Fundamentals of climate change action

2nd February 2023


Hello and welcome to another edition of Transform magazine.

The lessons and progress from COP27 have been well and truly digested, and in this issue we have a fascinating collection of comment and articles that speak to the fundamentals of climate change action.

At every COP there are passionate and articulate delegates from island states, challenging other countries to mitigate before these fragile places disappear. Climate change scientists say they are right to be so concerned and, according to Dr Parag Khanna, the futurologist and founder of FutureMap, these islands will disappear in the future, and moreover there will be other nations that will be unable to function as countries. This will have devastating consequences. Dr Khanna argues that there will be another wave of mass migration – but this must be seen in the context of human movement that has taken place for millennia, since well before the advent of the nation state.

The three pillars on which much of the COP process is based are adaptation, mitigation and more equitable financial distribution. However, a major parliamentary inquiry in the UK has highlighted how little attention, relatively speaking, policymakers give to adaptation, and how urgent the situation is becoming, given that climate change is making the conditions in which we expect infrastructure to operate successfully all the more uncertain. Huw Morris has been investigating.

"A major parliamentary inquiry in the UK has highlighted how little attention, relatively speaking, policymakers give to adaptation, and how urgent the situation is becoming"

As we emerge from several weeks of over-indulgence, the amount of waste that the festivities bring starts to hit home, and never more so than on food waste. Reducing food waste has been something that I have considered in almost every stage of my career, from presenting Farming Today to sitting on the advisory panel of the National Food Strategy. Being able to derive maximum nutrition from the food we buy is all the more important with a cost-of-living crisis in Europe; David Burrows looks at what the UK is doing to reduce the amount of food that ends up in the bin.

We hope you enjoy this issue and we welcome your feedback and suggestions. Please do get in touch if there is anything that you would like to see featured in the magazine.

Sarah Mukherjee MBE, CEO, IEMA

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Transform articles

IEMA’s deputy CEO reflects on announcements and controversy at COP28

With the first week of COP28 drawing to a close, IEMA’s deputy CEO, Martin Baxter, reflects on some of the key announcements made so far, addresses the controversy surrounding the climate summit, and highlights what to look out for in the second week.

7th December 2023

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Thousands of people have gathered in the UAE for this year’s COP28 climate summit, including IEMA CEO Sarah Mukherjee MBE, and deputy CEO, Martin Baxter.

1st December 2023

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Groundbreaking research warns that the models used by the finance sector to predict climate scenarios could easily sink our retirement pots… and the global economy. Huw Morris reports

30th November 2023

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Scott Hosking, environmental data scientist at the Alan Turing Institute and British Antarctic Survey, tells Chris Seekings how artificial intelligence is helping governments understand and predict the impacts of climate change

30th November 2023

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The huge quantities of data we generate online every day is having an increasingly negative impact on the environment. Chris Seekings examines what is being done to tackle the problem

30th November 2023

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Individual action or systems change? Which is the best route to net zero? Sophia Mwema weighs up the options

30th November 2023

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The UK’s renewables industry is being used to extend the life of the sector that is driving us towards climate breakdown. Tom Pashby reports

28th November 2023

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