In common with many places in the world, the UK has been experiencing high temperatures over the last couple of years, and not a great deal of rain, reminding us of the need to adapt to the consequences of climate change. Our episode focuses on adaptation, and some of the reasons why policy and practice are lagging behind where we need them to be.The Adapt Lock-in project has been working to understand this gap better, looking at experience in three countries – the UK, the Netherlands and Germany. Our guests today have been working on this project over the last 3 years. Tim Rayner is a Research Fellow in the School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia. Part of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, since 2006 he has participated in a range of European Union and national research council-funded projects covering climate change governance and policy, particularly from EU and UK perspectives.Meghan Alexander is an Assistant Professor in Human Geography of climate change at the University of Nottingham. In particular, her work focuses on climate adaptation and aspects of governance, policy and risk management, and the corresponding implications for societal resilience, well-being and social justice.The Adapt Lock-in project was supported by: the UK Economic and Social Research Council, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek. It was funded under Open Research Area (Round 5) Grant Reference ES/S015264/1. Partners are University of East Anglia (UK); Open Universiteit, and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Netherlands) and Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg (Germany)Learn more on the project website: https://adaptlockin.eu/(Music by BenSound)

Our episode is about plastic recycling, in time for International Plastic Free Day, which is was last May 25th. Did you know that if every person in the world stopped using one single-use piece of plastic for one day, we’d avoid over 7.6 BILLION plastic items on that single day according to the International Plastic Free Day organised by Free the Ocean? The plastic problem is enormous, but how can we better solve the plastic problem? “One Bin To Rule Them All” is a project that has been working to develop a framework for eliminating consumer choice and confusion in plastic waste management, through exploring the development of a targeted sorting system that prioritises separation based on the creation of economic value in plastic waste to sustain a plastic circular economy.Our guest today is Adeyemi Adelekan of the Tyndall Centre at the University of Manchester. Adeyemi is a Research Associate at the University of Manchester (UoM) and a Research Fellow at the Centre for Understanding Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP). His research interest lies in exploring organizational behaviour and strategies within the context of sustainability transformation, specifically focusing on social enterprises, sustainable business models, circular economy and institutional work research. His current work is looking at business model innovation for the ‘One Bin to rule them all’ project, which is an interdisciplinary circular economy study that aims to improve plastic recycling practices in the UK.Music by BenSound

Our episode today is about art and climate change. What is the role of art in the climate crisis? How can museums respond to the climate crisis?The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Art is one of the most prominent university museums in the UK. It is located in the University of East Anglia campus, and has a collection of global art. Recently, the Sainsbury Centre hired a Curator of Art and Climate Change (and he is here with us today), the very first of its kind in the UK. Our guests today are Jago Cooper and John Kenneth Paranada. Jago is the Director of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts and Professor of Art and Archaeology at UEA. For more than twenty years Jago has worked for and with museums, universities, cultural ministries and heritage organisations around the world to explore and communicate aspects of the great human story. He also worked for more than 20 years on the research and public communication of climate change, with quite a few articles, books, museum exhibitions and even some BBC documentaries focused on better understanding the human experience of environmental variability and climate impacts as well as sitting on the steering committee for IHOPE, the Integrated History and Future of Peoples on Earth.John Kenneth Paranada is the Curator of Art and Climate Change at the Sainsbury Centre. He received his Master of Fine Arts in Curating with a focus on art in the Anthropocene at Goldsmiths College, University of London (2016) and Master of Advanced Studies in Curating with a focus on Social Sculpture at Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland (2015). He has also been working towards opening the Centre for Ecologies, Sustainable Transitions and Environmental Consciousness (CESTEC) in Los Banos, Philippines – an experimental ecological platform for converging transdisciplinary practices on art, adaptations and the climate crisis in South-East Asia.Music by Ben Sound.

