While systemic government action is critical to our low carbon transition, people also want to know what they can do to take climate action. To effectively and fairly tackle climate change citizens must be engaged and have access to information that can support them to take action.

This session focuses on the potential for people as agents of change - in different roles and different ways - to contribute to a Net Zero and climate resilient future. Bringing together cutting edge data and expertise from academics and practitioners, the session will offer different examples of how to understand the barriers people face to taking action, and solutions on how to break them down.

The session will cover the spectrum of actions people can take, from low-carbon lifestyles; to changing social and cultural norms; providing social mandates for change; to pushing for systemic change through activism and advocacy.

As well as sharing our own research, we will use audience engagement to bring everyone into conversation about how we can catalyse our low carbon and climate resilient future.

Speakers:

Dr Katharine Steentjes, CAST

Dr Lewis Akenji, Hot or Cool institute

Dr Susie Wang, Climate Outreach

Dr Vanessa Timmer, OneEarth Canada

Chair: Dr. Stuart Capstick, CAST (Centre for Climate and Social Transformations)

The backdrop of legends and movies, the deep sea has always been unfathomable because we had no idea what existed there. Once thought to be barren of life, we now know this couldn’t be further from the truth. Life exists under extreme conditions at these depths and with every deep-sea expedition we gain a greater understanding of the crucial services it provides our planet. Although seemingly remote, the deep sea plays a key role in our climate. Better understanding of remote and deep-sea biodiversity, offers insight into how these systems both influence the climate and are, in turn, influenced by climate change. These insights are made with the help of new technologies such as Schmidt Ocean Institute’s 4,500 meter capable underwater robot, ROV SuBastian. This two hour event will feature exclusive, award-winning, video content from deep sea waters showcasing new species and underwater features with interviews from scientists around the world discussing the impact of climate change on these fragile ecosystems. Footage will be shared from the Great Barrier Reef and Coral Sea Marine Parks in Australia, the Phoenix Islands Protected Area in Kiribati, the Mariana Trench in Guam, submarine volcanoes of Tonga, hydrothermal vents in the Gulf of California – Mexico, and white shark feeding grounds in the high seas. The film will be followed by a panel centered on climate impacts in the deep sea and how we can better understand and mitigate this in order to improve the overall health of our planet. The panel will include Ocean experts focused on high seas, biodiversity and seabed mapping.

The event will bring together climate, agriculture gender experts and youth representatives both at the policy and grassroots levels.
The session will be an interactive discussion featuring female agricultural experts who are training to become UNFCCC negotiators and youth activists and contributors that, through their shared examples, aim at preserving the planet while increasing their resilience towards climate change.
It will be introduced by a high-profile expert and a moderator will then ask a rapid-fire series of questions to the female agricultural experts/scientists in agriculture about their realities as women advocates for the climate, the good practices they have experienced in their areas of expertise, hopes for the future and challenges they face. It is also foreseen to include an interview with women representing different generations who will share their experiences as female experts from LDC's and youth explaining what obstacles women in their countries face and recommendations for young women.
The audience will be engaged through a virtual icebreaker using menti-meter polls and leaving time to ask questions to panel members, with final discussion on main challenges to access climate services and last-mile application in the agriculture sector.

“Our Place in the Cosmos” is a planetarium show about the special, fragile place of the Earth in our Galaxy, the only habitat we yet know able to sustain life.

Our home needs to be in the right place of our Galaxy to be safe from violent activity like supernovae. Yet we needed such activity in the past for the elements that support life, produced inside stars, to be seeded in the proto-solar nebula from which the Earth formed.

Our home also needs to be in the right place of the Solar System to be in its habitable zone, a place capable of sustaining liquid water its surface for eons. We compare Earth to our nearest planetary neighbours, Venus and Mars, which also began their lives in the habitable zone. Soon after their birth, over 4 billion years ago, these three planets looked similar – rocky worlds with flowing lava and water under an atmosphere.

Yet their subsequent evolution followed very different paths. Venus turned into a Hades, the oceans boiling away to create a thick, hot toxic atmosphere. Mars lost its atmosphere and the oceans evaporated into space, to leave a dead world, yet where evidence of past liquid flows is still apparent.

We illustrate these contrasts in the show, we delve beneath the atmospheres to show how oceans might have looked on Venus and Mars. We contrast them to the Earth, and we show what would happen to our continents should sea level rise.

