Seminars

Date: Tuesday 14th February
Time: 12 – 1pm
Location: Online via zoom

Images are everywhere, playing a central role in how we engage with climate change. Despite their importance though, they are often relegated to the status of background ‘wallpaper’: given little thought by researchers, journalists, policymakers and others. This is a problem as it can lead to images which can stigmatise particular groups of people, and which poorly represent the risks of climate change – and importantly, how we could address those risks. This talk will summarise Dr O’Neill’s work, from discussing which images are dominant in media narratives about climate change (and which are marginalised); to how this impacts on peoples’ engagement. Three cases studies of climate imagery (polar bears, climate protest and heatwave imagery) will be used to show the limitations of current visual portrayals of climate change in the media; but also to show how a more diverse visual discourse can help us re-envision how we might live in a climate-changed future.

Saffron O’Neill is Associate Professor in Geography at the University of Exeter, UK. She currently holds a Leverhulme Research Fellowship titled ‘The Visual Life of Climate Change’. Saffron is also Co-Director of the ESRC-funded ACCESS network (Advancing Capacity for Climate and Environment Social Science). She is a regular media commentator, and advises a diversity of stakeholders, on climate communication. Saffron tweets @SaffronJONeill.

Click on the image below to view the presentation.

Date: Friday 2nd December
Time: 12 – 1pm
Location: Zoom

The achievement of the Paris Agreement climate goals of well-below 2 degrees of warming requires companies to align their greenhouse gas emission reductions with this goal. To measure whether companies are compliant with the Paris targets we propose several strict conditions that any emissions allocation methodology must meet before it can be classified as Paris-Compliant. Our conditions focus on the need for a common, and early as practicable, base year for all companies and consistency with an underlying Paris-aligned decarbonisation pathway. Additionally, we propose four operationalisation requirements to ensure companies can declare they are on a Paris Compliant Pathway including calculations of their carbon budgets and re-alignment pathways. Applying example Paris-Compliant Pathways and associated metrics to ten high emission electric utility companies and ten cement companies, we find that all but one of these companies are not currently Paris-compliant, with every year of delayed action increasing their required rate of decarbonisation and hence the exposure of billions of investment dollars to transition risk. Applying this proposed method will ensure the Paris carbon budget is met and that progress can be tracked accurately – an imperative for any companies and stakeholders seeking to align their decision-making with the Paris Agreement.

Dr Saphira Rekker is a Senior Lecturer in Sustainable Finance at The University of Queensland and has a PhD in Finance. Saphira’s research focuses on tools to measure and verify the efficacy of decarbonisation commitments by corporations. As part of the Princeton-led Rapid Switch initiative, she leads UQ’s Corporate Climate MAP program, which evaluates the alignment of companies and investment portfolios with the Paris Agreement. Saphira is a member of the Technical Working Group of the Science Based Targets initiative for the oil and gas sector, and a key contributor to EU climate benchmarking regulation. She has ongoing collaborations with numerous industry partners including Fidelity International, Ernst & Young and Norges Bank Investment Management. Saphira’s research is cross-disciplinary and she has published in high impact journals, Nature Climate Change and Nature Communications, as well as several other highly ranked academic journals.

Date: Wednesday 23rd November
Time: 12 – 1pm
Location: Zoom

The loss and degradation of nature can lead to hopelessness and despair, which may undermine engagement in conservation actions. Movements such as Conservation Optimism aim to avert potential despair of those involved in the conservation movement. Some argue that fostering positive states such as hope or optimism can motivate engagement and action; however, others question whether fostering hope or optimism may inadvertently undermine perceived gravity of conservation challenges. There is little empirical evidence that identifies how positive states such as hope and optimism influence conservation engagement. Here we address this gap by quantifying dispositional hope and optimism with a representative sample of Australians (N=4285) and assess their relationship with indicators of conservation engagement, using the Great Barrier Reef in Australia as a case study. Our findings suggest that rather than undermining appreciation of the challenges involved in conservation, dispositional hope can strengthen appraisal of both the challenges and solutions, and thereby increase conservation engagement.

Angela Dean is a conservation social scientist with 20 years’ experience leading research and engagement programs with diverse communities. Her research draws on behavioural science to explore patterns and drivers of environmental stewardship, how people experience and perceive environmental change, and the effectiveness of different engagement & communication approaches in encouraging uptake of conservation actions. Angela works closely with a range of government and NGO partners and coordinates social monitoring of engagement in reef and waterway stewardship.

Date: Wednesday 14th September
Time: 12 – 1pm
Location: Online via zoom

In studies and rhetoric about the environmental crises arising from plastics, there is relatively little attention to the social and economic sides of the issues. In this seminar we present a series of studies, each leading to the successors. Originally, a project on ‘capturing coral reef ecosystem services’, in which we were working with remote coastal communities and embryonic small businesses respectively, brought us together and developed our interests. From there, we conducted a study in the same and another remote Indonesian location, on the local people’s views and experiences of ocean plastic pollution: their knowledge, mental models, and the use, disposal, and local consequences of single use plastics. Insights from this study led us to a literature review on corporate social responsibility in the food and beverages sector, source of much of the single use packaging that pollutes southeast Asia’s oceans. In turn, this led Anya to a study on recycling innovation and social enterprise opportunities in remote Australian Outback communities, and both of us to collaborate with the School of Chemical Engineering and many industry partners in an ARC Training Centre for Bioplastics and Biocomposites. We show the many opportunities for social science and business lenses on what are often considered environmental and technical issues, and the creativity of interdisciplinary teams and partnerships with communities and organisations.

