Can fairness create a green future?

By Lydia Messling, University of Reading

Is it fair that climate change has the worst effects in areas that contributed to the problem the least?

It isn’t just polar bears being affected by climate change – people all over the world are already being negatively affected by changes to the climate, from droughts, flooding, and ruined harvests.

That’s not fair. Particularly as these communities had no role in making the problem in the first place. Fast forward a few years, and the environmental situation for our children’s children is not looking too peachy either… but could it look green?

If we changed the way we thought about climate change instead of it being ‘just a problem for science to solve’ to a problem about social justice, could we come up with a solution that addresses injustice that would help these communities and climate change at the same time? Can fairness create a green future?

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News from Prosperity & Resilience: Dr Avril Maddrell

Avril Maddrell

Avril Maddrell

Dr Avril Maddrell (SAGES) is running an AHRC-ESRC project on Deathscapes and Diversity. Against the backdrop of increasing ethnic and religious diversity in the UK, many challenges have been raised practically and politically about living together in difference within in Britain. While attention has focused upon Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) patterns of housing, education, employment and leisure, what is less well understood is migrant and established minority needs relating to cemetery, crematoria and sites of ritual and remembrance (‘deathscapes’).

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News from Prosperity and Resilience: Chuks Okereke

Professor Chuks Okereke

Professor Chuks Okereke

Professor Chuks Okereke is leading an ERSC Global Challenges Research Fund Grant to convene an international network on Governing Inclusive Green Economy in Africa (GIGGA). The project will build an interdisciplinary and international collaborative Network that can develop a substantive and innovative research agenda on the governance of green growth in Africa. The GIGGA Network comprises individuals from (i) four UK universities, (ii) academics from five countries in Africa and India, (iii) national and regional government institutions and departments; (iv) four research institutes and policy think tanks across Africa; (v) private sector (vi), top NGOs and civil society organizations in Africa.