F E AT U R E
Teaching Net Zero Lecturers from across the UK present their thoughts on how to teach climate action and illustrate their approach with examples from current student work.
Teaching Climate Action Ross McLean and Tim Waterman
University of Edinburgh and Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL
Transforming to a climate neutral society will radically change the environment around us, but what environmental and societal implications are caught up in this transformation? Academic institutions play a significant role in exploring these issues, stirring debate and proffering visions of
adaptive industries, economies and infrastructures, ecosystem and material performances, alongside social justice, cultural and political motivations. While climate transition encompasses broad scale behavioural change that promotes environmental and social adaptation, it also requires identifying existing environmental components and social practices that significantly contribute to climate change resilience. For instance, while the climate emergency may seem a contemporary concern, scientific knowledge about climate change dates back to the 18th Century, while many communities have had to adapt to local climatic impacts for decades. Adaptation must be placed as a historical trajectory of insights and events, thinking forward through the past. The Bartlett School of Architecture
Border Dynamics: Park as Parliament. Pin Chu Chen, MA student
This project explores how centuries of geopolitical dispute and conflict have had an impact on the local flora and fauna of a site at the border of Norway and Russia. He designs a series of endangered plant and lichen gardens across the border to function as political meeting spaces.
Midwinter
28
recently hosted an online international symposium called ‘Intersectional Climates’, celebrating climate practices that prioritise ecological, political and poetic engagement with communities, places and disciplines, and which recognise that ideas and practices must be dealt with intersectionally – that issues of inequality are inseparable from climate change and biodiversity loss. Such practices enable greater societal solidarity for tackling the Climate Crisis as we look ahead to the forthcoming UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow. Two seminars, ‘Climate Change Practices’ and ‘Reinventing Planetary Practices and Imaginaries’, involved eight invited keynote speakers, including Vandana Shiva, Paul Gilroy, and visionary landscape architects Anuradha Mathur and Dilip da Cunha. These seminars preceded discussion events with
Spring-winter
Pin Chu Chen explores how centuries of geopolitical dispute and conflict have had an impact on the local flora and fauna of a site at the border of Norway and Russia. He designs a series of endangered plant and lichen gardens across the border to function as political meeting spaces.