Dr Anya Phelan is a Lecturer in social entrepreneurship and business sustainability within the Strategy and Entrepreneurship Discipline at the UQ Business School. Anya is also Entrepreneur in Residence with the CSIRO Plastics Innovation Hub and Impact Initiatives Advisor for Blue Oceans Capital. Her ongoing research efforts focus on entrepreneurship and sustainable development, and lie at the intersection of social impact, community, and the circular economy. She examines how entrepreneurial action helps solve intractable social and environmental problems, such as plastic pollution.

Prof. Emeritus Helen Ross formerly managed social sciences in the School of Agriculture and Food Sciences and remains a member of the Agribusiness and Rural Development group. She is an interdisciplinary social scientist specialising in social aspects of agriculture, fisheries, environmental management, and sustainable rural development. She focuses particularly on people-environment relationships, resilience, collaboration processes, and participatory methodologies. She is a Fellow of the Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand, past winner of its prestigious Simon Molesworth Award for contribution to Environmental Management and managing Editor of the Australasian Journal of Environmental Management (since 2005). She is a member of Healthy Land and Water (regional body for NRM) Science Committee and Chairs its Social Science Committee. She is a board member of Architectural Science Reviews and International Perspectives in Psychology, and associate editor for Frontiers in Marine Science.

Date: Friday 26th August
Time: 1 – 2pm
Location: Zoom

Australia’s trajectory on climate action has changed heading. We are no longer debating the reality of climate change or the importance of climate action; yet many challenges remain. Debate in the public sphere will likely centre questions about how the intangible dimensions of the climate policy regime, like emissions reduction targets, translate into tangible changes to Australia’s economy, communities, and environment. Such questions are no more important than in Australia’s regional energy producing communities that must navigate the risk and opportunities presented by these changes. In this talk I explore the complex and contested social dimensions of climate action, and particularly energy transition, in Australia’s energy producing communities. Drawing on recent social research, I share important social considerations for realising the positive outcomes for these communities.

Dr Bec Colvin is a senior lecturer in the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University. She completed her PhD at UQ in 2017. Bec researches the social and political dimensions of contentious issues associated with climate policy and energy transition. Her research is focused on understanding the complexity of how different people and groups engage with social, policy, and political conflict about climate and energy issues, particularly through the theoretical lens of the social identity approach. She has explored conflict about wind energy, coal seam gas, coal, and climate policy and energy transition more broadly, in settings ranging from the public sphere through to local communities.

Click on the image below to view the presentation.

Date: Friday 22nd July
Time: 12 – 1pm
Via Zoom

There is growing recognition, in both the public sphere and academia, of the mental health consequences of climate change. Terms like eco-anxiety, climate distress, ecological grief, and solastalgia describe an existential dread associated with the escalating climate crisis and the absence of a commensurate policy response. The emergence of a global pandemic has added further pressure on people and already strained healthcare systems. Research is urgently needed to uncover how people can be supported to take action while protecting their mental health.

This talk will cover published and preliminary findings from the “Climate Cares” research program coordinated by The Institute for Global Health Innovation and the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London. Our “Changing Worlds” study aimed to understand how young people coped with this dual challenge of climate change and a pandemic, to identify areas of resilience and ways in which we can assist them with building agency in a changing world. Key findings from online surveys of young residents in the UK and US (aged 16-24) will be presented as well as recently collected data from Barbados, Trinidad & Tobago and Guyana, offering a first-ever insight into eco-anxiety and the mental health impact of COVID-19 on young people in the Caribbean region. We hope to inspire discussion on future directions for this type of work in other regions, including Australia and the Pacific.

Ans Vercammen (she/her) is a Senior Research Fellow at the School of Communication and Arts at UQ and an honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London. She holds degrees in experimental psychology, behavioural neuroscience and conservation. She is interested in the dynamic relationship between people and nature, particularly how this influences pro-environmental behaviour and human wellbeing, whether beneficial (e.g. the salutogenic effects of nature exposure) or detrimental (e.g. ecological grief, anxiety and trauma). In the next stages of this research, she aims to focus on co-developing tools and techniques for psychological adaptation, to support those working at the frontlines of environmental protection.

Quinta Seon (she/her, they/them) is a Ph.D. candidate in Mental Health at McGill University. Quinta is collaborating with Inuit in Quebec towards a culturally adapted psychotherapy with virtual reality (VR) components. She is currently completing an internship at the University of the West Indies and has led the analysis of the “Climate Cares” Caribbean survey.