Optima 2021

Optima

Fitzwilliam College Magazine 2021

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From the Master

widening participation; excellence in teaching; mental and physical wellbeing; our environmental impact; our governance and systems; and the wider public engagement of the College.

You will hear more about our work in each of the key areas in the months to come but for this issue of Optima, we have decided to focus attention on some of our activities in relation to the environment. COP26 is underway, and whilst our environmental impact is always on the agenda, this month it feels timely to reflect on this theme.

Welcome to the 2021 issue of Optima – I’m delighted that we have been able to resume our hard-copy circulation of the publication.

The last two years have been a moment of self-reflection and recalibration, for individuals and institutions alike. In November 2020, Fitzwilliam recognised that our response to and recovery from the pandemic would be shaped by our shared values, and that to recover well we would first need to understand better this collective identity.

Through a College-wide survey and a series of workshops with representative groups over several months, a strong and coherent set of guiding values has been identified.

They speak of the importance of community, of a supportive place to achieve academic excellence, and of our responsibilities, to each other, to the environment, to future generations, and to our wider communities.

Guided by these values, we have agreed a new strategic plan. This plan places emphasis upon actions rather than nice words and sets out an ambitious programme for the months and years ahead, across six areas: access and ⁄2

Fitzwilliam wants to lead by example, not only by adopting a responsible investment policy (page 4), and supporting our academics and students in their research to find solutions to the challenges facing our planet; but also by making small but important changes in the way we manage our operations and engage with our immediate environment. For me, it is this balance between the headline actions and the daily, incremental changes that we can all make, that is important. Many of our academics and alumni are engaged in tackling the environmental crisis in their professional lives, but we can all play a role in our own choices and as part of our College community.

The articles are deliberately varied in their perspectives, and sometimes challenging in their approach. You may not agree with everything you read, but I hope that you find the questions engaging and a prompt for reflection. We are keen to stimulate debate and to inspire practical actions.

4 Responsible Investment In 2018 the College reviewed its Investment Policy: now we update again.

25 A Porter’s view Follow Junita Davies on her rounds of the College site.

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Seeing the wood for the trees

The importance of activism

Professors David Coomes and Srinivasen Keshav talk about their collaboration to measure the quality of conservation projects.

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For Professor Bhaskar Vira, Graduate Tutor and Head of the Department of Geography, memories of youthful activism offer important lessons.

Meet the Fitz MSts in Sustainability Leadership Fitzwilliam is extremely proud to host its first cohort of students enrolled in the part-time MSt in Sustainability Leadership. Here we meet some of the students and learn about their motivations and interests.

14 Beyond Eden For alumnus Dr Pete Abrutat-Whitbread, mining is a reality of our modern society. But how can we work with the landscape and local communities to minimise its impact?

18 From the field Fitz students are engaged in important research projects, whether on the ground or remotely...and some have found themselves rather closer to the action than they expected!

21 Wellbeing at Fitz For Fitz’s new Wellbeing Co-ordinator, nature is at the heart of good mental and physical health.

OPTIMA LIVE - 25TH NOVEMBER Have you enjoyed the contents of this edition of Optima?

Would you like to discuss some of the work mentioned with the academics and students themselves? On Thursday 25th November, 6-7pm we will be holding a live Q&A with some of the contributors. If you would like to watch online, then you can do that here: https://bit.ly/3GmXdtY

22 A new approach to gardening Our Head Gardener, Steve Kidger, likes to explore new methods and techniques in the pursuit of a more sustainable approach to horticulture.

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Responsible Investment

A key theme in the College’s strategic plan is the importance of a sustainable and pragmatic approach to environmental challenges. Whether in relation to our use of energy sources, our choices when purchasing appliances or our support of community activities such as recycling, every decision in the College is now considered in the light of its environmental impact. Our investment policy needs to reflect this approach and as a result we have announced a significant step on the path of the College investing on a responsible basis. The new policy ensures that the College’s investments are managed, not just based on their financial performance and value for money, but also in line with the College’s values and recognising the collective example we set for others.

Why are we making these changes now?

Divestment has been a big topic of discussion at Fitzwilliam for a number of years.

In 2019, the College – with the support of the broader College community – undertook to divest on a direct basis and minimise any indirect investment from producers of high impact fossil fuels. At the time, we were one of the first Cambridge colleges to move on these issues, but since 2019 the divestment debate has moved quickly and become broader in nature.

Rod Cantrill, Bursar

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There has been a dramatic, positive change on the part of the University: the establishment of Cambridge Zero; full University divestment from direct and indirect fossil fuels by 2030; a commitment to cut greenhouse emissions to zero by 2038; and a ramping-up of renewableenergy investments from its £3.5 billion endowment fund. Changes have also been afoot in a number of Cambridge colleges, with increasingly ambitious statements on sustainability and divestment. Separately, in the broader finance arena, sustainable investment is being given a much higher

priority and is increasingly becoming a key feature of mainstream investment. Like many within the Fitzwilliam community, I believe passionately in the College’s fundamental values of environmentalism and sustainability, and it was clear that we needed to look again at our investment policy, to more accurately reflect the College’s values.

After 12 months of discussions, including a presentation by Dr Ellen Quigley (co-author of the University’s divestment report), to the College’s Investment Advisory Committee, an updated responsible investment policy paper was submitted to the Governing Body and approved in the middle of October.

What do the changes to the policy involve?

The policy sets out that in relation to the College’s investments held in the discretionary investment portfolio, the College will going forward: • Not invest either directly or indirectly in a meaningful way (where 10% or more of the revenue is exposed to the activities) in

Image by Elena Mirova

companies involved in fossil fuel extraction, processing/refining and trading, nor in companies involved in electricity production with a generation mix dominated by coal.

• Not invest either directly or indirectly in companies involved in the manufacture of tobacco, weapons banned by international conventions or other controversial weapons.

• Apply this policy to all its investments

by March 2022, other than its private equity investments where the policy will apply by 2028 or when the current investments mature.

• Invest at least 40% of its investments (where those investments can be scored on an ESG basis) in investments that achieve an ESG ‘leader’ rating (‘AAA’ or ‘AA’). This will be reviewed on an annual basis. Currently, the College does not have a clear ESG target for its investments.

