Global Governance Futures: Imperfect Utopias or Bust

As crucial climate negotiations are postponed to 2021, many wonder whether the world can wait. Echoing calls by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, our guest today, Farhana Yamin is clear that “we need to stop talking about climate change as a future problem, we really only have a short space of time to start making fundamental changes. The time for action really is now.” Farhana is an internationally recognized environmental lawyer, climate change policy expert and justice activist. She joined us at UCL between 2013 and 2018 as a Visiting Professor at UCL. During this time, she also set up Track 0, an organisation which promotes strategic coalition-building to pressure governments to act. Closer to home, in fact in our very own post code, she is also coordinator of the Camden Council’s Think and Do Community Climate and Eco Action pop up. She brings with her a wealth of experience, from serving as an author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to advising the European Commission on how to design the European emissions trading directive, and, in more recent years, negotiating at the UN on behalf of the Marshall Islands, where she has also been a lead proponent of the net zero emissions by 2050 goal in the Paris Agreement. Farhana joined Extinction Rebellion in November 2018 and has taken an active role in non-violent direct action, including gluing herself to Shell’s London offices last year. In this wide-ranging conversation, Farhana reflects on her journey to green radicalism and why she believes that more radical action is now required to deliver on the Paris Agreement.

Today we are in conversation with Jordan Hall. Jordan lays bare the multiplicity of issues that emerge from relying on complicated systems to manage complex situations. The conversation elucidates the fatal flaws with the complicated systems currently in place and touches on what solutions could look like, whilst contending with the difficulty in achieving these. Jordan is the executive chair and co-founder of Neurohacker Collective, a company that makes ground-breaking products for health and well-being through complex systems science. He is in his seventeenth year building disruptive technologies. His previous positions include crafting strategy and product for MP3.com, then at InterVU (acquired by Akamai) and then finally in2000 launching and leading the online digital video revolution as founder and CEO of DivX.

Crucial climate negotiations loom in 2021. Despite the incredible disruption caused by COVID-19, the work of the climate policymakers, researchers and activists is not, in any way, on hold. It is important to flag that this interview with one of UCLs leading climatologists was recorded before the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020. Nevertheless, this lively conversation ranging from climate change to green capitalism remains as pertinent today as ever. Mark Maslin FRGS, FRSA is a Professor of Climatology at University College London. His areas of scientific expertise include causes of past and future global climate change and its effects on the global carbon cycle, biodiversity, rainforests and human evolution. He also works on monitoring land carbon sinks using remote sensing and ecological models and international and national climate change policies. In addition to advisory positions with the Global Cool Foundation, the Sopria-Steria Group and the Cheltenham Science Festival Advisory Committee, Mark has written 8 books, and over 30 articles. His popular book “Climate Change: A Very Short Introduction” by Oxford University Press is now in its third edition and has sold over 40,000 copies. Mark was also a co-author of the seminal Lancet report ‘Managing the health effects of climate change’ and the Lancet review paper on the health links between Population, Development and Climate Change. You can find more information on Mark’s ongoing research and activities here: https://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/people/academic-staff/mark-maslin

More than 300 human rights defenders were killed in 2019 and many more face regular threats, physical assaults, arrests, harassment, and defamation campaigns. In this episode of Global Governance Futures, we speak with leading human rights expert and advocate Mary Lawlor about the growing list of challenges facing human rights defenders around the world. Mary was recently appointed UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of Human Rights Defenders. As an independent expert, her mandate includes identifying the risks to human rights defenders on the ground and recommending strategies to better protect them. Mary is also currently an Adjunct Professor in the Centre for Social Innovation, School of Business, Trinity College Dublin, and she is the founder and former Executive Director of Front Line Defenders, an organisation that focuses on human rights defenders at risk.

Is global governance failing? This podcast provides a space for dialogue and reflection, with a view to fostering well-informed principles and pragmatic visions for a better tomorrow.