Biodiversity, ecosystem services and sustainability

12 Novembro 2021, 16:00 • João Guerra

Professor Cristina Branquinho began by stressing a major gap in the PhD program on Climate Change and Sustainable Development Policies. According to her, the issues between biodiversity and climate change are not properly addressed by most experts working in climate change. In particular, she stated that climate change experts should not neglect the identification of the trade-offs between biodiversity conservation, ecosystem services delivery and climate change policy.b) Agreements and Commitments vs Targets Achieved:The Earth Rio Summit in 1992 represented a milestone in environmental awareness regarding worldwide biodiversity loss. Since then, several countries have endorsed commitments towards halting the loss of biodiversity. The most relevant commitments were the 2010 Biodiversity Target,enacted in the Convention for Biological Diversity and the Aichi Biodiversity Targets.Concomitantly, in 2005, the United Nations (UN) launched the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment to improve the scientific information concerning the consequences of ecosystem change for human well-being. Later, in 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) highlighted the links between biodiversity and human health. The SDGs, among other targets, call for the preservation an dconservation of biodiversity and guarantee the provision of ecosystem services. This number of agreements and commitments emphasizes the increasing pressures on biodiversity, further exacerbated by climate change and land desertification.Despite the multiple commitments and assessments, pressures on biodiversity are still increasing.The main Conventions concerning biodiversity, in particular, the Conventions on Biodiversity,Climate Change and Land Desertification have proposed ambitious targets to halt biodiversity loss.However, the inability to achieve the proposed targets to halt biodiversity loss can eventually reach a point of no return, leading to the extinction of many species. We should note that nowadays the issue of climate change sees the most funding opportunities. Still, the issues of biodiversity loss and land desertification are less subsidized. Concerning land desertification, the speaker stressed that this happens because the areas more vulnerable are in developing countries.

Governance, institutions and sustainability

5 Novembro 2021, 14:00 • João Guerra

Professor Filipe Duarte Santos started by presenting a historical treatise on the course that has led us to the current societal challenges. For a long period of time, humanity existed without the notions of “growth” or “progress” as part of their main goal or objectives. However, Modernism intellectual contests reprioritized the debate, putting humans’ development at the centre stage. This re-organised the priorities into society, henceforth, the living standards improved, societies got more prosperous and economic growth became intertwined with societal progress. The “great acceleration” boosted the prosperity process and economic growth, intensified by the adoption of Neo-liberal mainstream economics theories.The neoclassical theory of economic growth considers that stable and continued economic growth depends only on the combination of 3 factors - labour, capital and technology. Technology development became the mantra of any problem solving for contemporary society. One example of technological progress was the use and adoption of fossil fuel and the main energy matrix which led to further technological progress.

Transformation & Shaping Futures (II) Laverage poins

30 Outubro 2021, 09:00 • João Guerra

The session of October 30th 2021 was a lecture by Olivia Bina, researcher at the University of Lisbon,working on environmental governance, sustainable futures and transition/transformation theories. The goal of the session was to present Donella Meadows work and the notions of leverage points as points of intervention incomplex systems. After a brief introduction on the speaker and topics, the session moderators introduced a thought provoking question on how the notion of leverage points can be applied to large complex issues such as the climate emergency and COP26 discussions, which were ongoing at that precise moment. Olivia Bina’s presentation followed and a final discussion and Q&A session finalised the seminar.

Transformation & Shaping Futures (I)

22 Outubro 2021, 16:00 • João Guerra

On October 23, 2021, the session of the Seminar “Science of Sustainability and Climate Change” (SCSAC) was led by Dr. Olivia Bina and facilitated by Gideon Osabutey and Guillermo Porriños. During the first part of the session, attendants exposed their own ideas of what needs to change. During the second part, Dr. Bina exposed main theories of transformative change, structuring the lecture on three parts: why we need to change our global system; what we should change; and how to change it.

Methods for empathetic interviewing in social Sciences

16 Outubro 2021, 11:00 • João Guerra

The scientific method must satisfy four key characteristics: 

• Logical:  Scientific inferences must be based on logical principles of reasoning: organized searching for realistic solutions to a problem 

• Confirmable:  Inferences derived must match with identifiable and provable  observed evidence. 

• Repeatable: Other scientists should be able independently to replicate or repeat a similar methodological approach and obtain similar, if not identical, results. 

• Scrutinizable:  The procedures used and the inferences derived must be acceptable to critical scrutiny (peer review) by other scientists and knowledgeable people. 

• Scope for novelty and unexpectedness.

Action research assumes that complex social phenomena are best understood by intervening or disturbing those engaged phenomena and observing the effects of those actions.  Here the researcher is usually an observer or an advisor or an organisational member embedded within a particular set of social relationships seeking a common or cooperative response to a real dilemma facing the social group being studied. The researcher’s choice of actions must be based on theory, which should explain why and how such actions may cause the sought after change.  The researcher observes the results of actions, modifying them as necessary, while simultaneously learning from the action and generating new theoretical insights about the target problem, the dynamics of the social group, or the effects of interventions.