The policy will be put in place by JP Morgan, the College’s discretionary investment manager using an investment

criterion developed by Mirova. Mirova is a specialist B Corp certified investment management company which combines the search for financial performance with environmental and social impact.

The College also intends to review the different type of assets it invests in over the course of the next 12 months (the Strategic Asset Allocation review). As part of the review, it will explore investing at least 50% of its investments allocated to the Fixed Income asset class in ‘green/sustainable’ investments.

The revised approach will not just apply to our investments but also extend to the relationships we have with third party financial advisors, managers and banks. The College will expect that the investment strategies of its advisors and managers will reflect our new policy. Separately, the College will expect the banks with whom it works to align with the College’s social and environmental values.

What will be the impact of these choices?

The value of the College’s discretionary

investment portfolio was approximately £50m at the end of July 2021. The College does not believe that the changes to our investment policy will have a significant impact on the financial performance of our investments nor in achieving the current investment return target of RPI plus 4%.

The size of the College’s investments mean that we are a small investor, however our position, together with those of other Cambridge colleges and the University, mean that our actions in this area will hopefully set an example and have a broader impact beyond the direct steps the College has taken.

FIND OUT MORE To read further detailed information about the changes that have been made to the College investment policy, please go here: https://www.fitz.cam.ac.uk/news/new-collegeresponsible-investment-policy

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Seeing the wood for the trees Many of Fitzwilliam’s academics are actively engaged in research which will advance our understanding of the climate crisis and suggest new ways to respond. Lunchtimes in College often represent an opportunity to share ideas, but two Fitz Fellows, Professor David Coomes and Professor Srinivasan Keshav have now taken their joint interests beyond the dining table and have co-founded a new institution, the Cambridge Centre for Carbon Credits.

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Professors David Coomes and Srinivasan Keshav both work in the area of sustainability, are Fellows of Fitzwilliam College and, as luck would have it, share an office in The Grove. The story begins when Keshav interviewed at Cambridge in Easter 2019, “I’m a Professor of Computer Science,” he explains “but I made my mind up that I would only take a job at Cambridge if I could continue and expand my work, which began in 2010, on using computer science to move towards a sustainable future.” Having already worked on reducing the carbon footprint of building energy use; electricity generation, and transportation, in the previous decade, he turned to a new sector: Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU). “I wanted to explore how computer science can help plant trees at scale. As I began to do my initial research, have those early conversations, everyone said I needed to talk to David… and suddenly I realised that not only was he at Fitz, but I was going to be sharing an office with him.”

‘David’ turned out to be Professor David Coomes, a forest ecologist who runs the University’s Centre for Earth Observation and is the Director of the University of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute. For their first joint project they set to estimating the rate of carbon sequestration (removal) in tropical forests, using pulses of laser light fired from lidar sensors on planes and the International Space Station to create 3D reconstructions of forest canopy structure over huge areas of land. It’s possible to measure carbon sequestration in trees by tracking changes in forest structure over time. If that sounds like a big job, it is: the huge data banks require 1000 computers to analyse them.

“We use similar technology to that employed in autonomous cars to make them aware of their surroundings,” Professor Coomes says. “It’s like echolocation used by bats but using light instead of sound to measure distances.

Every second these lidar sensors give you about 1 million pieces of information to analyse afterwards. I have worked with airborne lidar for a decade now and have just about managed to cope with the data volumes involved, but NASA’s new sensor on the space station is providing data dispersed over much of the world’s surface, and that requires proper computer science expertise to process efficiently. It has been an enormous pleasure to work with Keshav and a bright postgraduate student on a new project to evaluate changes to the Amazonian rainforests using the new technologies.”

Professor Keshav, too, has been changed by the work.

“I started with the mindset of planting trees, but now I see that conservation is much more important. You can plant trees but you won’t get an ecosystem with biodiversity right away and you might destroy existing habitats to make

way for them. The reason I started with planting trees is that I knew nothing about forests – but I have since been reading lots of papers and coming up to speed. Certain ideas from computer science transfer over, but there are many new things to worry about in this new context, such as biodiversity, indigenous people, livelihoods.”

The importance of projects like these is hard to overstate. As Coomes explains, “The great challenge we face from a conservation perspective is that green finance is going into plantations. The message for protecting and restoring natural forests is a harder sell to corporations and governments than plantations.”

From a joint project to a new institution Now, with a £3.75 million donation from a blockchain company called Tezos, the two Fitzwilliam Fellows have teamed up to create the new Cambridge Centre for Carbon Credits (4C), based in the Cambridge Conservation Research Institute, located in the David Attenborough Building.

The initiative uses field measurements and earth observation to automatically certify the quality of a conservation project, creating a trusted marketplace for nature-based solutions.

“Currently organisations that seek to sell carbon credits arising from forest protection must pay consultants to fly out to their projects to certify that they are achieving their stated goals,” explains Coomes. “We hope, instead, to combine earth observation with highly targeted field work to analyse the livelihood and biodiversity benefits, for different projects from around the world. Essentially, we will create a new technology-led platform where you can get offsets for your carbon footprint by investing in these projects. We recognize, however, that although the technology is remarkable, projects will still need people on the ground to assess whether income from forest protection is distributed more equitably, and to assess any biodiversity benefits.”

This trusted decentralised marketplace uses a blockchain designed by its funders, Tezos. Tezos requires significantly less energy than better-known blockchains like Bitcoin or Ethereum because it’s not based on mining.

Instead, holders of a Tezos token (a ‘tez’) receive a reward for taking part in its proof-of-stake consensus mechanism.

If you ‘stake’ your tez coins, you tie up your coins so they can power the network. Moreover, the network has unique mechanisms that allow it to evolve by upgrading itself.

The 4C system is designed to directly fund project owners, greatly reducing monitoring and verification overheads and creating trust in the funding of projects ⁄7

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Professors David Coomes and Srinivasan Keshav

involving nature-based solutions around the world.

“The current approaches are a paradox, in that reducing carbon footprint might require trips halfway around the world. Our question,” Keshav emphasises, “is how much can be done scalably, for example with remote sensing?

There will probably continue to be elements of fieldwork: biodiversity and livelihood are the hardest components to assess remotely. Hyperspectral sensing can map forest diversity, but accounting for the impact on animal populations is much harder.”

