Introducing Biocultural Heritage Territories

IIED

Published on Nov 11, 2014

Biocultural heritage territories protect indigenous and traditional land tenure, use and culture to achieve simultaneous goals of biodiversity conservation and endogenous development.

This photofilm presents three examples of biocultural heritage territories: The Quechua Potato Park (Peru), the Naxi Seed Park (China), and the Lepcha/Limbu Bean Park (India).

It was produced in collaboration with Asociacion ANDES (Peru), the Centre for Chinese Agricultural Policy (China), and Lok Chetna Manch (India).

It is an output of the SIFOR project (Smallholder Innovation for Resilience), and has been produced with funding from the European Union and IIED’s frame donors – Danida, Irish Aid and Sida.

Producer: Matt Wright (IIED)
Music: David Jefferson – Acoustic Soundscapes.

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1980: Walter Cronkite on Climate Change

greenmanbucket

Published on Jan 22, 2013

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Is It Time To Discuss Geoengineering?

Nick Breeze

Published on Sep 24, 2014

Please visit http://envisionation.co.uk for more information.
Featuring: Dr James Hansen, Professor Martin Rees, Dr Michael Mann, Dr Hugh Hunt, Dr Rowan Williams – Produced by Nick Breeze

Climate Insider Series

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Ian Goldin: Think global

Can a university find solutions to the crises of the 21st century? John Crace meets the man who thinks it can

Ian Goldin: “The World Bank is owned by 184 countries, yet African countries have just two representatives.” Photograph: Linda Nylind Linda Nylind/Guardian

John Crace

Monday 23 October 2006 19.12 EDT

End poverty, reverse climate change, eliminate infectious diseases, stop global conflict. It sounds like a Miss World contestant’s wish-list. But when Oxford University’s latest baby has these aspirations as its stated goals, you have to take them rather more seriously.

So what does the James Martin 21st Century School have that the World Bank and the United Nations doesn’t? If anyone should know it’s Ian Goldin. Having served as World Bank vice-president for three years, leading its collaborations with the UN, he has been appointed the first director of Oxford’s 21st Century School.

“It is a tough call,” he says, “and I’m not anticipating any quick answers. But these are the main challenges the world is now facing, so it makes sense for an institution such as Oxford to set up a school devoted to finding solutions. Of course, we’re only one organisation among many around the world looking at these problems, but we do have some unique advantages in our interdisciplinary approach, and if we can solve one small set of these issues then we’ll be very satisfied.”

Goldin’s appointment comes over a year after the university set up the school in June 2005 with a £50m gift from the computer pioneer James Martin, and a number of projects are already up and running. So, initially at least, Goldin will be getting up to speed with existing research into the effects of rapid technological development, environmental change, ageing, international migration, the ethics of the new biosciences, e-horizons and the future of the mind and humanity.

The 21st Century School is designed on the hub-and-spoke model – with Goldin and a few academics at the centre and 10 research institutes on the periphery – and diplomacy is one of the prime requirements for the new director, as persuading leading academics to collaborate on an equal footing across the frontiers of medical, physical, biological, computing, technological and the social sciences is a tough call. But Goldin expects to be bringing rather more than industrial quantities of tact to the job.

…(read more).

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Choosing not to Choose – Lecture by Professor Cass Sunstein

TheSmithSchool

Published on Oct 21, 2014

Our ability to make choices is fundamental to our sense of ourselves as human beings, and essential to the political values of freedom-protecting nations. Whom we love; where we work; how we spend our time; what we buy; such choices define us in the eyes of ourselves and others, and much blood and ink has been spilt to establish and protect our rights to make them freely. Choice can also be a burden. Our cognitive capacity to research and make the best decisions is limited, so every active choice comes at a cost. In modern life the requirement to make active choices can often be overwhelming. So, across broad areas of our lives, from health plans to energy suppliers, many of us choose not to choose.