A recent paper by Harry Smith, Dr Nem Vaughan, and Dr Johanna Forster, highlights the risks of countries relying on nature-based solutions to achieve net-zero. To date, around 146 countries have set out a net zero target, committing to reducing their emissions across the decades ahead. Some emissions, however, are ‘difficult-to-decarbonise’ and are balanced out by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The study found that once the bulk of the emissions have been reduced, most countries plan to remove the left-over ‘difficult-to-decarbonise’ emissions through forests and soils, which can absorb carbon from the atmosphere.However, this may prove risky because forests and soils are also threatened by a range of impacts, such as fire, disease, changes in farming practices or deforestation. These mean forests and soils could lose their stored carbon back to the atmosphere. So what do countries need to do next?To talk to us more about the role of carbon dioxide removal in national climate strategies,  is the author and co-author of the paper, Harry Smith and Nem Vaughan. Harry Smith is a PhD Researcher on the climate governance of carbon dioxide removal, and part of the Critical Decade for Climate Change Programme with the Leverhulme Trust at UEA.Dr Nem Vaughan is an Associate Professor of Climate Change whose research is focussed on carbon dioxide removal and its role in mitigating climate change.Music by Ben Sound

This episode isabout climate change and its impacts on migration and population displacement.The World Bank’s updated Groundswell report in 2021 finds that climate change could force 216 million people across six world regions to move within their countries by 2050. Climate change is a powerful driver of internal migration because of its impacts on people’s livelihoods and loss of livability in highly exposed locations. By 2050, Sub-Saharan Africa could see as many as 86 million internal climate migrants; East Asia and the Pacific, 49 million; South Asia, 40 million; North Africa, 19 million; Latin America, 17 million; and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, 5 million.The report also finds that immediate and concerted action to reduce global emissions, and support green, inclusive, and resilient development, could reduce the scale of climate migration by as much as 80 percent.To talk to us more about climate change, migration, and population displacement is Roland Smith, a PhD researcher at the University of East Anglia.Music by Ben Sound

Our episode today is about future flooding scenarios due to sea level rise. This year, we remember the 1953 North Sea flood on the night of 31 January/1 February 1953 that devastated Scotland, England, Belgium, and especially the Netherlands. In the UK, the east coast was particularly affected – especially Lincolnshire, Essex, Norfolk, and the mouth of the Thames area. The flood was caused by a storm combined with spring tides and severe gale force winds from the north.In the UK, 1600 km of coastline was badly affected destroying mile upon mile of sea walls and dikes and inundating 160,000 acres of land with seawater, rendering it unusable for a number of years for agricultural purposes. Livestock and domesticated animals were killed in the thousands and washed out to sea. Over 24,000 homes in the UK were seriously damaged. 40,000 people in the UK were left homeless and many people’s livelihoods were ruined. Most shockingly over 300 people died in England – with about 50 deaths in Belgium, about 30 deaths in Scotland and nearly 2,000 deaths in the Netherlands in the area around Rotterdam.The flood caused a fundamental rethinking of coastal defenses including the commissioning of the Thames Barrier, and the introduction of weather prediction and storm surge warning systems – in modern parlance a “transformation”. Storms still threaten these coasts and the 5-6 December 2013 storm surge was in physical terms a more severe event than 1953. However, it was well forecast and with much better defences, damage was much smaller although significant problems still occurred, such as flooding at the port of Immingham. Importantly, no-one died. However, climate change and especially sea-level rise, is increasing the risk of flooding in the UK. The UK Climate Change Committee warned in 2021 that the most recent climate change risk assessment revealed 1.9 million people in England currently face a risk of greater flooding of any kind. Today’s guests are Prof. Robert Nicholls and Prof. Ivan Haigh who will talk more about flood risks in the face of climate change. Professor Robert Nicholls is the Director of the Tyndall Centre and is a world-leading scientist and engineer who has studied coastal problems and solutions for 30 years, focusing on how increases in sea level caused by climate change result in coastal erosion and flooding, and how communities can adapt to these changes. He has studied the implications of sea-level rise in the UK and in many of the most sensitive regions of the world.(Royalty Free Music by Benjamin Tissot)

