covid-19 pandemic is having a fundamentally destabilising effect, such that systems can be tipped into a new order, repurposed, or eradicated and replaced with better. ‘Bouncing beyond’ demands swift and decisive action, which will require new breakaway mechanisms and above all, wise leadership. Where will this come from? Our universities are outstanding in the acquisition of knowledge but much less effective in the acquisition of wisdom apt for fundamentally addressing wicked challenges (Tassone et al., 2017). At present, our educational systems do little to consider the ethical and ontological challenges related to sustainability science. There is a deeply fundamental and ongoing need to understand and reconcile the relationships between the human world and the physical universe, and hence help provide critical and imaginative solutions to a growing escalation of global existential problems (Maxwell, 2020).

One of the biggest challenges will continue to be launching en courage into [and thus creating] new paradigms. This is an action call to us all – a time to ask, “who am I in the interconnected universe and which systems do I want to support?” Is it time to explore these questions through agency now? We must be prepared to recognise old systems and navigate past pitfalls along the way. To truly create a movement of movements, we need to keep living the stories of collaboration, seeing our worldview rather than seeing with it, and committing decisively to acting as one flourishing system.

Bibliography:

References:

Citizens UK (2020) Local chapters > Leeds. Available at: https://www.citizensuk.org/leeds (Accessed: 26/05/20)
Crownshaw, T., Morgan, C., Adams, A., Sers, M., dos Santos, N., Damiano, A., Gilbert,L., Haage, G., Greenford, D. (2018), ‘Over the horizon: Exploring the conditions of a post-growth world’, The Anthropocene Review, 1 –25.
Oxford English Dictionary (2009) Concise Oxford English Dictionary: Luxury Edition. 11th Edition. New York: Oxford University Press.
Scoones, I., Stirling, A., Abrol, D., Atela, J., Charli-Joseph, L., Eakin, H., Ely, A., Olsson, P., Pereira, L., Priya, R., van Zwanenberg, P., Yang, L. (2020) ‘Transformations to sustainability: combining structural, systemic and enabling approaches’, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 42, 65-75. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2019.12.004
Maxwell, N (2020) Our Fundamental Problem: A Revolutionary Approach to Philosophy, McGill-Queen’s University Press. Available at: https://philpapers.org/rec/MAXOFP
Tassone, V., O’Mahony, C., McKenna, E., Eppink, H., Wals, A. (2017) ‘(Re-)designing higher education curricula in times of systemic dysfunction: a responsible research and innovation perspective’, Higher Education, Doi: /10.1007/s10734-017-0211-4

Hyperlinked websites:

IDEAS FOR A GROWN-UP ECONOMY

As we enter week 8 of the lock down, along with thoughts of returning to work or sending children back to school, there is a growing chorus of voices talking about the need for a new form of economics. One of these voices is called the Wellbeing Alliance (WEALL for short: https://wellbeingeconomy.org/ )

WEALL is proposing a new economic model based on a radical repurposing of our current preoccupation with more and more growth: an oxymoron on a finite planet!
It advocates that in the world’s most developed countries, growth has brought unrivalled prosperity and hence “we have arrived”. However, some of the outcomes of growth, such as increasing personal debt, inequality, climate change, a pandemic, and a fractured and deeply polarised politics, may make the fruits of growth rot! In a ground-breaking book – The Economics of Arrival -Katherine Trebeck and Jeremy Williams persuasively argue that it is about time we made ourselves “at home” with the wealth we have created. That we move away from enlarging the economy to improving it and secure the benefits that have accrued from growth, for everyone.

WEALL issued a briefing paper on 8 May, which sets out 10 key principles for an economy which “builds back better “from the Covid 19 pandemic. It prioritises human health,wellbeing,and ecological stability in the long term and seeks to avoid some of the “back to worse” traps of business as usual economics, based on GDP growth!

