A panel discussion to address the question: 'What needs to happen at COP26 for it to be a success?'

A discussion on what needs to happen at COP26 in Glasgow to mitigate the imminent ecological catastrophe of climate change.

The Panel:

Kate Roberts, Panel Chair

Former Royal Holloway Student Union President and Physical Geography student, and environmental activist

Interests: biodiversity loss, biogeographical implications of climate change, intersectionality of the climate crisis

Professor Klaus Dodds, Panelist

Professor of Geopolitics at Royal Holloway and Director of Research for the School of Life Sciences and Environment and Director of the Living Sustainably research catalyst.

Interests: the governance of the polar regions and the geopolitics of climate change alongside ocean conservation and the cryosphere.

Dr. Jennifer Cole, Panelist

Lecturer in Global and Planetary Health at Royal Holloway.

Interests: human influence on and adaptation to changing environmental conditions, resilience to natural hazards.

Dr. Liam F. Beiser-McGrath, Panelist

Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Politics and Director of the Politics of the Environment and Climate Change at Royal Holloway

Interests: public opinion and the political economy of climate change

Date and time: Weekends of 30-31 October, 6-7 November and 13-14 November

Location: Meeting point on campus to be advised by organiser. 

This eco walk around the Arboretum and other parts of the Royal Holloway campus will take place at weekends during COP26, and explore questions of environmental history, intervention and responsibility.

Please email the organiser, Liz Schafer, on liz.schaferrhul.ac.uk to express interest and find out further details.

The walk days and times will be finalised to coincide with the most favourable weather conditions and may be subject to change or cancellation. Each walk is limited to 10 participants. Please make sure to check that your walk is going ahead before journeying to the Royal Holloway campus. 

Participants must wear robust footwear, preferably walking boots, and, if it is raining, appropriate clothing. Please note that some sections of the walk are steep. Participants must provide contact details for Track and Trace purposes.

This event is open to local residents, as well as staff and students of Royal Holloway.

No. of tickets: Ten participants per walk. Please contact Liz Schafer on liz.schaferrhul.ac.uk

Date and time: 1 November, 1-2pm; repeated 12 November 2021, 2-3pm

Location: Online via Teams. Register your attendance here. 

This is a short one-hour taster session with an overview and teaser of a Carbon Literacy Training course that will be delivered in four two-hour sessions (“a day’s worth of carbon literacy training”) in the spring and summer term.

The full course gives participants the opportunity to learn with others about climate change and what we need to do as a society and as individuals and groups to get to Net Zero.

The course at Royal Holloway is run by Dr Sigrun Wagner from the School of Business and Management, with colleagues from Drama, Business and previous participants on the course. It is based on the successful course developed by Nottingham Trent University’s Green Academy. 

Further information and FAQs can be found on the Carbon Literacy website.  

The World Climate Simulation is an interactive role-playing game conducted as a simulated emergency climate summit organised by the UN.

Players are assigned to a team acting as one of six world nations to enact policy decisions until a scenario of less than 2°C warming is achieved. The impact of each emission reduction pledge proposed to the UN is simulated during the course of the negotiations, so players can see the links between policy and real-world outcomes. This simulation is made possible by the interactive computer model C-ROADS.

Facilitators Josh, Laura, and Amy will be acting as the UN Secretary General and will open the summit with a plenary talk on the current state of climate science and policy implications.

Tens of thousands of people around the world have taken part in the World Climate Simulation, from actual UN climate negotiators, Nobel Prize-winning scientists and EU policymakers to university staff and students. It was developed by Climate interactive, the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative and U-Mass Lowell’s Climate Change Initiative.

This event is open to all staff and students at Royal Holloway

About the organisers

Event organisers Amy Walsh, Laura Boyle and Josh Pike are PhD students in Geography. With thanks to Royal Holloway Department of Geography.

Follow #ClimateInteractRHUL and #rhcop26forum for updates.

Youtube video link: https://youtu.be/afO3lDX37tQ

Date and time: 2 November, 4-6.30pm

Location: Boilerhouse Auditorium. Register your attendance here. 

The standard Western clinical model tends to focus on ‘fixing’ human problems and illness once they have arisen, rather than on preventative and holistic care. Even less attention is given to the environmental consequences of medical practice. Our panel will discuss how we might shift to instead promote human health alongside environmental health.

This discussion will approach the issues and possibilities through a range of perspectives, from considering the environmentally damaging effects of nitrous oxide, a ‘greenhouse gas’ used in anaesthesia, to initiatives on wellbeing in conflict and post-conflict regions, such as Iraq.

The panel, which includes contributors from the newly launched Department of Health Studies at Royal Holloway, will consider questions such as the role of environment in human wellbeing, and what can foster resilience in the face of climate catastrophe. How do we need to rethink healthcare, for the whole planet, in the Anthropocene era?