Finally, we show Planet Earth today and see how we can monitor planetary health from space, providing a global view of the land, oceans and atmosphere. We see how fragile planet Earth is and the imperative to protect our home from further damage.

The event will share the initiatives of YOUNGO in the road to COP26 showcasing meaningful youth engagements and how to avoid tokenism in the meanwhile.

Award-winning poets and spoken word artists from around the world have been matched with researchers from Imperial College London and beyond studying the causes, effects of, and solutions to climate change. In a mixture of exciting live performances and subtitled recordings, they’ll present poetry in a range of languages, with time for questions and answers from the live performers afterwards. The result will be a cross-cultural feast of poetry and science, investigating the danger our natural and human landscapes are facing across the globe and what we can do about it.

Poets: Santiago Acosta, Adnan Al-Sayegh and Jenny Lewis, Luca Bernardini, Annsh Chawla, Moya De Feyter, Harry Josephine Giles, Tammy Lai-Ming Ho, Robin Lamboll, Yang Lian, Ian McLachlan, Jérôme Pinel, Pieta Poeta, Jacqueline Saphra, Marvin Thompson, Anton Trubaïchuk, Debra Watson, Tamar Yoseloff, Sindiswa Zulu.

Poets for the Planet is a community of kindred poets, performers, artists and creative activists raising their voices to engage with climate and ecological emergency through poetry in all its forms.

Website: poetsfortheplanet.org
Facebook/Instagram/YouTube: @poetsfortheplanet
Twitter: @poets4theplanet

The Grantham Institute at Imperial College London provides world-class research, training and innovation towards effective action on climate change and the environment.

Website: imperial.ac.uk/grantham
Twitter: @Grantham_IC

One of the world's leading Grade 1 pipe bands having featured as a regular prizewinner in all major competitions over several decades.

Twice Cowal Champions, Scottish Champions, All-Ireland and British Champions and runners-up in the World Championships are just some of their awards

Join the people involved in the Global Citizens’ Assembly to find out more about how a snapshot of the world population is being brought together to learn and deliberate on the climate and ecological crisis.

Global Assembly team members, Susan Nakyung Lee, Claire Mellier and Rich Wilson, will be joined live by citizens from across the world, who are taking part in the Global Assembly process to deliberate on the question:
“How can humanity address the climate and ecological crisis in a fair and effective way?”

The event will introduce the citizens’ proposals developed during the deliberative process in the run up to Glasgow.

It will be an opportunity to bring the lived experience of those citizens to the heart of COP26.

You will meet cultural figures from across the world who are lending their support to the initiative, including Oscar winner Sir Mark Rylance.

You will also find out how communities across the world can run their own local Community Assemblies, and how a ‘cultural wave’ will bring the Global Assembly into the lives of citizens through art and culture. There will be plenty of opportunities for interactive exchanges between the audience and the speakers.

To find out more about the Global Assembly in advance of our Green Zone event, have a look at our website, follow us on social media, and join us on November 1st to hear directly from the citizens making this initiative a reality.

www.globalassembly.org

The Commonwealth Jewish Council recognises that religion is one of the most potent and motivating forces in human society. Unfortunately, far too often the power of religious communities is overlooked in international affairs and only perceived as a source of trouble rather than idealistic action for the good of Humankind. If religions and their leaders are not on board with the need to address climate change, arguably, huge proportions of the world’s population will not be moved to take the matter seriously.

This panel will explore not only what religions have to say about the topic but, more importantly, what religions are doing and can do to improve the world on this front.

Panellists:
Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth
The Rt. Revd Olivia Graham, Bishop of Reading
Chief Imam Sayed Ali Abbas Razawi, Scottish Ahlul Bayt Society
Chaired by CEO of the CJC Clive Lawton OBE JP

Gaze down at the Arctic and see walrus, from space!

Join scientists from Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) and British Antarctic Survey (BAS) to discuss the Walrus From Space project and learn how YOU can help them better understand the impacts of the climate crisis on walrus.

The climate crisis has put the Arctic in meltdown, with this polar region warming almost three times faster than the rest of the world. The sea ice walrus depend on is melting beneath them and we need to know more about how their populations are impacted.

WWF and BAS are asking the public to become ‘Walrus Detectives’ and help contribute to conservation science by searching for walrus in the thousands of satellite images taken from space. Over the next 5 years the project aims to carry out the first ever census of the Atlantic and Laptev walrus population using satellite imagery and explore what might happen to walrus in the context of rapid climate change. This will help scientists to better understand the impact of climate change on populations of this iconic species and help safeguard their future.