The importance of action These paradoxes are becoming increasingly acute, and as we approach COP26, both Coomes and Keshav are thinking hard about the changes we must make. They both work closely with the data that measures our impact on the natural world and there is an authority to their request for action. Professor Coomes is a co-author of the recent landmark British Ecological Society report, in which his chapter concentrated on natural solutions to climate change in the UK context. He has also recently ⁄8

contributed to a policy brief for the UK Government on COP26. His advice, however, is far more direct: “There is definitely a place for nature-based solutions in the decades ahead but these solutions are no substitute for rapid decarbonisation. Nature-based solutions use nature to help address the climate crisis, simultaneously helping biodiversity and people, but they shouldn’t ever be used as an excuse to avoid decarbonising the economy. Also, planting trees is not an immediate solution, as is takes years for the plantations to reach their full potential at carbon capture. Protecting and restoring degraded natural systems will have immediate benefits.”

For Keshav, COP26 is the “last great hope”, and a chance for the UK to play a leading role in the future of the planet. His prescription is manifold: “Firstly, we need an organization one might call the ‘International Court of Climate Justice’. There are no teeth in the current international regime for cutting emissions and this court, like the International Criminal Court, would help. Secondly, we need a carbon border tax regime. If you import goods, there should a carbon tax on point of entry if the item originates from a country with no carbon tax.

Every tonne of carbon emitted must have a tax on it that

corresponds to its ‘social cost’ (see https://www.nature. com/articles/s41558-018-0282-y). Air travel should be discouraged and made rare. In contrast, at the moment airlines pay no tax on their aviation fuel – kerosene (see https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/ SN00523/SN00523.pdf )” He also questions the distribution of government subsidies. A recent analysis by the International Monetary Fund indicated that the fossil fuel industry benefits from subsidies of $11m every minute. “The subsidies for renewables are actually far less than for oil and gas at present,” he adds. “We could subsidise electric cars overnight, and gradually reduce that over time.” “There is this growing realisation,” Coomes adds, “that nature is not only intrinsically valuable, but provides huge value to humans both economically and socially, including by storing carbon. If you clear forests, their carbon goes into the atmosphere as CO2 and that contributes to the climate crisis.” Keshav chips in, “In terms of damage caused by releasing CO2 into the atmosphere (the Social Cost of Carbon), some economists have estimated it to be as high as $420per tonne of CO2. And the globe is emitting about 40 billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.”

Mindful of the funding behind their new centre, both were keen to identify Bitcoin as particularly problematic, since new coins are ‘mined’ using vast amounts of electricity generated by fossil fuels – using about same amount of energy annually as the Netherlands did in 2019 (data from the University of Cambridge and the International Energy Agency).

about four years ago, they totally banned ivory and official banquets stopped serving shark fin soup, something that no one expected.”

“Despite these hopeful signs, the problem is that international policies are not currently sufficient to keep climate change below 1.5 degrees. If we continue on the path we are today, it’s a question whether we get to 2 degrees, or 4. In short, we have the tools we need to avert the worst of climate change and, with the right political will and leadership, we can look forward to a better future.”

One thing is for sure. When it comes to climate and ecological action - from measuring the carbon in forests, to using blockchain marketplaces to generate trustworthy carbon credits, to a multitude of other projects led by their peers - it seems Fitzwilliam scientists like Professors Coomes and Keshav will be at the cutting edge.

FIND OUT MORE The Cambridge Conservation Research Institute can be visited online here: https://www.conservation.cam.ac.uk The Cambridge Centre for Carbon Credits will launch in November 2021.

“The world should ban Bitcoin,” Keshav adds. “It was the first blockchain to come out, so is best known, but it is particularly inefficient.”

When it was banned by China earlier this year, electricity usage in parts of Siberia skyrocketed 160%, as crypto miners, legal and illegal, migrated over the border to Russia.

In spite of these and other challenges, both have hope.

“The possibility of behavioural change is greater now than before,” Keshav says. “Twenty years ago, Greta Thunberg wouldn’t have stood a chance. In fact, we had someone similar in Canada – Severn Suzuki. She never had mass impact. I hate to say it, but the Tiktok generation is going to save the Earth. What we’re doing here – scientists, campaigners, journalists, people like Greta Thunberg or David Attenborough – is trying to educate, which leads to public awareness. When the public need for change grows sufficiently in a democratic country, politicians have no option but to pay attention. The film An Inconvenient Truth, for example, has created a generation of people whose eyes were opened to climate change. In China, ⁄9

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Meet the MSts...

In September 2020, Fitzwilliam welcomed our first cohort of 40 part-time MSt students in Sustainability Leadership. The Master of Studies (MSt) in Sustainability Leadership is a full Master’s degree, delivered part-time over two years for working professionals. It is part of the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership’s (CISL) mission to empower individuals and organisations to take leadership to tackle critical global challenges. The MSts bring a wide range of experience to their studies, and we asked some of them how they felt about the upcoming COP26...

PHIL BLAKEMAN

Phil works as a Sustainability Director at Elementis Global, in a role that encompasses climate change and biodiversity. His MSt research interests are focused on the use of renewable carbon in the chemicals industry. More about Phil can be found on Medium: https://link.medium. com/KFHzH8jZ7jb and LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/phil-blakeman.

“For me, COP26 is a last-chance saloon for world leaders to actually commit to what is necessary to change for the better”

BRENDA WALLACE

Brenda’s role is as Principal for an urban planning, sustainability and public engagement consulting firm. Her MSt research focus lies in biodiversity and hybrid organisations (i.e. forprofit organisations seeking to have a positive contribution to nature).

“I’m optimistic that progress will be made, in particular in gaining broader consensus on the need for action; but also pessimistic that the selected course of action will be sufficient to the urgency and scale of the challenge(s) ahead.”

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CLAIRE LIU

Claire’s day job is in investor services at a stock exchange, facilitating ESG information disclosure and long-term responsible investors. For her MSt, she is exploring the key factors determining the success of investor engagement on ESG issues, to ensure more effective engagement to drive corporates’ ESG transformation.

“It will surely bring about not just a clear signal to the market about accelerated low-carbon transition but also more concrete and concerted actions on climate change from all parties.”

DIANA DENKE

Diana is a manager at KOIS, where she focuses on financial solutions in sustainable land use. Her MSt research is on sustainable finance in nature-based solutions and regenerative agriculture.

