Responding to the climate crisis – taking action on the IPCC 6th Assessment Report
On 17 September 2021, the Grantham Institute hosted a follow-up to the Royal Meteorological Society's virtual event on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 6th assessment report (AR6). The event focused on the response to the climate crisis and taking actions from AR6. Three sectors were covered, including 'School leaders and educators', led by Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Learning Network & London Schools Climate Summit; 'Business and Industry - Environmental, social and corporate governance', chaired by Anita Punwani, Deputy Chair NED, Institute of Risk Management; and 'Geologists, earth scientists and energy experts', led by the European Federation of Geologists and Imperial College London researchers. Panel members were from British Standards Institution, 11 https://www.bsigroup.com/ Save the Children UK, 22 https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/ University College London 33 https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ and Resurgence. 44 https://www.resurgence.io/ Dr Alex Brown (STEM learning) and Malini Mehra (Globe International) chaired a session on the implications of AR6 for school leaders and educators. Participants agreed that we now have an opportunity for collaboration, as the UK Prime Minister recently appointed a new Education Secretary (Nadhim Zahawi) and Schools Minister (Robin Walker). With COP26 (Smith et al., 2021) at the time just five weeks away, it was emphasised that now is the time to put climate education on the agenda and embedded in the green recovery. There was a feeling that teachers are constrained by the curriculum and do not have the skills, capacity, or appropriate resources to apply climate issues to their own subjects. Recommendations were given to address this through exam bodies and quality assurance organisations, and to provide better training for teachers, so they are empowered to embed climate change into their lessons. A curriculum reform should also include green skills for students, to ensure the next generation is equipped to apply for green jobs in the future. Further discussion focussed on climate risk and adaptation. Few educational leaders recognise that the most harmful impacts of climate change to the educational sector are likely to be physical, such as flooding and extreme heat. It is important to find ways to communicate this effectively with school leaders, drawing on what has been learned from COVID-19. The session ended with discussion about the next steps, starting with a letter to the Education Secretary and Schools Minister regarding an enquiry into whether the current education system is fit for purpose in relation to the government's net zero commitments. Nuha Eltinay's (Middle East and North Africa representative) 55 https://www.resurgence.io/team/ key messages included the need to build bridges between existing communities and weather forecasters. The need to communicate weather information and climate change to grassroots were essential for progress. Specifically, what the IPCC meant to her organisation was centred around vulnerabilities in Middle East and Northern African regions. It was emphasised that compound and cascading hazards after natural events are often not reported and under-addressed, despite their ability to produce further catastrophic hazards that propagate through socio-economic systems (e.g. Alexander and Pescaroli, 2019). Kit Vaughan (Save the Children) mentioned the importance of dealing with the disruption arising from climate change. Kit also explained the interrelationship between other global issues including COVID-19 which led us to recognise global inequality. Kit raised the important point that children born in 2020 are subject to a seven-fold increase in climate events when compared with their grandparents born in the 1960s (Thiery et al., 2021). This is further exacerbated by the fact that one billion children are living in high-risk areas. This discussion raised important issues of climate change with regard to children. These stakeholders require a specific focus of support and integration at every level with effective communication. Gianluca Pesacaroli (University College London) expressed issues pertaining to operational silos whereby private companies operate independently from public bodies. This becomes problematic when addressing and meeting mutual climate mitigation targets. There is a need for the co-production of information between private and public entities, scientists and non-scientists, which can facilitate important discourses allowing for effective policy making. Lesley Wilson (British Standards Foundation, BSI) emphasised the need to have a common benchmark of sustainability that organisations should employ in their environmental agendas. The BSI works collaboratively across sectors to foster such common standards. Katrina Ramage (World Values Day) highlighted the need to communicate climate change to young children in layperson terms so that they can understand the issues facing them and how the government aims to support the future generation. Discourses in the realm of decision making, be that public or private, regarding the next generation, often do not directly involve young people. Moreover, the complexities of such discourses are rarely understood by children and more needs to be done to explain the ramifications of climate change to them. Examples of this include encouraging children to debate climate change in educational establishments and visiting schools to educate children and facilitating such discussions. Hannah Wood (UBS Foundation) identified that there is a funding gap between climate and environmental issues. There is growing concern that within corporate settings there is untapped capital which can be used to support financing the global environmental agenda (Clark et al., 2018). Funding is not disseminated appropriately with little communication between corporate and public entities. Therefore, there is a serious need to trigger funding for climate change initiatives and move capital to where it is more needed. Glen Burridge (European Federation of Geologists) led the breakout session 'Earth Sapience: How can Earth Scientists work together to address the climate crisis?'. Dr Yves Plancherel (Imperial College London) started by highlighting that much of the new IPCC reports are not novel, raising the debate of how the information in the IPCC should be delivered in the future. Cedric John (Imperial College London) and Dr Edward Gryspeerdt (Imperial College London) agreed with the sentiment but added that the IPCC reports do pave the way for more platforms to discuss the IPCC, beyond the short periods that it is popularised by the news media (Pearce et al., 2014; Sanford et al., 2019). Dr Isabelle Fernandez (European Federation of Geologists) continued this concept of communication, highlighting that involving people – both the general public and companies – is an important solution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Dr Edward Gryspeerdt followed this saying that geologists can develop such solutions at economic cost, with the key being to find a way where it is cheaper not to emit, but to leave the CO2 in the ground. Magnus Johansson (SGU) was the last panellist in the group and highlighted that there also needs to be resilience built into everyday life, as well as a push for mitigation measures. At present, Magnus Johansson said, there is a disconnect between those planning climate mitigation and resilience measures and those applying it on the ground. The session was then opened up for general input, where carbon capture and storage (CCS) was heavily discussed. Highlighted as a sustainable opportunity, CCS needs to be implemented as soon as possible to ensure CO2 is utilised, not wasted (Martin-Roberts et al., 2021). Yves highlights that, due to the cost of implementation, oil and gas companies might be in a unique position to spearhead the transition over to CCS by converting their assets (infrastructure, knowledge and workforce) over. The breakout room concluded on discussions around the importance of investigating other energy sources and alternate forms of carbon storage. Renewable and thermal energy are important clean energy options but must also be discussed alongside a candid conversation about their accompanying issues, such as raw material supply. Forest restoration is hugely valuable in tackling both the biosphere crisis, as well as providing a nature-based solution to the carbon issue (Seddon et al., 2020). The event was concluded with a large discussion of all three sectors and the key points that were brought up in the breakout rooms. Melina Mehra clarified that one overarching message that came through was the need to be clear with messages that are being communicated, ensuring those messages are accessible in terms of the capabilities of that person, group or industry. There needs to be clarity on questions such as: What is being asked to be done? How is the success of it measured? Katrina Ramage highlighted how societal tolerance of climate injustice has reduced and that works in favour of better communication, but it does not lessen the complexity of the issue being communicated. COVID-19, as a potentially climate-induced zoonotic 66 An infectious disease which has spread from animals to humans. pandemic, and the rise in extreme weather events, has made it clear that the impacts of climate change are happening now. Glen Burridge summarised that clear communication of complex issues alongside de-biased and practically analysed decisions will allow these issues to be addressed effectively, in the present rather than in the future.
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