As a science student, I have always been aware of climate change
and that it is changing our world. However, I have never previously had the
opportunity to explore this interest and so decided to attend the Cambridge
Climate Change and Sustainability Forum 2014.
The day began with an informative welcoming address from
Theodora Panayides and Opening Keynote by Gemma Adams. The first main session
was a quickfire session on ‘rethinking the way we live’ which raised some
important issues such as how individuals can have an impact on climate change
and what some of the challenges are that we face in changing people’s day to
day lives in order to be able to have an impact on climate change. This also
led into a discussion of what a sustainable lifestyle is and how we can live
more sustainable lives. I found the quickfire session very interesting and
informative.
After a short coffee break, we were given a series of short
talks by several organisations in the ‘Pecha Kucha’ session, each of whom
nominated a product they felt demonstrated some of the key topics surrounding climate
change and sustainability. I was particularly interested in some of the
projects each of the organisations were working on – including the ‘liberated
feast’ made from surplus food, a project aimed at analysing the use of freezers
at the Gurdon Institute by the Living Laboratory, and the One World Challenge
from WeAct. Products nominated included a sustainably produced hat, bottle
lights, and green benches made from old tyres and compost. I felt that these
showed some simple, cheap and enjoyable ways of reducing our harmful effects on
the environment.
Lunch was followed by workshop sessions, for which I
participated in a workshop entitled ‘Kick-Start your Project Ideas’ – run by
the Living Laboratory for Sustainability. This was a fantastic opportunity to
discuss some of my own ideas for tackling climate change and learning how to
communicate environmentally friendly suggestions to others. We worked on an
example tackling waste in a science laboratory – discussing the key steps of
collecting information, communicating the information to the scientists,
encouraging them to change their habits and setting measurable targets, and
regularly monitoring their progress in order to evaluate the success of the project.
For each of these steps we discussed possible ways of carrying them out – for example
bring in waste collected from the laboratory rubbish in order to communicate
the initial problem. I also learnt about ways students with limited time could
get involved, for example by volunteering to carry out surveys or doing an
internship with the Living Laboratory.
The final talk of the day was a panel debate entitled ‘Sustainability
Innovation online? Is the Internet a space for idle thoughts or an engine
driving real change?’. A variety of speakers gave their opinions on this topic,
mentioning issues such as the difficulties persuading people to take action in
their everyday lives, reaching poorer communities, and measuring the impact of
online campaigns. The possibility of people becoming distracted from the
outside environment by the more exciting online world or taking more passive
actions online were also mentioned. However, some positive possibilities were
considered, including the ability to tailor information to individuals, reach a
wider audience, use interactive tools such as games to communicate key ideas,
and raise money and awareness for campaigns. This talk made me consider some of
the ways in which online and ‘real life’ campaigns could be combined in order
to have a greater impact.
The forum closed with a presentation on images from the
photo competition and an announcement of the winners, followed by a closing
keynote from Fred Pearce, who mentioned some of the wider issues surrounding
climate change and sustainability – including a lack of political pressure,
agricultural wastage of water, and the need to change our lifestyles. However,
he was optimistic about the future – leaving everyone with a positive note to
end the day.
Overall, I learnt a lot about climate change and
sustainability, and in particular how I as an individual can make small changes
to my lifestyle in order as well as encourage others to join me in order to
tackle climate change. I have been inspired by the day, and have decided to
become a Student Switch Off Ambassador in order to be able to help communicate ‘green’
lifestyle changes to other students and organise awareness-raising events.