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Renewable Energy ‘Creates More Jobs Than Fossil Fuels’

Anastasia Pantsios | November 11, 2014 8:30 am

A new study by the UK’s Energy Research Centre (UKERC) took a deep dive into job creation claims made by proponents of renewable energy and energy efficiency, looking at the figures and projected figures for the EU from a number of angles. It came to the conclusion that in the short run, moving to renewables and ramping up energy conservation would create more jobs than the fossil fuel sector, at a rate of about one job per gigawatt hour of electricity saved or generated by a clean energy source, with the long-term picture murkier because of factors in the economy and government policy that are hard to predict.

Building new renewable generation capacity or investing in greater energy efficiency to avoid the need for new generation would create more jobs than investing in an equivalent level of fossil fuel-fired generation. Photo credit: Shutterstock

The report, Low Carbon Jobs: The evidence for net job creation from policy support for energy efficiency and renewable energy, said, “‘Green’ sectors account for as many as 3.4 million jobs in the EU, or 1.7 percent of all paid employment, more than car manufacturing or pharmaceuticals. Given the size of the green jobs market, and the expectation of rapid change and growth, there is a pressing need to independently analyse labour market dynamics and skills requirements in these sectors. What is more controversial is the question of whether policy-driven expansion of specific green sectors actually creates jobs, particularly when the policies in question require subsidies that are paid for through bills or taxes. Politicians often cite employment benefits as part of the justification for investing in clean energy projects such as renewables and energy efficiency. However, other literature is more sceptical, claiming that any intervention that raises costs in the energy sector will have an adverse impact on the economy as a whole.”

The report focused not simply on job creation, but on net job creation, subtracting the number of fossil fuel-based jobs that could potentially be displaced by spending on green infrastructure projects. It also employs “counterfactuals”: what other power generation sources would have been built instead without green policies. It says that over-optimistic green jobs figures don’t take this into account. But it also says that jobs skeptics tend to be overly broad in their application of counterfactuals.

…(read more).

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Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Climate Change Debate (HBO)

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Published on May 11, 2014

John Oliver hosts a mathematically representative climate change debate, with the help of special guest Bill Nye the Science Guy, of course.

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How To Have Sustainable Happiness…

The Big Picture RT

Published on Nov 7, 2014

Sarah van Gelder, YES! Magazine, Sustainable Happiness: Live Simply, Live Well, Make a Difference, joins Thom Hartmann.

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BBC News – L’Aquila quake: Scientists see convictions overturned

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29996872

A group of Italian scientists convicted of manslaughter for failing to predict a deadly earthquake have had the verdict quashed.

The seven men had been given six-year jail sentences after an earthquake devastated the medieval town of L’Aquila in 2009, killing 309 people.

The verdict triggered alarm, with some saying that science itself had been put on trial.

On Monday an appeals court cleared the group of the manslaughter charges.

Judge Fabrizia Ida Francabandera ruled that there was no case to answer.

“The credibility of Italy’s entire scientific community has been restored,” said Stefano Gresta, the president of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology.

The seven men – all leading scientists or disaster experts – had been members of a committee convened in L’Aquila in March 2009 following a series of tremors in the region.

…(read more).

• See: BBC News – L’Aquila quake: Italy scientists guilty of manslaughter

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BBC News – L’Aquila quake: Italy scientists guilty of manslaughter

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-20025626

22 October 2012 Last updated at 15:06 ET
The BBC’s Alan Johnston in Rome says the prosecution argued that the scientists were “just too reassuring”
Related Stories

• L’Aquila quake scientists in dock
• Can we predict when and where quakes will strike?
• An extraordinary trial in L’Aquila

Six Italian scientists and an ex-government official have been sentenced to six years in prison over the 2009 deadly earthquake in L’Aquila.

A regional court found them guilty of multiple manslaughter.

Prosecutors said the defendants gave a falsely reassuring statement before the quake, while the defence maintained there was no way to predict major quakes.

The 6.3 magnitude quake devastated the city and killed 309 people.

Many smaller tremors had rattled the area in the months before the quake that destroyed much of the historic centre.

It took Judge Marco Billi slightly more than four hours to reach the verdict in the trial, which had begun in September 2011.

…(read more).

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