Whatâs agriculture got to do with a âgreenâ Brexit?
Whilst Brexit has created major societal upheaval, it has illuminated issues that were brewing far in advance of its arrival. This is especially true in the agriculture sector. Brexit was presented as an opportunity to revise certain agricultural policies that facilitate ecological breakdown, but it has also provoked a critical examination of neoconservative policies and their relationship with ecological discourses and practice. Seeming to recognise the ecological impacts of the EU Common Agriculture Policy (CAP), the UK government has shifted away from the subsidy scheme which rewarded farmers largely based on land size. The EU system has been critiqued for disadvantaging smaller-scale farmers, and for encouraging a harmful extractivist approach to EU food production which has degraded the rural landscapes the British countryside. I spent the last year researching the ways in which the nationalist populist campaign
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This keynote talk is part of JRCCPF s Tenth Annual Conference: Healing the Big Fractures in the Economy, Politics, & Society. Panel discussions about increasing investment and making growth more equitable follow this keynote.
Mariana Mazzucato (PhD) is Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London (UCL), where she is the Founding Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose (IIPP). Her latest book Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism was just published in the UK and will be out in the US in March 2021. Mazzucato s work has drawn international recognition. She is the recipient of the 2020 John von Neumann Award, the 2019 All European Academies Madame de Staël Prize for Cultural Values, and the 2018 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought. She was named as one of the ‘3 most important thinkers about innovation’ by The New Republic, one of the 50 most creat
Last modified on Tue 16 Feb 2021 14.35 EST
Fred Brown is part of “generation Greta” – young people pursuing careers to fight the climate crisis, inspired partly by the teenage activist Greta Thunberg. “If we want the natural environment to be around for the next generation, we have to conserve it now,” says the 26-year-old. “Greta has proven we have a voice that can create change.”
The world’s top climate scientists agree that we are running out of time to limit global warming below catastrophic levels of 1.5C. Brown works in the green economy – jobs that generate a positive impact on people and the planet. The median salary in the sector is £40,000, far greater than the UK average, and there are high levels of job satisfaction. The green economy offers a silver lining for postgrads, with traditional sectors shedding thousands of jobs in the pandemic.
Estonia has become the latest destination to allow Covid-recovered travellers to skip quarantine
5 February 2021 • 1:23pm
Travellers can now visit Tallinn without quarantining – as long as they can prove they ve had Covid
Credit: getty
If you have had Covid and more importantly, can prove it, then you may be able to travel abroad sooner than you think. A number of countries have begun to change their policies to allow ‘Covid-recovered’ visitors in.
The concept of ‘immunotourism’ has sparked huge levels of debate, but has been largely centred around the idea of vaccine passports, which would see those who have been vaccinated able to to travel freely to a widening list of countries. The other side of the immunotourism coin, however, involves those who have antibodies not from vaccines but from their own brush with the virus.
Published on 14 January 2021
The ESRC STEPS Centre, a research centre on sustainability co-hosted by IDS and the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at the University of Sussex, will close at the end of 2021 after 15 years.
From its origins at Sussex, the STEPS Centre has developed a global consortium of partners, engaged in questions around pathways to sustainability. Complex challenges like climate change, food systems, disease, urbanisation and technology are varied, changing and unpredictable. Promising pathways to more sustainable futures are often hidden, contested and shaped by power.
By working with people who have been marginalised in different places around the world, STEPS has aimed to reveal diverse ideas, knowledges, innovations, ways of seeing the world, and ways of life. These can provide an important challenge to narrow thinking about ‘grand challenges’, global solutions and ‘top-down’ governance.