Global Sustainable Development News

This Thursday 8 November 2018, we will be welcoming Ross Eventon. He will give a guest lecture entitled: “Guatemala: Social Justice in the land of the Maya” in OC1.09 at 9.00am. Although this lecture is linked to the module GD313: Human Rights and Social Justice in Latin America and the Caribbean, the lecture is open to all GSD and LA students.

Guatemala is one of the poorest, most unequal societies in Latin America. For years it has competed with Haiti for the lowest place in the region on the Human Development Index. The legacy of a brutal civil war, which killed over 200,000 people, is still alive in the political system, rampant with corruption and dominated by business groups and the military. Activists and human rights defenders are murdered with impunity and imprisoned arbitrarily. The country's fabulous natural resources are exploited with little benefit for the population; almost every one of its five hundred rivers and rivulets are contaminated. Yet the government has debated elevating the "crime" of obstructing mining projects to "terrorism." The majority of Guatemalans are of indigenous descent, but political life remains the remit of the largely white or mestizo upper classes. Why has the struggle for social justice in Guatemala failed? What obstacles have prevented the unification of the indigenous population and the creation of a political apparatus that works in their interests? In this difficult scenario, what has been, and what can be, the role of international NGOs?

Warwick Engineering Society's 2018 Conference, 'Journey: To A Sustainable Future' takes place tomorrow, Wednesday 7th Novemeber (14:00-19:30). In what promises to be an insightful event discussing an array of sustainability issues, Dr. Leon Sealey-Huggins will be participating in a forum panel on 'Advancing Technology vs Altering Our Behaviour, Which Will Secure Our Future?'. Tickets remain available for the conference and more details can be found here.

Journey: To A Sustainable Future - Website

Life Sciences and GSD student Laura Mansfield was part of a team of 11 Warwick students which won a Gold Medal at the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition in Boston in October. With the goal of designing innovative solutions for producing safe water sources, Laura has been researching how gas vesicles in bacteria could counteract lead poisoning and heavy metal water contamination. The Warwick iGEM Team have also worked on Human Practices and Outreach aspect of the project, producing practical solutions for the real world. With the input of experts and stakeholders from across the world including Pakistan, Taiwan, and Malaysia, the team were commended for their studies and recommendations to combat biological, organic, and inorganic pollutants.

Congratulations to Laura and all involved!

Launching for the first time in Autumn 2019, Global Sustainable Development are partnering with the School for Modern Languages and Cultures to deliver a BASc in Hispanic Studies and GSD. This is the first of our degree programmes offering a modern language as a core component of the course. The degree is split 50-50 between GSD and Modern Languages and provides a truly interdisciplinary approach to studying the Hispanic World. With Hispanic Studies, students will study 50% language and 50% cultural modules. With GSD, students will gain a comprehensive and interrogative understanding of sustainable development, whilst also investigating some of the critical challenges facing Hispanic regions. Hear more from Dr. Stephanie Panichelli-Batalla, who will be teaching on the GSD side of the course:

“Studying Global Sustainable Development with Hispanic Studies offers you a unique opportunity to study a language and its cultural context from a different but complementary perspective. Acquiring excellent written and oral communication skills in the Spanish language, as well as a profound understanding of the cultural aspects of specific societies of the Hispanic world, will help you understand better the problems faced by the countries that are part of it. There is a particular focus on Latin America and the Caribbean, which offer an array of topics of interest, ranging from environmental issues, economic inequalities, to human rights violations. Using a problem-based approach possible solutions and ways to approach current issues are explored, while taking into consideration their respective cultural and linguistic context.”

On Thursday 18th October, staff, students and visitors from across the University and beyond were welcomed to the third Sustainability Summit, celebrating the University's achievements and sharing knowledge on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Students from GSD Society delivered a presentation about Warwick's expanding GSD courses offered by the School for Cross-faculty Studies and the courses' unique pedagogical approach. They also highlighted the important work GSD society is undertaking across campus to raise the profile of sustainable development. GSD Society were joined by the Environmental Sustainability Team, Climate Reality, and keynote speaker Farooq Ullah (Co-Founder and Co-Chair of the UK Stakeholders for Sustainable Development and a Director of Stakeholder Forum). You can read a full review of the Summit here.

Find out more about GSD Society

This summer, Dr. Stephanie Panichelli-Batalla, was awarded the Warwick Research Development Fund for her research on the Cuban international solidarity programme in Tanzania. This specific project is a collaboration with Dr. Virginie Grzelzyk (Aston University). The project will investigate how the concepts of aid and dignity underpin a distinctive approach to sustainable development in parts of the Global South, and explore how aid can turn into an agent of empowerment for recipient countries. Through an innovative and inter-disciplinary approach, both researchers will analyse the relationships between donor and recipient nations in South-South cooperation (SSC), amongst ODA countries, focusing particularly on the existing solidarity programmes between Cuba, the DPRK and the African continent. By analysing such relationships through qualitative and oral history interviews, this project will offer proposals on how these existing aid partnerships can be solidified and potentially streamlined in order for aid to be more effective, while also becoming a source of inspiration for other South-South and North-South cooperation relations.

Thursday 18 October 2018 | Zeeman MS01 | 6:15-9:30pm (prompt 6:30 start)

Come and celebrate sustainability at the University. The Warwick Sustainability Summit brings together students and staff with a passion for environmental sustainability. Through this event we aim to encourage different groups to collaborate on projects outside their specific fields. It's a chance to learn more about how the University, and everyone associated with it, are working towards making our campus more sustainable.

Following her summer internship, last week Seiwaa represented the SDG Advisory Unit of Ghana under the office of the President at the United Nations General Assembly.

Click on the title of this item to know more.

This Thursday 11 October 2018, we will be welcoming Dr. Maritza Carrasco-Marchessi. She will give a guest lecture entitled: “Chile 1973-1990: Memory, Oblivion and Uncertain Truths” in OC1.09 at 9.00am. Although this is linked to the module GD313: Human Rights and Social Justice in Latin America and the Caribbean, the lecture is open to all GSD and LA students.

Dr. Carrasco-Marchessi is an independent scholar who is currently working on how testimonies and the discourse of collective memory counterpoint and deconstruct those narratives built and established by the historical memory and the State. Her area of work is Post-dictatorial Chile and its transition to democracy during the late 80s and early 90s.

In her talk, she will string together her own testimony with those key historical events during the 17-year dictatorship in Chile and its transition to democracy. She will particularly focus on the discourse of denial and silence with which the State sought to cover up its systematic Human Rights abuse.

A new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that "we are already seeing the consequences of 1°C of global warming" and that "rapid, far-reaching, and unprecedented change in all aspects of society" are required to avert further damage to ecosystems and human society. Approved in Incheon, South Korea on 6th October, the report contains over 6,000 citations and differentiates between the consequences of 1.5°C and 2°C warming. The authors aim to indicate that whilst actions are beginning to be taken to counteract and mitigate human impact on the world's climate and ecosystems, these would need to "accelerate". Global warming is also now judged to be rising by 0.2°C per decade.

The IPCC report comes two months before the Katowice Climate Change Conference in December, where governments will meet to review the Paris Agreement.

The Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5ºC is available here