Our collective actions add up to something powerful, and we want you to be some of the first of the 500,000 people we hope to take part in this project as ‘citizen scientists’ over the next 5 years.

The sessions will begin with a presentation from one or more of the scientists leading the project, displaying imagery of walrus in the Arctic. Followed by a Q&A with the scientists and the opportunity to take part in the project and become a walrus scientist yourself!

Musicians in Exile, Glasgow’s asylum seeking and refugee musicians, perform their homelands’ music, with new songs created for COP26 about climate change’s impact on refugees.

With Eyve Madyise from Zimbabwe, Jose Rojas from Chile, Midya Jan from Syria, Aref Ghorbani and Milad Gharibi from Iran, Angaddeep & Param Singh Vig from India/Afghanistan and Calum Ingram from Scotland.

Founded in 2018, this group provides free instruments, rehearsal space, travel expenses and gigs to Scotland’s most vulnerable musicians. Shortlisted for this year’s European, and The Herald, Diversity Awards, a project of The Glasgow Barons, Govan’s orchestra www.glasgowbarons.com

Women leaders from the worlds of science, space exploration, activism and the arts discuss how they’ve witnessed climate change from unique vantage points, and what they’ve learned about solutions, collaboration, and ambition.

Join Nicole Stott (Veteran-NASA Astronaut) and Julia Sanchez (Secretary General, ActionAid) as they share their experiences alongside women who are on the frontlines of climate change. Hear from women who are leading the fight against climate change in their communities and developing inclusive and sustainable solutions to help safeguard their lives and livelihoods.

“Our Place in the Cosmos” is a planetarium show about the special, fragile place of the Earth in our Galaxy, the only habitat we yet know able to sustain life.

Our home needs to be in the right place of our Galaxy to be safe from violent activity like supernovae. Yet we needed such activity in the past for the elements that support life, produced inside stars, to be seeded in the proto-solar nebula from which the Earth formed.

Our home also needs to be in the right place of the Solar System to be in its habitable zone, a place capable of sustaining liquid water its surface for eons. We compare Earth to our nearest planetary neighbours, Venus and Mars, which also began their lives in the habitable zone. Soon after their birth, over 4 billion years ago, these three planets looked similar – rocky worlds with flowing lava and water under an atmosphere.

Yet their subsequent evolution followed very different paths. Venus turned into a Hades, the oceans boiling away to create a thick, hot toxic atmosphere. Mars lost its atmosphere and the oceans evaporated into space, to leave a dead world, yet where evidence of past liquid flows is still apparent.

We illustrate these contrasts in the show, we delve beneath the atmospheres to show how oceans might have looked on Venus and Mars. We contrast them to the Earth, and we show what would happen to our continents should sea level rise.

Finally, we show Planet Earth today and see how we can monitor planetary health from space, providing a global view of the land, oceans and atmosphere. We see how fragile planet Earth is and the imperative to protect our home from further damage.

Feminists and grassroots activists are at the frontlines of movements and solutions addressing the climate crisis around the world. They are forging pathways towards true climate justice, centered around human rights, gender equality and the integrity of the environment. In this session, they come together to share stories of fierce struggle, enduring hope and lessons on working in solidarity for change.

Embark on an interactive and immersive journey to explore how the world can evolve, as we respond to the cataclysmic effect of climate change.

Through using the Cranfield University Sustainability Group’s scenario exploration game, audience members can shape the decisions of the actors on stage and together journey to the future. Join us to explore the new world we have created and bring back important lessons, to put into our actions today. How will you feel about this new future and what will you learn?

Find out more about the game and Cranfield University here - https://www.cranfield.ac.uk/research/cop26

‘Our Village, Community Corner ’ organised by ‘If Not Us Then Who?’ presents an immersive multimedia IMAX experience from inside indigenous minds to the soul of the climate justice movement.

Featuring a new theatre piece, ‘Can I Live?’ from Complicité & Fehinti Balogun. Fehinti tells the story of how, as a Black British man, his path was forever changed by what he learnt about our planet.

Following this will be a discussion by local community climate leaders from the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities - APIB, AMAN, AMPB, COICA; the Black & Indigenous Liberation Movement, the Hip Hop Caucus, including emerging indigenous storytellers and live music from Eric Terena, Brazilian Indigenous DJ.

