Important Information 

☃️Festive Party - we need YOU! 🥳

We are looking for volunteers across all staffing groups to help set up an all-staff festive event. This will likely involve a festive lecture (kindly suggested by Alistair Boxall) and a moving feast/potluck, as in previous years. Please email environment-pa@york.ac.uk if you are interested.

🥼The Wellcome Trust 🟢

Labs are among the most expensive to operate and environmentally intensive buildings of any kind.  Labs use 10X more energy and 4X more water than offices; labs also generate 5.4 billion kg of plastic waste per annum.  In order to address the environmental footprint of their value chain,  the Wellcome have launched a policy outlining how researchers must address the environmental impact of their work; this coincides with the launch of an environmental sustainability concordat from UK research organisations. The Wellcome Trust requires those in lab-based environments to achieve the minimum level of accreditation offered by high-quality sustainability schemes such as LEAF and My Green Lab (MGL) by the end of 2025. At this stage Green Impact is not acceptable to them.  Cancer Research UK has set similar expectations on those they fund and we expect other research funding bodies to follow the same route.  Rebecca Sutton and Jason Snape have been working with the Directorate of Technology, Estates & Facilities team and other departments on the best way forward.  As a result DEG, alongside Chemistry, will pilot MGL.  In the first instance this will be restricted to the DEG Ecotoxicology Research Labs.  The knowledge we gain from these pilots, which will not replace Green Impact, will help target the improvements required to meet the MGL certification and its alignment with Green Impact.  This will help facilitate other laboratories across the university to gain certification.  For further details please see the attached slides.

Calling new members for Environment and Geography’s student-led Green Impact team

Geographers and Environmentalists for Managing Sustainability

(GEMS) is the Department’s student-led Green Impact team, who last year won an NUS Green Impact Gold Award for our project mapping sustainability hubs in York. 

This year we are committed to updating and extending the map, but there is no limit to the number of projects and teams we can run, from smaller projects aiming for a Bronze Award, to big projects aiming for Platinum. Whether you are a first year undergrad or putting the finishing touches to your PhD, all students are welcome. Staff and current GEMS members can talk you through the process of designing and running a Green Impact project, or you can assist with the Department’s staff-led Labs Team, who last year won a  Platinum Award to add to their many previous Gold Awards. The Department has also had two students win Green Impact Student Leadership awards - a great addition to any CV.

Our first meeting for new members is at 1pm Wednesday 16th October in ENV/005, or see our instagram page, or email the team on arch586@york.ac.uk 

Good News 

⭐ Congratulations to Lindsay Stringer who is a coauthor on a paper published with colleagues from Beijing Normal University: Wenxin Zhou, Changjia Li, Bojie Fu, Shuai Wang, Zhuobing Ren, Lindsay C. Stringer, 2024, Changes and drivers of vegetation productivity in China’s drylands under climate change

vol. 19, issue 11. Environmental Research Letters.114001. DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ad7a0e

⭐ Tabitha K. participated in the PAGES DiverseK workshop: Data-Driven Decisions - enhancing mountain ecosystem management through the integration of long-term data held in Innsbruck, Austria on 3-4th Oct 2024. Tabitha presented on ways in which we can use historical datasets to enhance management of mountain ecosystems and also participated in the development of a policy brief outline.

⭐ The Yorkshire Post published an article on the exhibition, called Bees: a story of survival, that Oli Wilson contributed to at the World Museum Liverpool.

⭐ Oli Wilson was an invited speaker at the Energy and Environment Institute Colloquium at the University of Hull.

⭐ Darpan Das co-chaired a session on 'cross disciplinary research towards solutions' at the UK Clean Air Conference held in Birmingham on 2nd and 3rd October.

⭐ A page about the Three Horizons framework authored by Sam Buckton has been published on Wikipedia.

⭐ Adrian has published a paper in Journal of Geography in Higher Education entitled "Sustainable and inclusive; transforming residential undergraduate fieldtrips in an age of the climate crisis." The paper focuses on the recent internationalisation of UK residential UG fieldtrips (as an example of wider UK HE climate hypocrisy, patriarchal white privilege & the "international imperative") & the environmental & EDI implications. Through a case study centred on DEG, it shows the carbon impact of residential fieldtrips before setting out the establishment of a sustainable & inclusive framework for fieldtrips.

Events and Training

All Staff Meeting - Wednesday 16th October 2024

Our next all staff meeting will take place on Wednesday 16th October, 2:05 - 2:55pm. The invite should be in your calendar - email environment-pa@york.ac.uk if not.

Do you have an item you would like to present? Please email environment-pa@york.ac.uk for us to add this to the agenda.

