Shaping The Future We Want

GAMEngage

Gamification for climate and sustainability engagement

The Production of Climate Justice

Alkebulan

Conservation Under Fire

Manakh Alsalam

Resource Orders and Transitions in Global History

Towards Critical Actuarial Science in Loss and Damage Negotiations

Our Stories Told by Us

Enabling Equitable De-weaponization of Climate Change in the MENA Region

Protecting Biodiversity Hotspots in Conflict and post-Conflict Areas

GAMEngage: Gamification for stakeholder engagement

GAMEngage is testing different climate-related roleplaying games, to see how they impact people's knowledge and beliefs about climate security and sustainability. The project has already supported testing for 400+ senior officials from the military, civil service, NGOs, charities and academia from over 50 countries. We're working to expand the number of games and the ability for non-experts to access and deliver games themselves.

The project has received funding from organisations including King's College London and Circle U. It is being conducted in collaboration with partners from King’s College London, Aarhus University, and the University of Vienna.

Project Leads: Dr. Duraid Jalili and Dr. Fatima Wang

The Production of Climate Justice: Towards Critical Actuarial Science in Loss and Damage Negotiations

Climate justice is one of the prevailing challenges of the global climate governance regime, not least because of the attribution of debt and responsibility. At the international and institutional levels, discussions have largely taken place through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its loss and damage negotiations. Yet reaching consensus on questions such as organisational and institutional logics, beneficiaries and contributors remains politically charged. This project addresses a gap in the current analysis of loss and damage negotiations by examining the assumptions behind the fund's formation and development, including how its framers understand the relationship between calculating debts for climate damage and achieving climate justice. Based on interviews with policymakers, climate justice advocates and climate scientists, as well as narrative analysis, the project builds a bridge between normative international political theory and real-world policymaking, informed by critical actuarial climate science.

Project Lead: Dr. Pauline Heinrichs

The project is funded by the British Academy, as part of its Knowledge Frontiers grant.

Alkebulan: Our Stories Told by Us

Foregrounding authentic stories from the Global South continues to be inhibited by a lack of networks and infrastructures for local creatives. The Alkebulan TV series is seeking to bridge this gap in the African context, by giving African creatives the opportunity to create and disseminate their own experiences in their own voice. Set in central Africa, it follows four main characters as they navigate through the unforeseen consequences of a rapidly changing world, highlighting issues of environmental insecurity, cultural identity, fractured belief systems, economic aspirations and the pervasive influence of foreign powers. In addition to providing a route for indigenous stories, the series is testing new models and mechanisms for bringing together scholars and creatives. In doing so, it is finding new ways to build engaging narratives that blend personal insights and scholarship on environmental insecurity, as a catalyst for environmental awareness, community empowerment, and social change.

Project Leads: Jerome Arab and Dr. Duraid Jalili

Protecting Biodiversity Hotspots in Conflict and post-Conflict Areas

Global biodiversity hotspots cover 2.4% of the Earth’s landmass yet were the site of over 80% of armed conflicts between 1950-2000. Four-fifths of these conflicts occurred on the lands of Indigenous peoples, particularly around the equatorial areas of Africa. Limited research exists on pathways to reduce this cycle, in part due to the threats to personal safety involved in research. This has led to an insufficient evidence for policymaking and practice. This project seeks to reduce this deficit, by bringing together world leading scholar-practitioners involved in physical protection and research of biodiverse conflict sites, with local and indigenous environmental leaders, to examine two key questions:

• What systems best enable secure, sustainable and culturally relevant research on ecological and human insecurity in biodiversity hotspots with high levels of conflict risk?

• How should lessons learned be disseminated, translated or obscured to ensure equitable policymaking, funding and practice for ecological and human security in such locales?

Manakh Alsalam: Enabling Equitable De-weaponization of Climate Change in the MENA Region

Climate change effects are increasingly used to advocate for exceptional measures that enhance political and geostrategic power. This ‘weaponisation’ of climate change is seen in the informational, ideological, economic and security levers used by actors from nation-states to peri-state groups (such as Hashad al-Sha’abi and Hizb’allah) to secure critical resources and underscore the legitimacy of their agenda. This generates significant risk, both from direct loss and damage to indigenous communities and ecosystems, and second and third order effects of maladaptive responses. The Middle East and North Africa are a fertile site for this process of climate weaponization, given the water scarcity and climate-induced migration facing the region. However, existing research, policy and practice for de-weaponizing climate change is often influenced by power-blindness, status-quo approaches, and a lack of understanding of local leadership beyond dominant, Western institutions. This project seeks to redress this imbalance by examining how de-weaponization of climate change can be led by indigenous groups as a mechanism for enhancing community resilience.

Project Lead: Dr. Amjed Rasheed

Resource Orders and Transitions in Global History

This project examines how changes in the exploitation of natural resources have shaped global politics and the environment. This includes a core focus on transitions from one ‘resource order’ to another (from the industrial revolution to the development of global capitalism), and how these have led to profound geopolitical, economic, legal, social and ecological repercussions. In examining these transitions, it seeks to provider greater insights on how to mitigate their negative consequences.

Project Leads: Dr. Mats Ingulstad and Prof. Joe Maiolo