“I’m cautiously optimistic. The climate movement has finally reached a critical mass now, and there is a mass recognition that the way we produce, consume and dispose of things has to fundamentally change.

The challenge will be in seeing real, concrete action.”

ESOHE DENISE ODARO

Esohe works in Investor relations at IFC and her research is on the role of financing in influencing ESG considerations in corporate behaviour.

“I’m apprehensive yet optimistic. The recent IPCC report emphasizes the narrowing window of time to address global warming. With all that has gone on with the COVID19 pandemic over the last year and a half, COP26 could be a line in the sand for real impact.”

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HANNAH DUNN

Hannah is an Associate Director, working in Carbon and Energy Consulting, and her MSt research concentrates on energy behaviour, natural capital, and biodiversity net gain.

“With the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report showing global warming of 1.5 degrees as almost-certain, securing COP26’s goal of global net zero by mid-century is no longer a question of policy or politics - it’s the only option.”

MATT JUDEN-BLOOMFIELD

Matt is a manager in the newly formed Net Zero Transformation team at Deloitte and his research for the MSt is on Universal Basic Income, funded by automation output.

“Personally feel this is a pivotal moment.

Extreme weather events are getting worse, global unrest and crucially inequality are at untenable levels. Something must change soon. My hope is a unilateral set of punchier targets and laws mandating divestment from fossil fuels and investment in regenerative technologies to bring us in line with Paris targets sooner. It won’t be easy but it’s necessary”

SARAH WALKLEY

Sarah is the Chief Research Officer for Autovista Group, and executive team lead for sustainability, encompassing travel, supplier choice and training staff on homeworking carbon literacy. Her MSt research looks at the importance of second language learning for sustainability, particularly in relation to the target of 1 million Welsh-speakers by 2021. Learning another language helps us challenge cultural assumptions, which is vital to adapt to environmental and climate needs.

“COP26 is an important event in the story of our country and planet. I am heartened that it is receiving so much attention, but worried it may not achieve all that we hope, especially given the current UK Government’s counterproductive actions, e.g. signing off new coal mines.” ⁄ 12

Cri de Cœur How to respond to the climate and biodiversity crisis amid climate denial from the top? For Cambray Crozier, an MSt in Sustainability Leadership (2020), it’s all about advocacy.

Cambray’s new Cri de Cœur podcast was joint-winner of the inaugural Fitzwilliam Environment Award. It features interviews with leaders in climate change advocacy and sustainability.

It is the culmination of a journey into politics sparked by a political awakening in 2012, while working in France. Back in the US, she started working in politics for Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton – a Democrat – and then spent time working in progressive leadership roles in public policy and public affairs positions focused on healthcare and technology. Four years of climate denial in the White House led business and civil society to the forefront of action in the United States.

“I got quite frustrated with simply following ‘the political process’,” she says. “I saw opportunities for policy decisions that would positively impact Minnesotans, for which there was ample budget, and yet change wasn’t getting made. Meanwhile, I was watching business move forward rapidly to establish partnerships and implement innovative solutions. I needed to move towards the action.”

The result: her current job working in issues management for a US Fortune-50 company, and her current part-time Masters, which she finds “a relief ”.

“The community here in Cambridge is having a much more mature level of conversation around climate change and biodiversity, and grappling with more intricate, substantive concepts. It’s exciting to be around people with significant expertise who are still open to new ideas. In my own context, so many around me seem to feel that the

status quo is working and nothing needs to change. My aim is to influence this attitude wherever I can.

“My hope for my work and podcast is to document and reflect on how to bring about actual positive change as individuals. To spur the level of systemic change we must understand a range of different strategies. How can we leverage our own position and serve as leaders and change agents in the places and spaces we are in? We need to engage the very systems we are each part of.

“Some research (Hadler and Haller, 2011, Abrahamse and Steg, 2013) has found that demonstrating environmentallypositive lifestyle behaviours can influence those around you.

I’ve made further and more visible changes to my own lifestyle, including reducing my food waste. This was directly informed by my podcast interview with Anne-Marie Bonneau, the ‘zerowaste chef.’ But my firm belief is that it is just as important to focus on advocacy in one’s workplace, family, and community, and for each of us to be as vocal as we can be. I aim to be the ‘squeaky wheel’.”

She quotes Professor Simon Lewis, who says the climate crisis is not caused by vague ‘human actions’ nor due to some innate part of human nature, but “by specific investments by specific people in specific things. Change those, and we can change the future”. “I’m a new mom,” she adds. “I’ve just read the latest IPCC report and I recognise that the next decade is crucial. My baby was just born this year. We will have either taken the steps we need to take - or not – before she is 10 years old. I’d like to be positive about COP26. This could be the last conference with runway to choose a path ahead that is less destructive.”

Find Cambray Crozier’s Cri de Cœur wherever you get your podcasts. ⁄ 13

Image: Super Pit Goldmine in Kalgoorlie, Australia, by Viktor Posnov

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Beyond Eden

The environmental and social impact of mining is huge, but Fitz alumnus Dr Pete Whitbread-Abrutat (Natural Sciences, 1987) insists mined minerals are crucial to a Green transition.

The Eden Project

in captivity”. It’s now a flagship environmental education charity, named the best UK Leisure Attraction five years running.

In 1998 Dr Pete Whitbread-Abrutat, an environmental scientist, was sitting in a Portacabin five miles away from a huge clay pit in Cornwall that was destined to become the Eden Project. The mining company’s plan for the site, which had been a China clay quarry for 160 years, was to create a landfill.

“It was quite a rollercoaster,” Pete recalls.

“I worked as a volunteer for the first few months, and we often thought we’d be out of a job by the end of the month. There was this grand vision but no money – we didn’t know if it would continue.” As part of a rapidly expanding horticulture team sourcing plants from around the world, Pete set up the Plant Sciences team, looking at soils, pests and diseases and plant records, and also dealing with living collections which grew from tiny nurseries in makeshift temporary buildings to huge collections currently seen in the Eden Project’s tropical and Mediterranean biomes, and the Outdoor gardens spaces. It was an ambitious but ultimately pragmatic solution to a landscape scarred by mining. Not that it was straightforward.

