Clean up energy innovation

Countries need to agree clean energy definitions and baselines to track essential uplift of research investments to decarbonize the world’s energy supplies

Planetary health: from concept to decisive action.

Planetary health sets the ambitious task of understanding the dynamic and systemic relationships between global environmental changes, their effects on natural systems, and how changes to natural systems affect human health and wellbeing at multiple scales: global (eg, climate), regional (eg, transboundary fire emissions), and local (eg, persistent organic pollutants). By emphasising interconnections between human health and environmental changes and enabling holistic thinking about overlapping challenges and integrated solutions for present and future generations, the concept of planetary health offers an opportunity to advance the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including identification of co-benefits across targets, encouraging effective cross-sector action and partnerships, and ensuring policy coherence. In turn, the agenda of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) offers substantial opportunities to advance planetary health. As the scientific evidence strengthens and public appreciation of humanity's dependence on the state of natural systems increases, now is the time to move from concept to decisive action to protect planetary health

The New Urban Agenda: key opportunities and challenges for policy and practice

The UN-HABITAT III conference held in Quito in late 2016 enshrined the first Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) with an exclusively urban focus. SDG 11, as it became known, aims to make cities more inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable through a range of metrics, indicators, and evaluation systems. It also became part of a post-Quito ‘New Urban Agenda’ that is still taking shape. This paper raises questions around the potential for reductionism in this new agenda, and argues for the reflexive need to be aware of the types of urban space that are potentially sidelined by the new trends in global urban policy

The 2018 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: shaping the health of nations for centuries to come

The Lancet Countdown: tracking progress on health and climate change was established to provide an independent, global monitoring system dedicated to tracking the health dimensions of the impacts of, and the response to, climate change. The Lancet Countdown tracks 41 indicators across five domains: climate change impacts, exposures, and vulnerability; adaptation, planning, and resilience for health; mitigation actions and health co-benefits; finance and economics; and public and political engagement. This report is the product of a collaboration of 27 leading academic institutions, the UN, and intergovernmental agencies from every continent. The report draws on world-class expertise from climate scientists, ecologists, mathematicians, geographers, engineers, energy, food, livestock, and transport experts, economists, social and political scientists, public health professionals, and. doctors. The Lancet Countdown’s work builds on decades of research in this field, and was first proposed in the 2015 Lancet Commission on health and climate change,1 which documented the human impacts of climate change and provided ten global recommendations to respond to this public health emergency and secure the public health benefits available (panel 1)

The 2020 report of The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: responding to converging crises

The Lancet Countdown is an international collaboration, established to provide an independent, global monitoring system dedicated to tracking the emerging health profile of the changing climate. The 2020 report presents 43 indicators across five sections: climate change impacts, exposures, and vulnerability; adaptation, planning, and resilience for health; mitigation actions and health co-benefits; economics and finance; and public and political engagement. This report represents the findings and consensus of the 35 leading academic institutions and UN agencies that make up the Lancet Countdown, and draws on the expertise of climate scientists, geographers, and engineers; of energy, food, and transport experts; and of economists, social and political scientists, data scientists, public health professionals, and doctors

Redefining and measuring the global green economy: tracking green economy transformations using transactional data

The green economy has emerged as an important concept for sustainable development in both developed and developing countries. It presents a seemingly attractive framework to deliver more resource efficient, lower carbon, less environmentally damaging, more inclusive societies. There are tensions between competing green economy discourses and different definitions exist, which all have shortcomings. Different underlying concepts of the ‘weak’, ‘transformational’ and ‘strong’ green economy also exist. This thesis identifies that several important definitions focus on the aspirational ‘transformational green economy’. To track this ‘transformation’, economic and environmental measurement is essential. This thesis reviews various attempts to measure green economy progress, outlining their shortcomings and whether they may support effective decision-making. Data availability can influence policy goals set and the practical measures taken to achieve them. Economic measurement is a key example where current measurement is not adequate to support detailed decision-making. Measuring green economy transformations must be improved as part of broader frameworks for measuring economy–society–environment interactions. Through reviewing current policies and practices within the global green economy, this thesis provides a revised definition for measuring the green economy using transactional data. Transactional data provides economic measurement in fast-moving or emerging areas where national statistics do not always provide accurate and detailed measurement. The thesis explores whether the transactional data can help to explore how the green economy exists and changes across different scales and geographies, and of the kind of economic relationships upon which it is built. This includes exploring the global green economy, different national level trends, relationships with other datasets, green economy trade flows and the green economy in cities. Assessing this contributes to understanding the economic geography and political economy of the green economy. Understanding the effectiveness of transactional data in exploring green economy transformations also contributes to improving future measurement approaches

An investigation of investor behaviour and attitudes (in private equity and venture capital) in the cleantech sector in London

Cleantech has emerged in the last decade as a new investment area, responding to macro-level environmental and climate trends through their impact on businesses. Previous research has defined the discursive logics and conceptual and sectoral development of cleantech, but there is an opportunity for further understanding within economic geography of cleantech by engaging a broad representation of cleantech professionals to explore its nature, operational drivers and definitions, and how these interact with those areas already explored. This study uses theoretical frameworks from relational economic geography and cultural economy to analyse the construction and organisation of cleantech across multiple levels. Fourteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with a range of cleantech professionals in London. The study discusses these cleantech actors, their decision-making and how they interact in network forms of association, and brings these discussions together with analyses of cleantech geographies, Discourses and definitions. It considers how the factors analysed in the research interact, discusses potential futures for cleantech, and suggests ways to ensure that cleantech remains ‘clean’

The METROPOLE Project – An Integrated Framework to Analyse Local Decision Making and Adaptive Capacity to Large-Scale Environmental Change: Decision Making and Adaptation to Sea Level Rise in Santos, Brazil

Assessment of the risks due to exposure and sensitivity of coastal communities to coastal flooding is essential for informed decision-making. Strategies for public understanding and awareness of the tangible effects of climate change are fundamental in developing policy options. A multidisciplinary, multinational team of natural and social scientists from the USA, the UK, and Brazil developed the METROPOLE Project to evaluate how local governments may decide between adaptation options associated with SLR projections. METROPOLE developed a participatory approach in which public actors engage fully in defining the research problem and evaluating outcomes. Using a case study of the city of Santos, in the coast of the State of Sao Paulo in Southeastern Brazil, METROPOLE developed a method for evaluating risks jointly with the community, comparing ‘no-action’ to ‘adaptation’ scenarios. At the core of the analysis are estimates of economic costs of the impact of floods on urban real estate under SLR projections through 2050 and 2100. Results helped identify broad preferences and orientations in adaptation planning, which the community, including the Santos municipal government, co-developed in a joint effort with natural and social scientists

The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: from 25 years of inaction to a global transformation for public health

Climate change underpins all the social and environmental determinants of health but also has positive implications. The Lancet Countdown: Tracking Progress on Health and Climate Change is an international, multi-disciplinary research collaboration between academic institutions following on from the 2015 Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change, which emphasised that the response to climate change could be “the greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century”