Addressing climate change and realising net zero demands long-term systemic changes and the meaningful engagement of society. However, most existing approaches to public engagement focus on communicating to the public or inviting publics to engage in discrete one-off processes – such as behaviour change initiatives, attitude surveys, and deliberative processes – in specific parts of…
3S member Martin Mahony has been appointed as a founding member of the Norwich Climate Commission. The Commission is an independent advisory body set up to bring actors from the public, private and third sectors together to support, guide and track the impact of ambitious climate change and sustainability actions across Norwich. It is currently…
New 3S PhD researcher Cat Acheson shares her perspective on the role and policing of publics at COP26. COP26 has been widely portrayed as a make-or-break moment for global efforts to prevent catastrophic climate change. During the first week of the conference, I joined protests on the ground in Glasgow, with a diverse coalition of…
There are 4 competition funded PhD projects advertised at UEA with researchers from the 3S group. MAPPING PARTICIPATION IN ENERGY, CLIMATE CHANGE AND NET ZERO will be supervised by Dr Helen Pallett and Professor Jason Chilvers, and is part of the UEA Science Faculty funding competition. To date, approaches to involving the public in decisions…
New funding announced today will see our 3S Research Group become a core part of the new five-year phase of the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC). As part of this significant investment 3S will establish and house the first ever national observatory for societal engagement with energy and net zero transitions, which is a new core…
I am a 1+3 PhD student in the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations (CAST) and in the Science, Society & Sustainability (3S) Research Group. My research explores UK climate change governance, specifically the role of the UK Committee on Climate Change (CCC) in shaping the wider knowledge and governance landscapes in which specific…
UK Parliament announced in a press release today that Professor Jason Chilvers of 3S has been appointed to serve on the Academic Panel advising Climate Assembly UK. Climate Assembly UK is the UK’s first nationwide citizens’ assembly on climate change. It was commissioned by six cross-party House of Commons Select Committees in summer 2019 in…
FAB-GGR is an interdisciplinary project that aims to better understand the real-world feasibility and consequences of large-scale afforestation and biomass energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) approaches to greenhouse gas removal (GGR). As part of FAB-GGR, 3S researchers – Jason Chilvers, Laurie Waller, Irene Lorenzoni – are studying the social and political feasibility of developing afforestation and…
Deliberate large-scale interventions in the Earth’s climate system known as ‘geoengineering’ have been proposed in order to moderate anthropogenic climate change. This PhD research critically reviewed existing appraisals of geoengineering before developing and executing its own appraisal method in response to their limitations. The research developed an innovative multicriteria method called deliberative mapping to ‘open…
‘Citizen science’ can place citizens at the centre of a process that generates new knowledge for disaster risk reduction. This project, funded under the Research Councils UK Global Challenges Research Fund, aims to understand how citizen science is currently applied to disaster risk reduction (DRR) objectives in the face of natural hazards, and how it might be more…
Large concentrations of jellyfish are increasingly being recorded worldwide. The main drivers of this are hypothesised to be as a result of increasing ocean temperatures and increases in prey availability. These factors are often influenced by anthropogenic activities that alter the characteristics of the oceans in favour of gelatinous zooplankton. The impacts of a bloomed…
Many communities along the Norfolk coast have historically, and more recently, seen changes to their landscapes. Significant changes are likely in the future, especially in areas where coastal erosion is evident. The way these changes are communicated and the level of community engagement in the decision making process on how to deal with current and…
Social practice theory is a relatively young field of scholarship in social science and has a lot to offer in terms of describing the actions of individuals and communities – particularly with regards to mundane situations or everyday live. To date there has not been a lot of work done on the governance of practices…
ESRC (2014) Identifies the degree to which the Regional Flood and Coastal Committees (RFCCs) provide a collaborative approach to flood and coastal management at local level through the involvement of local actors.
EU FP7 (2010-11) How members of the public understand and engage with climate change impacts on marine environments, ranging from ocean acidification and species distribution change to sea-level rise and costal erosion.
NERC (2014-15) Aims to determine the environmental impacts of the December 2013 North Norfolk storm surge event and understand the social responses.
EU FP7 (2010-13) Develops new global low emissions scenarios, placing EU efforts in a global context; builds an approach for assessing EU policies against mitigation and adaptation objectives and for developing alternative policy options.
Leverhulme Trust (2010-13) At a time when natural scientists are anxiously debating the importance of critical ‘tipping points’ in natural systems, this project will in effect explore the scope for ‘tipping’ the multi-level governance systems in large, polluting states to enable significant and enduring policy innovation for climate change governance.
Leverhulme Trust (2007-11) This project explored public, scientific and policy understandings, conceptualisations and responses to framings of energy policy.
The Science, Trust and Public Engagement project comprised a major review of public concerns about the governance of emerging science and technology through a meta-analysis of 17 UK public dialogues sponsored by Sciencewise on subjects ranging from nanotechnology and synthetic biology, through to low carbon energy and geoengineering of climate change. This analysis identified five…
The past decade has seen a dramatic rise in public engagement and participatory modes of governing science, technology and the environment, promoted by arguments that it enhances trust, acceptance, and the quality and social responsibility of science and decision-making. Most academic and practical effort in this field to date has been channelled into developing engagement…