Under the leadership of Sir Tim Smit, a former record producer behind the Lost Gardens of Heligan, it became the Eden Project - two stunning, giant ‘biomes’ housing a huge global garden and the “largest rainforest

“You need people to believe in the idea, and go the extra mile,” Pete adds. “If we had tried to do it by committee it wouldn’t have worked. A lot of the work was Tim promoting the project to the establishment, working in partnership

with a myriad of other organisations and trusting the young Eden team to deliver.”

In 2002, Pete was instrumental in partnering the Eden Project with mining behemoth Rio Tinto. While seemingly poles apart, the tieup between the often controversial mining company and an eco-visitor attraction was designed to emphasise best practice in mining, and raise public awareness of the mining industry. While he has seen at first-hand how mining can go wrong, Pete insists that its practice is necessary and fundamental to our lives: “We can’t have a modern world without a mining industry. Everything we use is either grown or mined. For example, electric cars require more copper, and lithium mining to increase vastly. Don’t get me wrong, the global mining industry produces between 4 and 10% of greenhouse gas emissions. It’s still a big deal, but if we want EVs there will be more mining, not less. Many people in the mining industry want to change too – they have kids.”

In the intervening 20 years, Pete has worked hard to create productive change in some of the most challenging places: “Eden had a massive influence on my career. I was

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Native Tree Nursery for restoring Brazil’s Atlantic Rainforest, picture Pete Whitbread-Abrutat

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inspired to see what other people were doing in the field of mine closure and landscape restoration. I’ve since worked all over the world, from Central America to the middle of Liberia. When you visit places like that, you see similar environmental and socio-economic problems and their causes – and also potential solutions, big and small. It’s important for somebody in my position to walk the talk, and I’ve made lifestyle changes. We’ve got solar panels and a domestic battery and a biomass boiler. We’ve planted a thousand native trees on our little field. I’ve reduced my driving 8090%. I always offset my flights. It’s not ideal, but it’s better than nothing. And anybody can change their diet - my meat consumption is down 75%”.

In 2011 Pete received a grant from the Churchill Fellowship, which allowed him to investigate landscape restoration projects from the mining towns of the Appalachians to the Everglades; from Central America to the Amazon; and from the Galapagos to Patagonia. The result was a report which outlined best practice – and his own social enterprise consultancy, Future Terrains.

As well as training students in best practice, Future Terrains works with Governments and mining companies to ameliorate their environmental and social impacts on specific projects – environmental and social audits of mining projects worldwide. A recent study assessed a mining project in an ecologically and socially sensitive part of Guinea, west Africa – a mine supplying the global aluminium industry’s demand for bauxite.

In the UK itself, Pete has carried out the environmental and social due diligence audit on a huge polyhalite mine. Located under the North York Moors National Park, the project involves a 23-mile tunnel to transport the fertiliser to Teesside. Pete’s work with Future Terrains has also included restoring wooded landscapes in mining sites as far afield as Arctic

Sweden and Thailand – and a range of work in Afghanistan, where he has seen first-hand how climate change is a driver for conflict and population change.

Between 2017 and 2020 Pete did pro-bono and paid work on projects in Afghanistan, working for DFID, the UN, the World Bank, and local charities from Kabul to Bamyan, and from Daykundi to Mazar in the north.

“Afghanistan is one of the places suffering the worst from climate change,” he says. “Many communities there are so reliant on mountain snowmelt to provide year-round water for growing food. They’ve had a drought for the last few years: the harvest is down 40-50% this year alone. And that drives population movements – it shows how environmental pressures link to political conflict and instability. Until you see it happening before your eyes it’s hard to believe. One of our projects involved assisting mountain communities to increase the efficiency of their water use and protecting soil on hillsides from overgrazing and erosion.” He describes the victory of the Taliban as “literally unbelievable”. “I am appalled at how unprepared our Government was for a foreseeable contingency.”

For Pete, the events in Afghanistan also raise concerns about the Government’s stewardship of climate negotiations. “On previous form, I’m not optimistic for COP26, he says. “But longer term, there is a huge opportunity in the Green Revolution: new ways of farming, new ways of doing industry and society. It’s about one world: a common humanity and a common future.”

FIND OUT MORE To find out more about Pete’s work, you can find his organisation at futureterrains.org

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From the field Fitzwilliam students are regularly engaged in fieldwork as part of their studies. From COVID restrictions, to erupting volanoes, it’s clear that 2021 was an eventful year for Ellie, Alexandra and Rosie.

The world is on fire, with grasslands burning across the continents. As well as impacting humans directly through PM2.5 particles, these fires release carbon into the atmosphere. Precisely how much, however, is unknown.

PhD student Ellie Wilding (2020) is researching what happens to carbon at burn sites in such open ecoystems, focusing on experimental burn plots in the oak savannahs in Minnesota and Kruger National Park in South Africa, and heathlands of the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall, which are burned by Natural England and the National Trust to prevent them from growing into forests.

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“Heathland is an ecosystem always cut short by grazing or burning. But that has also created a very unique habitat for lots of wildlife. It’ll be really interesting to see how much of a direct effect the climate has on repeated burn sites. These ecosystems are repeatedly burned, either by prescribed fires or wild fires, over time. Some were burned 20 years ago, four years ago and so on. I’ll be looking at carbon in those successional stages.”

Thanks to agriculture and development, the amount of savannah is decreasing, so globally there is a decrease in savannah fires.

“It sounds misleading. And there is a massive increase in places where fires haven’t occurred, historically.”

Ellie’s current work on savannahs builds on her MPhil research on a different kind of grassland: seagrass.

“Wetlands store so much more carbon in the soil than any other system in the planet, and there’s no limit to the amount of carbon that can be stored by seagrass. As it’s underwater, it won’t saturate – you can constantly accrete sediment and build it up over time.”

Ellie won the Fitz LKY scholarship for her MPhil, which involved mapping the seagrass around Singapore to help the citystate become the first country to quantify

their natural capital. COVID broke the week before she was due to fly out.

“I was gutted – this research really needed to be done. I had to change everything three months to the deadline.”

With a month to go, Ellie gained access to online maps of Singapore over the last 60 years, creating a model that estimated whether an area was likely to be high or low carbon based on geology, slope, and coastal development. “It was a seascape approach – mud flat, seagrass and mangroves are a mosaic.

You can’t just protect or create one specific habitat.”

While savannahs suffer from high temperatures, seagrass – which grows on every continent bar Antarctica – mainly suffers from coastal development and our appetite for fish.

