News and Updates

To Lewes, yesterday, for the latest FERN meeting; as always, good to meet up to discuss research and environmental / sustainability education.  A modest, but quality, turn-out. The main event of the day was to visit the Railway Land Project...

A report in yesterday's Times (sorry, no link possible) about crop breeders developing glossy plants that will reflect more sunlight than duller varieties, and thus combat climate change.  Well, fine, but if there weren't so much prejudice against GMOs this...

I heard this morning that I have won £475,000 in this United Nations "online international program" – and I didn't even have to apply.  Now, haven't I always said that the UN was wonderful?  All I have to do, it...

Perhaps I am the last person to become aware of this, but it strikes me as a positive move that the DfE Sustainable Development Unit has been moved within the DfE's Policy Impact Division with an objective to mainstream sustainability...

The Environmental Audit Committee, chaired by Joan Walley MP, has launched an inquiry into how sustainable development can be further embedded in Government policy decision-making and operations.  As part of its inquiry, the Committee will examine latest sustainable development performance...

When I saw this in the latest SDRN mailing, I thought researchers have discovered what many already know: happiness through looking at, and using, maps.  Not so.  Read on, especially you iPhoners: Researchers at the London School of Economics have...

Off to the launch of the Ellen Macarthur Foundation tonight. The ambition of its education programme is striking: Education at the Foundation revolves around sharing our enthusiasm for the bigger picture. It explores in particular the excitement around the circular...

It is not widely known, but the last government launched another new quango before it mis-managed its own re-election.  This was the Office for Strictures and Controll on Food and Fodder  – OFSCOFF.   As befits an era of austerity, Ofscoff's remit...

In Barcelona last week sitting on a PhD jury – one of these public defences that are literally and metaphorically foreign to the UK.  The thesis was in Catalan with a presentation to an audience of about 35 in that...

The coalition government announced today that, from 2011, the Ministry of Defence is to set up programmes in order to raise awareness of defence issues within the UK; this will include work in schools.   An MoD representative said "We...