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DEG Wellbeing Fair - Wednesday 23rd October 2024, 12-4pm, DEG Foyer

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'Getting ready for the Anthropocene: overcoming obstacles on the development path for municipal water and sanitation services'

With Professor Dale Whittington, Visiting Fellow, Oxford Martin Systemic Resilience Initiative

Monday 21st October, 12.30pm – 1.30pm BST

Lecture Theatre, Oxford Martin School and online

Cities go through three phases on their development path to deliver improved municipal water and sanitation services to their customers. Globally cities can be found in all three phases, but even cities far along on this development path are rarely prepared for what is coming in the Anthropocene.

Municipal water utilities in many locations are facing water scarcity and will need an improved policy mix to reduce their raw water withdrawals and avoid ‘Day Zeros’. The results of a systems optimisation model illustrate the magnitude of the reductions in raw water withdrawals that are possible in a circular urban water system and the trade-offs between reduced raw water withdrawals and system-wide costs.

• To register to attend in-person in Oxford: 'Getting ready for the Anthropocene: overcoming obstacles on the…

• To register to join live online on Crowdcast: 'Getting ready for the Anthropocene: overcoming obstacles on the development path for municipal water and sanitation services' with Prof Dale Whittington

• To watch later: Getting ready for the Anthropocene: overcoming obstacles for municipal water and sanitation services

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Panel discussion: 'Operationalising climate policy for global net zero emissions'

Wednesday 23 October, 12.30pm – 1.30pm BST

Lecture Theatre, Oxford Martin School and online

89% of the world’s population live in a country with a national net zero target but these targets need to be implemented effectively in policy and regulation if the goals of the Paris Agreement are to be achieved. Too often, this is still not happening.

One important gap in climate policy is that it often focuses on domestic emission reductions but does not prevent states from contributing substantially to emissions outside of their borders, for instance by remaining a major fossil fuel exporter. This event will interrogate the consequences of climate policies that fail to look beyond national borders, and discuss best practice from around the world for curbing emissions at home as well as abroad.

Professor Wetzer will introduce the work of the recently established Oxford Martin Programme on Net Zero Regulation and Policy, and explain what the Programme aims to achieve.

Panel:

• Professor Thom Wetzer, Director, Oxford Martin Programme on Net Zero Regulation & Policy (Chair)

• Professor David Karoly, Visiting Fellow, Oxford Martin Programme on Net Zero Regulation & Policy

• More to follow....

• To register to attend in-person in Oxford: Panel discussion: 'Operationalising climate policy for global net…

• To register to join live online on Crowdcast: Panel discussion: 'Operationalising climate policy for global net zero emissions'

• To watch later: https://youtube.com/live/-4Uhsn2cZls

Also this term

• Book talk: 'The Universal History of Us' with Tim Coulson in conversation with Charles Godfray – 15 Oct

• 'Factors affecting quality of life in adults with epilepsy: insights from South Africa' with Nwabisa Mlandu – 23 Oct

• Book talk: 'Wicked Problems: How to Engineer a Better World' with Guru Madhavan – 28 Oct

• 'Crafting a new global order? The United Nations and international politics in the 1990s' with Prof Fabian Klose – 30 Oct

• 'Chinese global messaging campaigns on Western social media platforms' with Dr Naima Green-Riley – 19 Nov

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🟢 Energy – Thursday 24 October 2024, Bridlington Spa – stallholder invitation

We are writing to you about Energy – an ambitious project engaging over 120 students from across the East Riding. The project explores innovative solutions to the energy and climate crises through brand-new music and classical pieces performed by local school students and orchestra Sinfonia Viva on Thursday 24 October.

We would like to invite relevant colleagues at the University of York, those involved in science, energy and/or the environment, to have a free-of-charge stall in the Royal Hall on the day of the concerts and to join the brilliant young minds of the East Riding as they look, musically, towards a brighter future.

For more information and details of how to book a stall, please see the attached letter and booking form.

If you have any questions, please get in touch at arts.development@eastriding.gov.uk.

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Summit: A Landmark Ecopoetry Festival at York Sculpture Park is on 19-20 October.

‘Summit’s ethos is centred around poetry, community, and action. It will provide a vital space to consider how words, and worlds, are deeply connected, and what role poetry plays as we face up to immense biodiversity losses, habitat destruction, rising carbon emissions and warming temperatures. Summit is more than a festival; it’s a call to action.’ Details of the Summit are here for those interested in attending.

Research Surveys

My name is Luying You, and I am a visiting PhD student at the University of York, supervised by Prof. Paul Wakeling and Dr. Sally Hancock (University of York), and Prof. Baocun Liu (Beijing Normal University). I am conducting research for my PhD project on the professional experiences and career development of precarious staff in UK research universities.

I am seeking British or Chinese nationals working in academic teaching and/or research posts to participate in my study. I have created a short survey designed to gather background information that will guide more detailed follow-up interviews. Please also see the poster for this research.

Thank you very much for your time and consideration. I truly appreciate your support for this research.

Sincerely,

Luying You

kcm531@york.ac.uk

PhD Student, Department of Education

University of York & Beijing Normal University

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