Click here for an update on the Youth Climate Summit that’s being held from November 9 to 13. Co-ordinated by the charity Global Action Plan and a team of dedicated teachers, the Youth Climate Summit will be a week-long virtual festival of themed discussions and activities. GAP is inviting schools, teachers and organisations all over the UK to submit session ideas and fringe events. Full timings and details will be announced soon – many minds are working on what will be an exciting week of coordinated sharing, learning and action in schools and homes across the UK and beyond. §§§§
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The World Bank says that the economic fallout from the covid virus will likely result in between 71m and 100m people being tipped back into extreme poverty. This is defined as subsisting on < $1.90 / day (at 2011 prices). Several years of progress are being wiped out as, from 1990 to 2019, the number of extremely poor people fell from 2bn (36% of the global population) to 630m (8%). Most these 8% are in sub-Saharan Africa. By contrast, most of the newly impoverished are in South Asia. §§§§
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The United Nations is gloomier still. It defines people as poor if they do not have access to things like clean water, electricity, enough food, and access to schools for children. The UN reckons that the pandemic could cast 490m people (across 70 countries) into poverty, reversing nearly 10 years of progress. The UN’s World Food Programme reckons that the number of people unable to afford enough to eat will double as a result of the pandemic, and that an extra 130m people will now be suffering from the sort of hunger that harms adult health and stunts children’s growth. There’s more detail and grim reading in The Economist. §§§§
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The results of this year’s Big Butterfly Count are in, and the news is not good. All the gloomy details are here. Dr Zoë Randle, Senior Surveys Officer at Butterfly Conservation said: “Coming so shortly after the recent WWF and UN reports on the global biodiversity crisis these 2020 results illustrate the perilous state of wildlife in the UK. However, the fact that so many people take part in this exciting citizen science initiative is encouraging and makes a huge difference to our understanding of how the natural world is responding to the crisis it is in. Now we need to see initiatives both here and across the world to put nature on a path to recovery”. §§§§
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Wildlabs is promoting The Promise a film about a girl who takes a bag of acorns which she plants and transforms her city. They’d like as many schools as possible to screen the film on its launch date of 16th October. Wildlabs have produced a screening kit which includes: Tips for how to make your screening of The Promise more engaging; A classroom guide for how to prompt discussion and creativity after the screening; and Ideas for how your school can take collective action and become part of a generation of youngsters who are promising themselves a greener future. Info on the screening kit can be found here and there are promotional materials here. §§§§
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The Oil and Gas Authority says that the flaring of North Sea is wasting enough gas to supply a million homes, as well as needlessly sending CO2 into the atmosphere. The regulator says that 42 billion cubic feet of gas was flared in the UK North Sea in 2019 — 3% of all the gas produced. Flaring produced 3 million tonnes of CO2 last year ~1% of the carbon emissions of the UK. §§§§
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Plastic consuming enzymes have been created to consume PET (polyethylene terephthalate) waste; this stems from an initial observation in Japan in 2016. John McGeehan, from the University of Portsmouth, was quoted saying: “It’s starting to become commercially viable, which is a lot faster than I would have expected a couple of years ago.” The work is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. §§§§
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The University of Bath’s I-SEE seminars have resumed (in webinar format). On October 13th, Malcolm Grimston ask: Why is the safest way of making electricity that we have yet come up with viewed as so dangerous by so many people that its potential as a large-scale way of making low-carbon power has not been fulfilled in many countries? The nuclear industry’s answer to this question has tended to be that there is something wrong with the public – a combination of ignorance and irrationality – and putting these inadequacies right by ‘educating’ the public will put matters right. However, 70 years of this attitude has not been met with unqualified success in winning hearts and minds. This talk will look at some of the psychology that may lie behind this ‘discrepancy’ and suggest that if irrationality and ignorance are to be found they may not be on the public side of the debate. Registration is here for this free event. §§§§
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The Earth Prize is a $1,000,000 dollar global youth environmental sustainability award and is being developed to help accelerate positive change toward environmental sustainability. Through the Earth Prize, young people in secondary schools and FE/HE will be awarded financial grants to fund research and youth led initiatives that focus on real world issues. The goal of the prize is to nurture and accelerate the next great environmental sustainability change-makers.
The organisers want to hear from young people to help define the structure and resources behind the prize. If you can, please complete the following questionnaire. §§§§
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October 1st was National Poetry Day. We’re marking it by recalling that it’s been a tough few months for many of us, especially, perhaps, for those living in towns and cities who have had to rely on their memories or second-hand images of an open-air life. It was Coleridge and Wordsworth who planted in our minds the idea of nature as a healing and spiritual force and the redemptive powers of the natural world, and Peter Ackroyd says that anyone who yearns to walk beside the sea, or to ascend a mountain, or to row across a lake, owes a great debt to them. Wordsworth knew nature could provide solace and comfort both in the present and also in the memory. Even when we are no longer somewhere, landscape, vistas, geography, topography, rock, river, turf and sky remain with us – together with how we felt about them. In 1798, in his great poem, Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey, he wrote this about recovering and reliving the experience of being in the natural world:
“But oft, in lonely rooms, and ‘mid the din / Of towns and cities, I have owed to them, / In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, / Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; / And passing even into my purer mind / With tranquil restoration. …” §§§§
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16 year old Dara McAnulty has won the Wainwright prize for nature writing for his Diary of a Young Naturalist. The prize website says that “Dara’s book is an extraordinary portrayal of his intense connection to the natural world alongside his perspective as an autistic teenager juggling exams, friendships and a life of campaigning.” There’s a discussion between Dara and Julia Bradbury on the Wainwright Prize website. §§§§
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Mock COP is a group of young climate activists from across the world united in their frustration at the speed of progress from world leaders. Mock COP26 is being held from the 19th November to the 1st December 2020 to fill the void of the postponed COP26 with a big, inclusive online event.
The event will be run by young climate activists and aims to get between 3 and 5 delegates from as many countries as possible, with a focus on the Global South. The two-week event will comprise empowering and informative keynotes and panels by global names and youth activists, followed by high-level opening statements by the youth delegates and facilitated workshops and regional caucuses. The discussions will be framed around five conference themes: climate justice; education; health and mental health; green jobs; carbon reduction targets. The event will culminate in a powerful conference statement to world leaders from the youth of the world, raising ambition for COP26. Here’s the contact details if you want to take part or have questions. §§§§
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The Wildlife Trusts have launched a new Action for Insects guide for schools. The lesson plans and resources included set out to help to engage children with insects and their local environment. It’s available here. And this is a recent Trusts’ report on the decline of insects. §§§§