New goals: ecologically safe and environmentally just Prioritise long-term human wellbeing and ecological stability in all decision-making; degrow and divest from economic sectors that do not contribute to ecological and wellbeing goals; invest in those that do; facilitate a just transition for all that creates jobs in and reskills for environmentally friendly and wellbeing focused sectors.
Protecting environmental standards Protect all existing climate policy and emission reduction targets, environmental regulations, and other environmental policies in all COVID-19 responses.
Green infrastructure and provisioning Develop new green infrastructure and provisioning, and sustainable social practices as part of the COVID-19 recovery. For instance, transform urban space towards active travel and away from car use; scale up public transport, green energy, environmentally sustainable food production, low carbon housing; attach environmental conditionality to bailouts of high carbon industries.
Universal basic services Guarantee needs satisfaction for everyone, including through health care coverage for the whole population free of charge at point of access; universal free provision or vouchers for basic levels of water, electricity, gas, housing, food, mobility, education.
Guaranteed livelihoods Ensure everyone has the means for decent living, for instance through income and/or job guarantees, redistribution of employment through working-time reduction.
Fair distribution Create more equal societies nationally and globally through a fair distribution of resources and opportunities. E.g. more progressive and environmentally orientated income and wealth taxation; public/common ownership of key resources and infrastructure.
Better democracy Ensure effective, transparent, and inclusive democratic processes at all levels; end regulatory capture from corporate interests and corruption.
Wellbeing economics organisations Prioritise in all businesses and organisations social and ecological goals; implement circular economy principles to minimise resource use and waste; ensure economic and organisational democracy.
Cooperation Ensure cooperation and solidarity at all levels, including in international politics and the global economy; across industrial sectors and government ministries; across scales (global, national, regional, local).
Public control of money Introduce public and democratic control of money creation. Spend newly created money on investments that promote social and environmental goals and avoid post-recovery austerity.

I believe we are at a new global tipping point, where the idea of building back better, is growing in everybody’s mind. But will our existing governance systems respond urgently and at scale to the new reality and embrace an economy that values wellbeing and ecological sustainability? Its worth all of us joining and fully supporting the WEALL Movement!

THE HIDDEN POWER OF SYSTEMS THINKING Governance in a Climate Emergency

In many of my recent blogs I have begun to focus on how we can implement transformational change. During my time as the CEO of a new company in the fastest growing city in the UK- Milton Keynes in the late 1990s, I found myself engaging with some of the foremost creative and influential academics in what was then the Centre for Complexity and Change at the Open University. One of the many outcomes of this collaboration was a piece of research by one of its students-Alexandra Di Stefano- on the company I was running. Her PhD was entitled -BEYOND the RHETORIC: A Grounded Perspective on Learning Company and Learning Community.

The creative initiatives the company took with the local business communities , schools and the 4 universities, from a systems perspective, had a profound effect on national education policy, because the company became the precursor of a national network of regional Learning and Skills Councils. Anyway , to the point of this blog! Alexandra’s work and her supervisor Professor Ray Ison introduced me to the importance and impact of systems thinking and practice. Ray and the OU systems team have pioneered work on systems thinking and practice for almost 50 years.

Last month , Ray and Ed Straw published a persuasive and well written book called the Hidden Power of Systems Thinking(https://youtu.be/f3Q-YLKoIQ8) , which shows how the failure of governance at all levels(national, regional , local and organisational) is fundamentally at the heart of “the collective incapacity to tackle the climate and biodiversity crises.”

As the preface of the book states:” it is an invitation to think differently. Because the world is in a fix”. And, it goes on to argue very persuasively that we need purposeful change to fix the world’s wicked problems. But not first order purposeful change(i.e. doing the same things more efficiently) but second order change (i.e. changing all systems)which embraces governing for emergence in a new and complex new epoch called the Anthropocene.

