The School of Anthropology and Conservation declared a Climate and Environmental Emergency on September 25th, 2019 and continues its efforts both through its Staff and Student Sustainability Working Group alongside various activities and collaborations across the University including working with Kent Union, particularly in shaping and delivering their Climate Emergency Action Week.
On Monday 11th November, Dr Miguel Alexaides, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Anthropology and Ethnobotany, will host the Kent Union Open Lecture entitled Humans, Climate Change and the Environmental Crisis: A Planetary Perspective. The event is open to all and will be held in Rutherford Lecture Theatre 1 between 18:00 and 19:00.
The lecture will act as a precursor to Kent Union’s call for a Climate Strike and march on Thursday 14th November between 12:00 and 14:00 and beginning at the central Plaza. In tandem with the School’s declaration, the demonstration will be to urge the University to recognise climate emergency as a student and staff issue and priority, and to act accordingly, through committing to reductions in greenhouse emissions in line with or surpassing IPCC recommendations.
It will also call the University to embed sustainability and the climate crisis in the curriculum akin to Dr Alexiades’ popular The Anthropocene: Planetary Crises and the Age of Humans module. All students and staff should be informed and understand the scale of these global sustainability challenges, ensuring graduates are equipped to tackle these issues and inequalities when entering society and the workplace post University.
Other events during the week include creative approaches to climate action, designing murals, making banners and Extinction Rebellion block printing, waste workshops, plogging (litter picking whilst jogging) and a closing Open Lecture on Radical Decarbonisation and Sustainability in 1990s post-Soviet Cuba delivered by the School of European Culture and Languages’ Dr William Rowlandson at 14:00 on Friday 15th November in Darwin Lecture Theatre 1.
This Climate Strike is part of Kent Union’s Climate Emergency Action Week, organised by the Kent Union Sustainability Network, student societies (UKC Conservation Society, ECS – Environmental Conservation Sustainability, Climate Justice Society, Amnesty International), and students from YouthStrike4Climate Canterbury and Extinction Rebellion Youth Canterbury. All event details can be found on the Kent Union website.