Climate Change

Bangladesh Sink or Swim

Many recent news stories highlight Bangladesh and its people living with and dying from climate change. This is both a moving and disturbing story – a wake-up call to all of us about the direct environmental and indirect social and political consequences of our (the developed world’s) dependency on fossil fuels. In this most vulnerableContinue reading “Bangladesh Sink or Swim”

Educating Earth Literate Leaders

We are now citizens of the Earth joined in a common enterprise with many variations. We have every right to insist that those who purport to lead us be worthy of the task. Imagine such a time! (Orr, 2003) Hundreds of delegates met late in 2019 in Madrid(Cop25) to discuss climate change and the UN’sContinue reading “Educating Earth Literate Leaders”

PREFACE TO THE DAS GUPTA REVIEW ON THE ECONOMICS OF BIODIVERSITY

We are facing a global crisis. We are totally dependent upon the natural world. It supplies us with every oxygen-laden breath we take and every mouthful of food we eat. But we are currently damaging it so profoundly that many of its natural systems are now on the verge of breakdown. Every other animal livingContinue reading “PREFACE TO THE DAS GUPTA REVIEW ON THE ECONOMICS OF BIODIVERSITY”

Celebrating the Trees of Derbyshire: their contribution to climate change, flood risk and our mental health.

Guest Blog by Sarah EA Parkin Growing up in the flat lands of the West of England, I enjoyed drawing and painting. My background is in textiles with an MA specialising in Printed Design. A love of nature, wildlife and getting out into the landscape is a thread that runs through my life. Moving toContinue reading “Celebrating the Trees of Derbyshire: their contribution to climate change, flood risk and our mental health.”

Quality Standards and Sustainability in our Universities

The link between quality and sustainable development is probably best exemplified in the following quote: “Human relationships based on naked self-interest (e.g., greed, envy or lust for power) maintain inequitable distribution of wealth, generate conflict and lead to scant regard for the future availability of natural resources.” An education system which mirrors these values isContinue reading “Quality Standards and Sustainability in our Universities”

What’s in a name? – why ‘the environment’ can be a misleading myth

Guest blog by Stephen Sterling, Emeritus Professor of Sustainability Education, University of Plymouth I see myself as an environmentalist. And have done so ever since my early teens – which was a long time ago. So why would I be writing a blog with such a title? On the face of things, perhaps it seemsContinue reading “What’s in a name? – why ‘the environment’ can be a misleading myth”

A SHIP FROM DELOS

Annually a sacred ship would set sail around the Island of Delos, and until its return, Athenian society would not partake in public executions due to religious observance. Socrates trial at Roayl Sota and sentence occurred during this period. Whilst waiting for the sacred ship and the fate to follow, the 70-year-old Athenian philosopher defendsContinue reading “A SHIP FROM DELOS”

A Brave New Wild

A new report entitled ‘Count the cost of 2020: a year of climate breakdown’, published by the charity Christian Aid, has once again highlighted the existential crisis we face from Climate Change. Unsurprisingly, the burden falls disproportionately on poor nations, like Bangladesh, where the 2020 floods covered almost a quarter of the land area ofContinue reading “A Brave New Wild”

Sustainability Leadership

THE POSITIVE DEVIANT: SUSTAINABILITY LEADERSHIP in a PERVERSE WORLD by SARA PARKIN EARTHSCAN 2010 This is a review I wrote for the Institution of Environmental Sciences in 2010-It has even more relevance to our current existential predicament now. So much of what we do is unsustainable and there seems to be a paucity of sustainabilityContinue reading “Sustainability Leadership”

A LIFE ON OUR PLANET

I was invited to a virtual event last Sunday by WWK-UK to hear from Sir David Attenborough about his new film on Netflix. A Life on our Planet is a feature-length documentary which tells the story of life on Earth and the ecological changes of the last century, many of which have been filmed andContinue reading “A LIFE ON OUR PLANET”