From COVID-19 to COP26: Forging a just and sustainable future

Policy Scotland and the University’s Centre for Sustainable Solutions have created a partnership with Glasgow City Council to run a series of Green Recovery Dialogues.

Des McNulty, Deputy Director of Policy Scotland, said, “The series is intended to help foster a just and sustainable recovery from COVID-19 for the city and, as we both work to achieve our carbon neutrality/net zero targets for 2030, enable better-informed partnership working between the University, the city and other partners.”

Professor Jaime L. Toney, Director of the Centre for Sustainable Solutions said: “These will be active discussion events to mobilise the academic and practitioner communities, identify common issues and potential solutions, and pave the way for collective impact on challenges posed by climate change.”

Leader of Glasgow City Council, Councillor Susan Aitken, said: “As we seek to emerge from the unforeseen COVID crisis and face a climate emergency which we already knew to be looming over us, success will rest on mobilising our collective efforts.

“That’s why the Sustainable Glasgow partnership was re-launched this year – with the key relationship between ‘town and gown’, or the wider city and academia, at the heart of it.

“This important dialogue with the University of Glasgow will provide an impetus for our ambitions and material for our work, and I look forward to participating in the roundtable event on leadership to follow in the new year.”

The three dialogues are:

Implementing Green Futures – Increasing urban green space and implementing nature-based solutions
Raising Ambition on Net Zero – providing low carbon energy and housing solutions
Rethinking Consumption – achieving sustainable recovery through green and/or circular economy

The participants will identify practical steps that can be taken now, or in the near future, offering options for consideration at a leadership forum early in 2021. An ethos of co-creation will be central to discussions, recognising that a sustainable future and a just transition are synonymous.

The Dialogues, taking place in November and December, are part of the preparations for the COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow in November 2021.

If you’d like to find out more about the Green Recovery Dialogues, please contact sustainable-solutions@glasgow.ac.uk