“Trawling both destroys the ground but also muddies the water,” she says. “Seagrass needs sunlight; suspended sediment blocks that.

And repeated trawling just kills everything.

Seagrass is a massive carbon sink until it’s destroyed – and then it becomes a source.”

The University of Singapore is now hoping to increase carbon storage in no-trawling zones by trialling seagrass nurseries, if a current world-first pilot at Swansea University is successful. But conservation is key.

As part of her final-year Natural Sciences degree project, Alexandra Nikolin (2018) worked in conjunction with the Save Our Seas Foundation using data collected on D’Arros in the Seychelles, north of Madagascar.

The project drew on acoustic telemetry data from receivers around the St Joseph atoll. They recorded the temperature and movement patterns of juvenile green sea turtles – which feed on seagrass in the lagoons – and hawksbill turtles which feed on sponges dispersed around the coasts. Provisional conclusions from the data showed that both species preferred the lagoon.

“It was surprising,” Alexandra explains.

“Sea turtles are ectotherms, they rely on the environment to regulate their temperatures.

And thermo-regulation is important because the oceans are warming. Our results suggested that these juvenile turtles weren’t actively moving for temperature regulation, which was

encouraging. Maybe they were using other means, or maybe the temperatures were in the acceptable range.”

“Organisms are dynamic and the more we understand their movement ecology – when, where and why they move – the better we can put our resources into their areas. The bigger picture of the whole project is that green turtles are endangered, and hawksbills are critically endangered by habitat destruction or direct harvesting – killing. They are umbrella species – if you protect them, then other species benefit.”

The provisional findings could allow resources to be directed into these lagoons, or towards the establishment of dynamic maritime protected areas. Alexandra has now moved from research into policy via an MSc in Global Environmental Change and Policy at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Bottom, Eelgrass bed (by Divedog @Adobe Stock); Right, Green turtle (by Michal @Adobe Stock).

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from the lava flow – it had destroyed the local church. It’s a traditional Catholic community on the island. For the older generation, the church was their focal point. As a Catholic myself – my grandparents are devout - that had a chilling effect.”

Some indigenous Guanches peoples of the Canaries believed that volcanoes were inhabited by a disgruntled demon or God – something Rosie found easy to connect with.

In August, Rosie Rice (Geography, 2019) was three weeks into working as a GeoIntern at the Teide National Park in Tenerife to research an eruption dating from 1705. Her plan had been to draw comparisons between the 18th century eruption and the last eruption, back in 1971. But events took a dramatic turn, when the activity on La Palma developed into an eruption. History swiftly moved into a live emergency and the GeoTenerife team made plans to get closer to the action.

“We’d all studied it,” Rosie recalls.

“But none of us had seen an eruption. As Geography students, when we arrived we were really excited, like kids in a sweetshop. Seeing fountains of lava for the first time at night, rather than as pictures in a textbook, or in an article – actually seeing it, it was absolutely incredible. We all just stood there in silence, awestruck - with hands on our head.

“On our first full day, smoke was rising ⁄ 20

“It was like a beast you had to respect. The rumble in the background was constant, and then you’d hear something like cannons going off – soundwaves bouncing off flat buildings, and shutters rattling. Even 12km away, the sliding doors of our accommodation were shaking. When we were 2km away, it was like fighter jets were flying overhead.

“As the week went on, our perspective changed. I remember the night before my 21st birthday just wanting it to end. It was like a warzone – it all just seemed unfair on locals. One evening a woman just burst into tears after her husband looked through our binoculars to see their house being destroyed.”

The impact of the latest eruption is in sharp contrast to the 1971 event. With over 1,000 homes destroyed by lava and ash, it is the most devastating eruption in the island’s recorded history. At the time of writing, a second lava flow has sparked fresh evacuations.

“In 1971 people took picnics to watch the eruption,” Rosie adds. “No one was turning up with picnics this time. We were in El Paso on the second day and evacuees were just coming back to their houses. I was thinking about interviews for my dissertation – that was what was going through my head. But then I saw an argument blowing up between a visitor from Tenerife and a La Palma local.

“That was when it hit me that it was people’s livelihoods we were documenting, people whose houses had been destroyed, who had lost everything. I just got overwhelmed and burst into tears. We all left the area. No one spoke in the car on the way back. From then on, the ethical side of what we were doing really hit home, in a way that it doesn’t when you’re filling out an ethics form.”

Rosie is now back in Cambridge, to complete her Geography degree, and to write up her work on La Palma. But she is keen to return…

“Those situations made me realise there is more to life than just putting letters after your name; there is a world outside Cambridge. I just want to go back to La Palma now, and work in science communication around volcanology in some way”.

To donate to victims of the La Palma eruption, go to: https://justgiving.com/ crowdfunding/samulapalma

Natural capital is often expressed in terms of carbon capture, or the diversity of species, but our natural environment also plays a significant role in our psychological wellbeing. This term saw the appointment of Fitzwilliam’s first Wellbeing Coordinator, Claire Thompson, for whom the natural world is key to her practice.

Wellbeing at Fitz Claire is a trained Psychological Wellbeing Practitioner with the NHS and the author of Mindfulness and the Natural World, as well as The Art of Mindful Birdwatching. In her practice she encourages participants to engage with the natural world, through nature walks and guided meditations.

“A leading cause of mental health challenges is our disconnection from ourselves and wider nature,” Claire explains. “We’ve forgotten how to listen and respond to our physical, emotional and psychological feedback. This is one of the main root causes of depression, anxiety and burnout.

“The challenges of wellbeing and mental health are complex, and individual. They exist on a spectrum, from dealing with emotional responses to life to clinical mental illness – and everything in between. But emotions are part of life, and emotional ill health is feedback.

“Life can be painful. Whether we’ve experienced a break-up, find work stressful, feel homesick, feel lonely, we need to learn to look after ourselves for the first time at University, it’s normal to feel what we feel.”

In a high-achieving environment like Cambridge, with the particular intensity of a short teaching term, students and academics alike face pressure to perform at the highest level. All of us – whether involved in the academic life of the College, or the operational – are facing heightened challenges due to COVID. “We don’t leave our emotions at the door when we are at work or study. That doesn’t mean we need to wear our hearts on our sleeves, but if we are to value wellbeing, it’s important to recognise and respect our humanity. I hope to support students and staff with this.”

