Highlights from the Sustainability Symposium 2019
Anna Vall Navés attends the Sustainability Symposium 2019 to hear a variety of experts discuss solutions to the climate emergency.
On Saturday 5th October, Climate Action Society (CAS) held the second edition of their Sustainability Symposium at UCL’s Institute of Education. CAS are a student society founded on the need for urgent action against climate change, and the Symposium - one of their flagship events - brought together leaders in fields as diverse as fashion, science, business and education to discuss the climate emergency and strategies to tackle it.
The event was held in collaboration with more than 40 student societies across the UK. Attendees could also find climate-focused organisations such as the UK Student Climate Network, Extinction Rebellion and the food waste app Too Good to Go at stalls before the conference.
Photography by Zina Larbi
The event opened with a brief address from Aliza Ayaz, Founder and Chairperson of CAS, and Joanna Marshall-Cook of Sustainable UCL, a team that work to improve the university’s environmental performance. In her speech, Ayaz said the Symposium “falls on the belief that we need a different way of doing business” and emphasised “carbon neutrality on campuses”. In turn, Marshall-Cook pledged to achieve “a zero carbon UCL” by 2030, with zero carbon buildings by 2024.
The first panel, “Corporate Responsibility: Should the C-Suite or Government Lead the Change?”, questioned whether governments and businesses can cooperate in fighting climate change. The general consensus among speakers was that corporations and governments should enable each other and pursue a “thoroughly bound-up approach”. However, Paul Ekins, Professor at the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources, noted that the profit-oriented mindset of corporations can be difficult to reconcile with tackling climate change. By the end, discussion turned towards the individual’s power as a voter, consumer and investor. “People do things, not the corporates or the government”, the panel moderator succinctly concluded.
Photography by Zina Larbi
The second panel, “Shifting Mindsets for Sustainable Consumption”, focused on the changes individual consumers should make to reduce damage to the environment. Tara Button from BuyMeOnce and Fashion Revolution’s Ilishio Lovejoy encouraged the audience to invest in long-lasting and sustainable products - a goal both organisations are committed to. The panel moderator agreed that we should “redefine our value structure”, avoid the allure of fast fashion and instead consume durable, quality products. Vegan activist and filmmaker ‘Earthling Ed’ also noted the power of consumers “in the supermarkets”. The easiest thing an individual can do to minimise their environmental damage is give up animal products, he argued.
The panel ended with a note of caution to not lose sight of the “bigger picture” when it comes to climate change. Lovejoy argued that public discourse around sustainable consumption tends to come from a “very middle-class point of view”. She pointed out that this neglects the experience of different social groups in fighting climate change and privileges individual choices, forgetting the need for systemic change.
The Symposium then paused for a food and networking break, featuring exclusively vegan and vegetarian options. Grace Lai, a first-year Psychology and Education student at UCL, chatted to Pi News about why she attended: “I’m quite an environmentalist, but it’s always good to find different ways to fight climate change. I’m definitely also a fan of Earthling Ed.” She added that, while she was enjoying the event as a whole, she preferred the second panel, describing it as “the one more of us could relate to”.
Felipe Riquelme, an Energy Systems and Data Analytics MSc student, told Pi that while he does not consider himself an environmentalist yet, he’s interested in learning more. When asked whether he would change any habits after hearing the second panel, he said he would like to become a vegetarian. “But it’s difficult”, he admitted. Riquelme also mentioned the challenge of reconciling financial constraints with ethical choices in an economic system that is not, as several speakers argued, geared towards environmentally-friendly consumption.
The third and final panel, “Is Climate Action Inclusive?”, grappled with the issue of diversity in the climate change movement. When asked the title question, Luisa Miranda Morel answered simply: “No, but it can be”. Working at C40 Cities, an organisation encouraging sustainability in cities across the world, Morel said she learned that any fruitful discussion about climate action “needs to foster discussions about class and poverty too”. Elisa Calliari, from the UCL Department of Political Science, emphasised the urgent need to include indigenous knowledge systems in climate change discourse and to understand the needs of developing nations.
The speakers seemed to find agreement in the notion that inclusivity and climate action could not be considered separately. Morel emphasised the danger of non-inclusive climate movements: “Climate action can actually worsen inequality, if carried out without thinking of possible impacts beyond the climate”. According to the speakers, inclusivity has to feature prominently in every stage of climate action.
As the Sustainability Symposium came to a close, Maria Escalante, a UCL alumnus, reflected on the various discussions. “There’s still so much to be learned when it comes to the climate crisis; we’re all still learning, and events like these are so important. Many people defend specific causes within climate change movements, but at the end of the day, we’re united by a common interest,” she told Pi. “It’s so encouraging to see so many different people here today,” Escalante concluded.