In the first of a series of posts to mark the Sixth International Conference on Learning Cities, which focuses on the role of learning cities in promoting climate action, Bjørn Bedsted, International Director at Democracy X, reflects on the potential of climate assemblies in facilitating a green transition
The gap between what needs to be done to live up to the Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty on climate change adopted by 196 Parties at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) on 12 December 2015, and what is being done is growing. This gap leads to increased polarization between those calling for faster implementation of mitigation measures and those affected by and resisting such measures.
The United Nations COP26 climate conference is an opportunity not only to galvanize political leadership but also to reflect on the role of education and the contribution of lifelong learning to climate action, writes Paul Stanistreet
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The future isn’t
what it used to be. Whereas once we imagined a future of chrome-plated,
high-tech convenience, limitless space exploration and driverless vehicles
scudding across the commuter-crammed skies of cities, it is now difficult to
imagine any kind of long-term future human civilization as we know it. Our
habits of production and consumption, our ways of living, without any sense of
planetary limitations, and our fetishization of economic growth are incompatible
with human survival. Humanity faces unparalleled global challenges, with the
future of the climate at their heart, and the warnings, from the United
Nations and others – and the consequences of further inaction
– are dire.
The need for
international cooperation is pretty much unprecedented; greater, I would say,
than it has been at any point since the United Nations was created to promote
and facilitate it. The COP26
climate change conference, held this week and next in Glasgow, is an
opportunity for leaders from across the globe to discuss ways of combatting the
effects of climate change and, crucially, of minimizing
further warming. Yet it comes at a moment when the spirit of
global cooperation has been in retreat. As UN Secretary‑General
António Guterres noted last month, vaccine
nationalism in the richer parts of the world is putting
global recovery at risk. The pandemic has not been the cause of nationalism, of
course – as in many other cases, COVID-19 has highlighted an area in which we
need to do better – but it has demonstrated how the leaders of the developed
world can struggle to act in a genuinely cooperative, multilateral way, even when
it is in their interests to do so. Continue reading →