TRANSITIONING FROM THE PANDEMIC: Sound Advice from the OECD

As governments proceed to reduce the lock down measures implemented to contain Covid-19 they are being encouraged to implement a 5-step decision making framework which takes account of longer-term impacts of climate change. We do not need gung-ho business as usual changes which stimulate carbon intensive industrial and consumption growth, knowing only to well that this will need further decoupling in the very near future in response to the climate and biodiversity crisis. Makes sense doesn’t it?
OECD FRAMEWORK
• Systematically evaluate possible unintended negative environmental impacts of new short-term fiscal and tax provisions. While the priority is rightly on providing urgent relief to impacted businesses and individuals, a careful screening of the environmental impacts of stimulus measures would significantly add coherence to policies and avoid creating perverse and unintended environmental consequences that might damage the future resilience and environmental health of societies.

• Do not roll-back existing environmental standards as part of recovery plans. As countries implement urgent measures to tackle the health and immediate economic impact of the crisis, it will be important not to retreat from the gains made in recent decades in addressing climate change, air and water pollution, biodiversity loss, and other environmental challenges.

• Make sector-specific financial support measures conditional on environmental improvements where possible. The use of financial support measures such as preferential loans, loan guarantees and tax abatements could be directed towards supporting stronger environmental commitments and performance in pollution-intensive sectors that may be particularly affected by the crisis.

• Ensure that the measures will enhance levels of environmental health to strengthen the resilience of societies. A cleaner environment will have a positive impact on human health; for example, reductions in air pollution will improve the health of vulnerable segments of urban populations and can make them more resilient to health risks.

• Communicate clearly on the benefits of improving the overall environmental health of societies. Underscoring the benefits to well-being and prosperity from more resilient societies can strengthen public support for measures aimed at enhancing environmental health.

As the COVID-19 emergency evolves, the effects of governments’ stimulus packages will need to be assessed with respect to the long-term environmental impacts. A focus on the transition to low emissions and resource efficient economies will be a central component of such a process. For example, the investment plans associated with recovery will be critical in setting the environmental pathway for the next few decades, crucial for global efforts to avoid dangerous climate change.

SHOULD UNIVERSITIES BE A FORCE FOR SOCIAL GOOD?

Imagine if a university totally reoriented itself around redeveloping its locality. It would only offer teaching and research directly relevant to this mission. It might bring in local employers, partner with private training providers, and only carry out research that would benefit its local communities.
This idea by a leading consultancy firm was headlined in the Times Higher last week. Yet, it failed to mention a range of opinion and research on this issue emanating from academics in the UK and worldwide. In an earlier blog I mentioned the extensive work by the philosopher Nicholas Maxwell on the role of universities in learning for wisdom and their contribution to social progress. Another important contribution was made recently in a report by the Civic University Commission, chaired by former cabinet Secretary Bob Kerslake.
It argued that universities play a key societal role through their teaching and research work. But they can also play a hugely important role in the sustainability and environmental wellbeing of the cities in which they are located.
The importance of this civic role is growing. For example, in the city of Sheffield there were 4,000 students and nearly 45,000 people working in the steel industry in 1978. Today there are around 60,000 students and around 3,000 steelworkers. Universities have become one of the largest employers – next to the National Health Service in many cities and areas of the country.
In the United Kingdom , for example , which has grappled with the challenges of low growth, low productivity, the impact of austerity and widening spatial inequalities, universities can be (alongside local authorities and the health sector), significant ‘anchor institutions’, able to make an enormous impact on the success of their places. But this impact is often framed solely in terms of their economic impact, with limited consideration of the wider sustainability agenda set out in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs)
National education policy has tended to ignore the importance of regions and cities. This ignorance of place – and how different places have experienced growth, globalisation, and shifts in a country’s sources of wealth – has led to huge inequalities across many countries. Many universities have seen themselves as increasingly global first, national second, and local third.
There has been some shift towards place-based policy making – most notably in the UK through the industrial strategy and city deals, but also – for example – through opportunity areas in schools’ policy.
University policy in England remains almost wholly national, including:
• A lack of recognition in recent policy and legislation that universities are anchor institutions in ‘left behind’ places and their closure could have drastic effects on those areas.
• Funding for teaching that is nationally designed.
• Funding for research which is still almost wholly awarded based on national and international excellence.
What is needed is a greater focus on creating Civic Universities with the following characteristics:
• A clear strategic rationale for how teaching, research and professional civic engagement benefits the city/city region.
• Along with a civic engagement plan which is negotiated and evaluated with key organisations in the city via a time dependent “Performance Agreement” Which is in line with what happens in Holland.

