How you can get involved in COP26 in Glasgow

By Stephen EmersonThursday, 11th February 2021 in The Scotsman

It will be the biggest  summit ever held in the UK and will offer a number of opportunities for people to get involved.

Over 30,000 people from more than 200 countries will attend the conference which takes place at the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre (SEC) and the Glasgow Science Centre from 1st to the 12th of November 2021.

The conference will focus around five key themes of adaptation and resilience, nature, energy transitions, clean transport and finance.

The event will be split over two zones with the blue zone hosting the UN negotiations, panel discussions and cultural events and the green zone, managed by the UK Government, which will be open to the public and feature panel discussions, side events, exhibits, and cultural events.

Glasgow City Council is also recruiting for volunteers with applications currently open and selection taking place in March.

Volunteers will interact with delegates in and around Glasgow city centre, along the main walking routes to the SEC, at transport and accommodation hubs and also at key locations in Edinburgh.

Members of the public and organisations can get involved in the summit by exhibiting, performing or hosting an event within the two week programme.

There are a number of opportunities available to individuals, organisations and businesses to get involved at COP26 in both the blue and green zones.

Organisers are currently taking expressions of interest from people and organisations looking to take part with the deadline set for March 5.

People from across the UK are also being encouraged to share their positive climate actions by sharing what they are doing using #TogetherForOurPlanet on all social media platforms and joining others through the Count Us In campaign.

British-based businesses can also share how they are reducing carbon emissions on social media through the hashtag #RacetoZero. Race To Zero is a global initiative, backed by science-based targets, to commit businesses, cities, regions, investors and universities to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 at the very latest.

Since 1995, government representatives from around the world have gathered annually for the UN Climate Change Conference.

The Conference of the Parties event, which it is hoped will agree an international deal on reducing carbon emissions, was due to take place last November at the city’s SEC but was postponed for a year because of the coronavirus outbreak.

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Report finds that the world’s obsession with economic growth is killing nature

From the Natural History Museum: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2021/february/obsession-with-economic-growth-is-killing-nature.html

By Katie Pavid 2nd Feb 2021

Changing our economic system would create a fairer, healthier, more sustainable world for everyone.

In the west, nature has historically been left out of economics. A major new review is hoping to change that.   

Eminent economist Prof Sir Partha Dasgupta has led a review into how the world’s financial systems have failed nature, and what we can do about it.  

Commissioned by HM Treasury, The Dasgupta Review explains that because we rely on nature for so much (including food, water, oxygen and a safe climate), nature is an asset to us just like roads, buildings, knowledge and skills. 

Beyond that, it’s more than just an economic asset because it also has a worth of its own. You could compare it to human health: we value our health because it allows us to lead more active lives, and also because it’s simply more pleasant to feel healthy. Likewise, we need nature to stay alive, but we also enjoy it when we experience it. 

People who manage very large sums of money are sometimes called asset managers. The review argues that we are all asset managers when it comes to nature, even if we’re not farmers or fishers or foresters. 

But we have managed our asset very badly. The prosperity that humans have enjoyed (on the whole) over the last few decades has come at what The Dasgupta Review calls a ‘devastating price’. The standard of living of the average person is higher than ever, but biodiversity is declining faster than at any time in human history. 

This is partly because many countries measure progress through economic growth, the increase in the value of our national output. Governments place economic growth above all other priorities, but many have questioned how sustainable that’s going to be. 

The review argues that instead of focusing on growth, countries should focus on wealth, and include nature in the list of things which might make a country or person wealthy. 

It says, ‘Sustainable economic growth and development requires us to take a different path, where our engagements with nature are not only sustainable, but also enhance our collective wealth and well-being and that of our descendants.’ 

In the review, Prof Sir Dasgupta calls the degradation of nature an institutional failure, saying, ‘Governments almost everywhere exacerbate the problem by paying people more to exploit nature than to protect it, and to prioritise unsustainable economic activities.’ 

What’s the solution?

Currently, we are asking too much of the natural world, which presents a risk to both the economy and the wellbeing of our children and grandchildren. We need transformative change.

Prof Sir Dasgupta recommends three areas of change:

1. Ensure that our demands on nature do not exceed its supply.
2. Change the way we think about economic success.
3. Transform our finance and education systems.

To make it easier for nature to provide for us, we need to find better, more efficient ways of farming that will both preserve wild spaces and create jobs at the same time.

The world also needs to get used to the idea of consuming less and reusing, recycling and sharing what we have much more than we do now. Governments can nudge this along with policies that change prices and behavioural norms. 

Natural capital forms the bulk of wealth in low-income countries, and those on low incomes tend to rely more directly on nature, which means conserving and restoring our natural assets also contributes to alleviating poverty.

Countries also need to measure their wealth differently, not using gross domestic product (GDP), but by measuring all our assets, including nature.

We all need to help each other to protect the ecosystems on which we all rely, like rainforests and oceans. Financial investments need to be channelled into activities that support and protect nature. By contrast, billions of pounds are spent each year subsidising activities that run nature down. 

Plus, all of us need support in feeling connected to nature, and we need to help each other to demand change.

Prof Sir Partha says, ‘The success stories from around the world highlighted throughout the Review show us what is possible. They also demonstrate that the same ingenuity that has led us to make demands on Nature that are so large, so damaging and over such a short period, can be redeployed to bring about transformative change, perhaps even in just as short a time. We and our descendants deserve nothing less.’