At present, there is significant focus on student resilience, but unchecked this approach also has its shadow side: “Resilience can suggest that wellbeing depends on individuals alone.” she says.

“But wellbeing is something we develop in relationship. In nature, things are resilient due to their connections with everything else. Nothing exists in isolation, and we need to support each other. The University is a competitive environment. Playful competition can be energising but, like anything, it can go too far. Measuring our own worth against other people’s success can be damaging.”

These thoughts on wellbeing are also relevant when it comes to the climate and biodiversity crises.

“I’m not a climate change expert, but I do know that behavioural changes based on facts and rational thinking are often short-term.

Unless we connect with emotion, it’s hard to create a sustainable change. Ultimately, longterm solutions will be found by looking inward, where the roots of our destructive behaviours can lie. I believe that bringing awareness to our relationship with ourselves and the rest of the world is key to bringing forth a happier, more peaceful and sustainable world.”

See fitz.cam.ac.uk/wellbeing for the wellbeing provision Claire will support. If you’d like to read some of Claire’s work, then her books are available here: https://bit.ly/3vISGNI

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A new approach to gardening

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Chateau Villandry in the Loire Valley

THE FRENCH CONNECTION If you take a stroll around the Fitzwilliam site, you are more likely to encounter artichokes, pumpkins and onions, than monoculture lawns.

Inspired by Chateau Villandry ( far left), the gardening team have been cultivating a cornucopia of vegetables.

There is a quiet revolution happening in the gardens of Britain, and Fitzwilliam College is in its vanguard, maximising biodiversity with nodig gardening, edible potagers, and bio-char compost inspired by the Incas and Mayans. We caught up with Head Gardener, Steve Kidger, to hear about his approach, his inspiration, and our curious connection with a certain chateau in central France...

For any recent visitor to Fitz, it may have been something of a surprise to encounter formal vegetable planting in place of the more traditional Cambridge lawns. The changes in New Court in particular indicate where College horticulture is heading. Back in 2019 it was a monoculture lawn suffering, like many gardens across Cambridge, from an acute attack of chafer beetles, recalls Head Gardener, Steve Kidger, “The lawns were just being torn up from crows looking for beetle grubs. It was a daily onslaught...every morning we’d have to start again, raking the torn up grass, patching and repairing as best we could. As weeks turned into months, we exhausted all the conventional solutions.

We tried nematodes, we tried returfing it which didn’t work, because the birds came down and just started ripping it up all over again. The patches were growing bigger and spreading as the grubs, and the crows, began to move to new sections. It was desperate. And so that’s when we thought of doing something radically different.” Instead of attempting to beat the crows in their destruction, Steve and his team decided to collaborate with them on the redesign...

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Each autumn the College now enjoys a vegetable harvest - first come, first served!

Inspired by a 2006 visit to the formal kitchen gardens of Chateau Villandry in the Loire Valley, Steve began the steady transformation of New Court into a potager, or ornamental edible garden.

Today, it features a stunning array of organic fruit and vegetables: broccoli, courgettes, red onion, swedes, aubergines, pumpkins, raspberries, strawberries, tomatoes, artichokes and chillis. Combined with stylised hedges, roses and wild flowers (planted at Fitzwilliam since 2013), it makes for an incredible combination: a habitat, allotment and ornamental amenity all at once.

“I’d always wanted to do what I’d seen in Villandry.

The geometry is right for it. Alumni who see it now will be stunned. It’s still ornamentally, visually and aesthetically appealing. And it’s still an amenity, but more atmospheric.

And because you can eat the garden, it helps staff and students interact with it more.

“We have wildflowers for attracting insects of all kinds, creating habitats for smaller animals – food sources for insects and humans alike. This is the future of the garden as we see it at Fitzwilliam College.”

And not just Fitzwilliam – Steve’s innovations have inspired edible gardens in other Colleges, including Clare Hall. The potager complements existing allotments near the Master’s Lodge and Wilson Court, with more to come.

There have been other changes to improve our impact ⁄ 24

on the environment. The gardening team use rechargeable battery-powered hedge trimmers and strimmers. And this year they have also introduced the use of bio-char composts, which sees koa and coconut fibre infused with bits of charcoal through a process called pyrolysis.

“The benefit of using bio-char is the reduction in CO2 that is released into the atmosphere – when bio-char is spread you are left with charcoal you can use on the soil,” Steve explains. “The structure of individual charcoals is like a honeycomb, the perfect home for microbes. It also retains water, stopping the soil from leaching nutrients.

And as charcoal is carbon it’s literally carbon capture. This isn’t new technology really...it was practiced by the Incas and the Mayans to create their terraces.”

A more modern inspiration is Charles Dowden, a pioneer of no-dig gardening, in which a new layer of compost is built up above existing soil, keeping the symbiotic relationship between trees, plants, and mycealium of the soil fungus, a network of cells carrying nutrients to root hairs of plants and trees.

“In taking this approach, gradually the soil will improve.

You’d chew it up all up by ploughing. By leaving it in the soil, you maintain the beneficial fungal structure of the soil, and build up nutrients on top like forest humus.”

As COVID restrictions lift and we are able to travel more, we look forward to seeing you around the College grounds!

A Porter’s view It’s the early hours of the morning, and for Porter Junita Davies, carrying out her security check, it’s an opportunity to see another side of Fitz hidden to those fast asleep. A family of badgers have been spotted ambling along the edge of the east wall. A muntjac deer with its fawn munches on leaves behind the Auditorium. In the tall beeches framing the Grove, tawny owls hoot, and a fox pauses in the shadows with her four young cubs, with one eye on a blackbird in the undergrowth.

The blackbird is alive to the danger and joins the rest of his kind in a dawn chorus. They are perched on the Grove; on the Chapel; on the Lantern roof; on the top of the Auditorium.

For Junita, a keen birdwatcher and lover of nature, these encounters make Fitzwilliam a special place to work. “Being in nature is a wonderful thing for your peace of mind,” she says.

“And I’m always amazed we get what we do here, considering we’re located between two roads. I studied Geography and interest in the environment and wildlife goes hand in hand for me. Whenever I have days off, I tend to be out in the local area with binoculars and a camera. It’s fun, it’s connecting.”