Este es el primer episodio del podcast en español y vamos a conversar sobre que es la economía circular, como se puede aplicar en el ámbito de América del Sur y como puede influir en la lucha contra el cambio climático Nuestros invitados en este episodio son Edmundo Munoz y Nicolas Labra, ambos expertos en economía circular.  Dr Edmundo Muñoz es Ingeniero Ambiental y Doctor en Ingeniería de la Universidad de La Frontera, Temuco, Chile. Actualmente es profesor asociado e investigador de la Universidad Andrés Bello en Santiago de Chile. Su línea de investigación principal es en análisis del ciclo de vida, metodología que ha utilizado para evaluar estrategias de mitigación de impactos ambientales de actividades antrópicas con especial énfasis en cambio climático. Nicolás Labra es un investigador en temas de economía circular y gestión de residuos con foco en el sector informal del Sur Global. En el contexto de su doctorado en el Centro Tyndall Manchester, está investigando la forma en que el sector informal o recicladores de base gestionan los residuos electrónicos y evaluando alternativas para su integración en base al análisis ambiental y social de ciclo de vida. (Royalty Free Music by Benjamin Tissot)

Our episode is about circular economy and renewable energy. According to the Circularity Gap Report of 2019, an annual report produced for the yearly World Economic Forum in Davos, “The world can maximise chances of avoiding dangerous climate change by moving to a circular economy, thereby allowing societies to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement on Climate Action.” The role of circular economy in achieving net zero has been acknowledged by many countries. The World Resources Institute notes that one-third of nationally determined contributions – climate action plans by each country to cut emissions and adapt to climate impacts – updated and submitted in 2021, largely across Europe and some other G20 countries, include mention of a circular economy. But what is a circular economy and how can it help as a solution to climate change? What role does renewable energy play in a circular economy?Our guests for this episode are Christopher, Velma, and Jingyi – PhD students at Tyndall Manchester whose research focuses on renewable energy and circular economy.(Royalty Free Music by Benjamin Tissot)

Our episode today is about aviation and shipping emissions. Aviation emissions have become a hot topic recently, thanks to the revelation that celebrities like Kylie Jenner and Taylor Swift have been using their private jets even for short trips – apparently as short as a three minute flight! This has caused some uproar, especially as climate researchers and activists have been pushing for a reduction of emissions in the aviation sector. Over the years, with cheaper tickets available to the public for air travel, aviation emissions have skyrocketed. According to data from Oxford University, flying accounts for 2.5% of the world’s emissions. The UK Research Institute released a study that shows aviation could consume ⅙ of the remaining temperature budget to limit warming to 1.5C. Similarly, the shipping industry is responsible for around 940 million tonnes of CO2 annually, which is at least 2.5% of the world’s total CO2 emissions. Why is aviation and shipping problematic and what solutions can we implement to solve this problem? Our guest are James and Asha, post-doc researchers at the University of Manchester whose research focus is on aviation and shipping. (Royalty Free Music by Benjamin Tissot)

This episode is about the real world feasibility and consequences of two greenhouse gas removal approaches: first, large-scale afforestation, and second, biomass energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). They both play the largest roles of any greenhouse gas removal approaches in future low emission scenarios that keep global mean temperature increase to below 1.5 °C and 2 °C.We have three guests for this episode Nem Vaughan, Clair Gough and Diarmaid Clery from the FAB-GGR team or the Feasibility of Afforestation and Biomass Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage for Greenhouse Gas Removal.Clair is senior research fellow at the University of Manchester where she has worked for many years on carbon capture storage, looking at everything from the social and political aspects to its role in decarbonising industry and removing carbon dioxide.Diarmaid is a research associate at the University of Manchester, and previously worked at the University of East Anglia. His background is in engineering, working on technical aspects of  biomass energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), but now working on more social aspects of greenhouse gas removal, and industrial decarbonisation.Nem is an associate professor at the University of East Anglia where she works on greenhouse gas removal methods, from an earth system perspective through to public and policy.(Royalty Free Music by Benjamin Tissot)