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Sustainable Planet

How can we achieve a more sustainable planet? How can nature improve our health? Could gender equality be the key to tackling climate change? What can renewable energy do for us? How can we clean up our oceans? Gresham Professor Jacqueline McGlade will look at how we can work towards a greener future for our planet, with each of her six lectures examining a different UN Sustainable Development Goal.

Professor Jacqueline McGlade is the Frank Jackson Foundation Professor of the Environment at Gresham College. She is also a Professor of Resilience and Sustainable Development at University College London and Professor at the Maasai Mara University in Kenya. (from gresham.ac.uk)

Lecture 1 - How to Avert a Climate Catastrophe
After the UN Climate Action Summit in September, our Environment Professor will be talking to three experts about whether we still have a meaningful chance of averting a climate catastrophe, and how we can get there.

Lecture 2 - Building Sustainable Communities: A New Era for Twinning
In contrast to their stark socio-economic and environmental differences, the communities of Harbury, UK and Sekenani, Kenya are building 'collaborative ecosystems' that are helping people and their environment to flourish.

Lecture 3 - Unlocking the Health Benefits of Nature
Nature's benefits to human health are so well-attested, that the medical profession is now actively engaged in fighting for a clean, healthy environment as a human right and prescribing it as treatment across the world from Shetland to Japan.

Lecture 4 - Ending Our Consumer Addiction
How can we end our intense consumer addiction and change our habits and values to be more sustainable? In this lecture Environment Professor Jacqueline McGlade will look at patterns of consumption and the concepts of sufficiency in communities across the world.

Lecture 5 - Can Gender Equality Help Solve Climate Change?
Is gender equality a key factor in tackling climate change? Many think so, and in this lecture Environment Professor Jacqueline McGlade will explain why in relation to UN Sustainable Development Goal 5 is to 'achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls'.

Lecture 6 - The Future of Our Oceans
Recent evidence about the extent of plastics and litter in our oceans has led to grassroots rejection of single-use plastics. This lecture will draw on McGlade's own research (published in 2020) on plastics in our seas.

Lecture 7 - The Last Mile: Ensuring Access to Affordable Energy to Poor, Rural Communities
How can we deliver clean and affordable energy to even the poor, especially in rural settlements, as set out in UN Sustainable Development Goal 7?