Thanks to Junita’s photography and the gardening team’s keen eyes, the Fitz community regularly hears about our semi-hidden community. Whether it’s the grass snakes giving Freshers a surprise, or peacocks paying a visit to the student accommodation, there’s always something to see. The latest excitement has been our community of pipistrelle bats. “I have a bat detector,” Junita explains. “It picks up the sound they make and translates it into one we can hear. Last night it was picking them up constantly. We have a bat roost in one of the big lime trees. They’re beautiful silhouetted against the dawn sky.”

Although it has lots of open spaces, Cambridgeshire is not a haven for wildlife. As Junita explains, “Cambridgeshire is a treeless county, one of the least forested areas in Europe. And there is huge pressure on water supply; our chalk streams often dry up in summer. I feel that the city needs to slow down. We need to value wildlife when it’s threatened by development.”

And so, while our site between Storey’s Way and Huntingdon Road may be relatively small, it is an important and muchloved space, both for the humans who live and work here, and also the animals.

The pathway from Wilson Court, past the First Undergraduate, to the MCR.

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Most of the contributors to this edition have chosen to foreground their academic research or professional contributions as their action on environmental issues, but for this final piece, we interviewed Fitzwilliam Graduate Tutor, and Head of the Department of Geography, Professor Bhaskar Vira, on the role that activism must play in our response to the climate and biodiversity crises.

The importance of activism ⁄ 26

Inset image, Bhaskar, doing research for his PhD in 1993, with Chipko activist Mr Bisht, in Chamoli Uttarakhand

Ever since he learned about the Chipko movement during the 1970s and 1980s in his homeland, the Indian Himalayas, Bhaskar has been a supporter of environmental activism.

The Chipko movement began in response to commercial logging operations and, after several decades of action, it led to a Supreme Court ban on tree-felling at altitude. It is clear that this early experience was formative.

Bhaskar believes the increasingly visible environmental groups in Cambridge and the wider UK are crucial to solving the climate and biodiversity crises: “Activism is hugely important in terms of keeping our consciences alive,” he says. “Chipko was powerful; one of the most celebrated environmental movements, and very much a grassroots movement. Activists challenge a complacency that can set in otherwise. They act as the conscience of society. And I’ve seen that in more recent forms of activism in this country.”

With the UK Government criticised for their lacklustre decarbonisation and conservation, what does he think of protestors like Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain?

“Nonviolent protest is often designed to be disruptive. Activists want to get their point across. People often call them the weapons of the weak. Holding up a motorway is a weapon of the weak. They don’t necessarily have access to the boardrooms. They get their voices heard through high-profile, charismatic campaigns.

“The street activist creates a space for policy dialogue. Otherwise Governments won’t even be open to dialogue. Activism needs to be coupled with pragmatic policy intervention.

“There is a long tradition of civil disobedience - the Chipko movement were themselves following a tradition practised by people like Ghandhi, by Martin Luther King,

by Nelson Mandela. All believed in nonviolent activism. I think we need to recognise that as a really powerful tool for social change.”

Britain’s manifesto closely enough, but in general I support the climate strikers – they make these questions visible on an international scale. So I lend my voice to the school strikers, I help them organise.”

This organisational support extends beyond the personal, and he recently supported a student activist takeover of the Geography Department Instagram account, with updates about COP26.

“I’m giving them a platform for them to amplify their voices,” Bhaskar adds. “As moral beings trying to live good lives, increasingly in a climate emergency and biodiversity emergency context that means being responsible towards the climate. That’s a moral commitment we should all have. However, personal responsibility cannot shift the blame away from Governments and industry, businesses – the people who really have the means to make big changes.”

Bhaskar warns against emphasising a technological solution to the climate crisis in terms of carbon capture, as giving people a false sense of security.

“It also takes the pressure off the Government in terms of policy choices they need to make, and also lets individuals in their own lifestyle and choices they make. A technofix takes the focus off everything else we need to do.”

He also says that those who design technology may not forsee the winners and losers – citing a social forestry initiative in India in the 1970s and 1980s. Designed to fix a rural energy crisis, it resulted in rich landlords dispossessing poor farmers to access the lucrative tree subsidy market.

But should we all be marching?

“There is now a campaign to plant a trillion trees across the planet, but trees need land and water. Where is the spare land? Nobody has articulated where those trees go – and if you’re dispossessing poor farmers, you’ve got a problem.”

“I’m not going to personally lock myself up somewhere, but I am supporting activists.

In fact, I’m about to go down to the climate strikes. I’ve taken part in the marches and support them. I haven’t listened to Insulate

As a political scientist, Bhaskar focuses on how environmental changes often results in winners and losers. He says the closest thing to a win-win, however, is to end “harmful subsidies” of fossil fuels, including the low-tax

regime enjoyed by airlines on their kerosene.

“Airline travel is one example. It shouldn’t be possible to take a £10 flight. That’s a perverse incentive. The cost of train travel should not be more expensive than the cost of flights. That’s the type of policy decision Governments need to make. The more climate-damaging alternative needs to be more expensive than the train.

“In a densely populated country like the UK, public transport is viable. In Cambridge people sit in cars all day because you don’t have a good public transport system - buses are stuck in the same traffic jams as cars. But if you have a tax on petrol – a good climate change policy – it disproportionately affects the leastpaid worker. In Cambridge, some of the least well-paid people live furthest from the city.

We need good public transport.”

He says the Green New Deal proposed by the New Economics Foundation could recreate Green jobs for communities ravaged by deindustrialisation.

“If climate justice, social justice and economic recovery can be made to work together, you have a sweet spot. Of course, some will lose out, due to higher taxation on the rich. In my value system the fact the rich are paying for something to help the poor, that’s ok – someone else’s value system will say the opposite.”

It is in this context of Government stimulus packages that COP26 is important.

“If post-Covid spending commitments can be put towards a net-zero transition, there’s a real opportunity. It’s not the last chance.

But the longer we delay the decision, it will become more difficult. We can only emit a certain amount of carbon before the impacts of climate change are uncontrollable. We are already seeing these events by denselypopulated cities in the global south already.

And East Anglia is very low-lying and is an important agricultural production centre for the UK. It’s not unreasonable that you’ll have the coastline very close to Cambridge in a few decades. It’ll be easier to get the beach, I suppose.”

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