Centre for Sustainability, Equality and Climate Action

DAERA Minister Andrew Muir MLA has met with the Forever Mournes Partnership to discuss how he and the Department can continue to work collectively on the sustainable management and resilience of the landscape. National Trust NI

‘Botched’ process sees mining giants surrender controversial prospecting licences The mining licences have been relinquished due to failure to publish notices as required under law

This Thursday👉NI Review of Environmental Governance is looking you for you!
👉Call for Evidence is now open & welcomes input from individuals, organisations & communities
💻We are holding an online event at 7PM Thur 27 Feb - sign up at: https://tinyurl.com/yvx74udy

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Northern Ireland Executive
Northern Ireland Environment Link
Northern Ireland Water
Department for Infrastructure
Ulster Farmers' Union
Discover CAFRE
Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute
Centre for Sustainability, Equality and Climate Action

Dr. Brian Kelly, ‘‘We Are All Palestinians’: Why Gaza Matters in the Global North’

Wednesday 30th October, 7pm

Peter Froggatt Centre 02/017

Free and all welcome

“Central banks and the climate crisis”

Martin Sokol (Trinity College Dublin)

Thursday 17th Oct (from 12 – 1.30pm)

Venue: Meredith Room, 23 University Square

Queen's University Belfast

As the climate crisis deepens and climate chaos around the world accelerates, the need for an urgent transformative action has never been greater. This talk will argue that there is one powerful climate actor that should be a focus of our attention and increased scrutiny - the central bank. On paper, central banks are public institutions in charge of monetary policy, simply maintaining the price stability by keeping inflation low. However, a closer look reveals that central banks play a much more important role in the financial system and the economy more widely. Indeed, central banks could be seen as central to the very operation of financialised capitalism. As such, they are also deeply interconnected with the climate crisis. The talk will discuss the role of central banks both as culprits of climate chaos (and powerful institutions of climate obstruction) as well as potential agents of radical socio-ecological transformation towards climate justice. Reimagining central banks so that they can serve both the people and the planet is a pressing political question and a crucial international relations issue.

All welcome

Yet another scientific article (with 15,682 signatories) communicating the need for urgent and ambitious climate action and to address the root cause of the crisis by rich countries moving beyond ecocidal and endless 'economic growth'....

Starting point: "We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster"

Conclusion: "In a world with finite resources, unlimited growth is a perilous illusion"

Will our politicians listen? The media? The economics profession? Policymakers? Citizens? Trades unions? businesses? faith communities?

https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/biae087/7808595

Very important new paper 'A Just World on a Safe Planet: a Lancet Planetary Health–Earth Commission report on Earth-system boundaries, translations, and transformations' in the latest issue of The Lancet Planetary Health

My main take aways

We need to move beyond economic growth

"Economic growth trajectories (which dominate global economic policy) pose even greater risks through destabilisation of the global commons—ie, the biosphere, climate, and cryosphere, and nutrient and water cycles".

The current economic system is not compatible with all of humanity living with a safe and just space

"Under current social and environmental conditions, all humans cannot live healthy lives within the safe and just corridor".

Put justice (interspecies, intergenerational & intragenerational) at the heart of revolutionary sustainability transformations

There is no technological solution to 'greening business as usual' i.e. we cannot innovate our way out of the planetary crisis within the current socio-economic system...we need to decouple human and nonhuman well-being from that system rather than waste time and resources on seeking to decouple the negative ecological and climate impacts of the current economic system.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2542519624000421

DAERA Minister Andrew Muir MLA has visited Centre for Sustainability, Equality and Climate Action Queen's University Belfast to discuss their work and also the new
Climate Northern Ireland