Universities can actively promote co-creation of societal transformation that goes far beyond technology transfer and other economic contributions, which is what the concept of a “civic university” demands. The idea of a civic university takes a university’s role in society much further and at scale towards active engagement and mutual learning. If a university takes on this role, it enhances its chances of transforming itself as an institution and becoming a sustainability role model in its community. This is especially true when active engagement and mutual learning are paired with participatory processes, since this creates an environment that promotes critical, systemic, and future-oriented thinking. A good example of such engagement is the development of city-wide citizens assemblies to develop climate emergency and net zero carbon plans( Good examples include the universities and cities of Nottingham, Bristol, and Leeds)
Another example is a recent study carried out by the University of Sheffield: it addressed the question; Is there space to grow vegetables and fruit in the city? In the United Kingdom, approximately 16,000 km2 of land is designated as urban, of which green infrastructure constitutes approximately 50% (an area 5.3 times larger than that used nationally for the commercial production of fruits and vegetables). To understand the extent to which urban horticulture can make use of this apparent land resource, the researchers used high-spatial-resolution datasets to analyse the current and potential productive space for urban horticulture for the UK city of Sheffield. With 582,500 inhabitants, Sheffield has the sixth largest population in England and Wales. Results indicate that there is more than enough urban land available within the city to meet the fruit and vegetable requirements of its population. Such studies illuminate the recent proposals made by Tim Lang in his book-Feeding Britain- that we need a systemic reappraisal of our food system so that we avoid a food security crisis.

Transformative Change: How do we get there?

The pandemic lockdown is offering groups of like-minded individuals the opportunities to come together to talk sensibly and sensitively about our global futures. Here in Derbyshire the Climate Coalition group recently initiated a zoom conversation on why and how to create a “movement of movements” on climate change. It was a robust and creative session but limited by the inevitable complexity of the question. At a time when humanity is facing a growing number of unprecedented and interdependent existential crises, how do we make progress? Is there realistically a convergence of solutions to both the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change?

Paul Raskin, the founder of the Great Transition Initiative (GTI: https://greattransition.org/), offers some encouraging ways of approaching this complexity. He argues that we need a global citizens movement. He believes we need stronger and more motivational answers to the burning question of action. He uses a simple framework of 4 questions to address this conundrum:

Where are we?
Where are we going?
Where do we want to go?
How do we get there?

The questions offer an ascending order of difficulty. On the first 3 questions there has been a growing catalogue of progress. Not least in terms of the scientific understanding of many of the so-called wicked sustainability issues we face.

We are also getting a wholesale and frightening introduction to the social, psychological, and economic impacts of a global pandemic.

The fact that most nations have signed up to implementing the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals provides us with a global road map of where we are going and more importantly where we want to go.

Other international agreements like the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the Sendai Framework on disaster risk reduction add considerable weight to the beginning of a global response to these crises. But much more is needed to embed these agreements into national and sub-national governance systems along with the transformation of institutional and organisational structures and cultures.

To tackle the question “How do we get there?” we need a systemic transformation. This requires a systemic movement to lead us in a vast cultural and political transformation which can shape a new and vibrant sustainable future.

Maybe the systemic movements initiated by Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion show the way. Maybe the clean air in our cities, arising out of the current pandemic, is also showing people a new and different future.

Crucially this movement must ensure that its ends animate the means. It needs to find ways of balancing a unity of purpose with the diversity of human engagement, whilst renouncing the extremes and polarising influence of top-down vanguardism and bottom-up spontaneity.