All around the world local communities are responding to climate change with powerful resilience, innovative action, and a spirit that can profoundly impact our world. OUR VILLAGE invites people from all walks of life to belong to a community inspired by justice and our connection to the earth. www.ourvillage.us

The event, organised by the Commonwealth Local Government Forum (CLGF), in partnership with Cities Alliance and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), will bring together international speakers and audience members from local and city governments; central governments; research communities; and civil society to discuss climate justice and the importance of taking account of the cumulative risks created by conditions of urban informality, inequality and climate vulnerability in developing effective responses to climate change. We will identify priorities for action and the role that researchers, civil society actors, city governments and policy makers can play in strengthening local action for sustainable climate justice.

Contributors:

Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, Mayor, Freetown, Sierra Leone
Joanes Atela, Convener Africa Research and Impact Network, Director Partnerships African Centre for Technology Studies, Kenya
Harriet Bulkeley, Professor of Geography, Durham University, UK.
Vanesa Castan Broto, Professor of Climate Urbanism, University of Sheffield, UK
Sonia Dias, Waste Specialist, WIEGO, Brazil
David Dodman, Director, Human Settlements, International Institute for Environment and Development, UK
Aníbal Gaviria, Governor of Antioquia, Colombia and President of Cities Alliance
Heike Henn, Deputy Director General, Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, Germany
Rubbina Karruna, Regional Cities & Infrastructure Adviser, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, UK
Rose Molokoane, Vice-President Slum Dwellers International, South Africa
Greg Munro, Director, Cities Alliance (Chair)
Aromar Revi, Director, Indian Institute for Human Settlements, India
Emilia Saiz, Secretary General, UCLG on behalf of the Global Taskforce of Local and Regional Governments

The event will be held concurrently in person and online, with an interactive panel discussion. It will offer an opportunity to help shape critical policy and research priorities for addressing climate change equitably in cities - where informality and inequality are the reality. The event will help shape priorities for research and local action to ensure better chances of achieving urban climate justice.

Talented people with bright ideas in the UK’s research and innovation system are coming together to drive a new green industrial revolution. This revolution is powered by collective expertise and the determination to achieve net zero carbon emissions, live more sustainably and ultimately tackle climate change.

The UK’s scientists, researchers and innovators, supported by UKRI investment, are creating new and exciting solutions to complex climate challenges. As well as technical solutions, their work provides robust, rigorous evidence to inform climate policy.

Did you know that hydrogen could power a plane, or that robots are inspecting wind turbines? Join us to discover how ideas are becoming reality to offer a more sustainable and certain future for us all.
In our 90-minute session, you’ll hear from scientists and innovators themselves.

• Understand the role of science in identifying and understanding climate change and its impacts
• Explore the latest in renewable energy, from the role of hydrogen to lighter wind turbine blades
• We’ll be busting some of the myths around electric vehicles as well as considering flight and maritime innovation in our session on travel and transport
• We will explore whether we will all be eating insects in the future
• In food and packaging; will we all be eating insects in the future and how do we solve the problem of plastic?
• Showcasing the diversity of talent including the work of women and young innovators and leaving you with some great ideas about how you can help to tackle climate change

Imagine a net zero world in 2050 world of possible solutions in our interactive and lively session. You will leave us knowing how to contribute to a brighter future by making everyday changes which help tackle climate change and its impact on our planet and people.

Join one of the UK’s leading children and youth choirs for a performance of songs inspired by climate change. Directed by Patrick Barrett, members of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra’s Junior Chorus will perform a selection of Green Songs by Bob Chilcott and a trio of Assembly Songs by Errollyn Wallen, Shruthi Rajasekar and Claire McCue, specially commissioned for COP26.

Gaze down at the Arctic and see walrus, from space!

Join scientists from Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) and British Antarctic Survey (BAS) to discuss the Walrus From Space project and learn how YOU can help them better understand the impacts of the climate crisis on walrus.

The climate crisis has put the Arctic in meltdown, with this polar region warming almost three times faster than the rest of the world. The sea ice walrus depend on is melting beneath them and we need to know more about how their populations are impacted.

WWF and BAS are asking the public to become ‘Walrus Detectives’ and help contribute to conservation science by searching for walrus in the thousands of satellite images taken from space. Over the next 5 years the project aims to carry out the first ever census of the Atlantic and Laptev walrus population using satellite imagery and explore what might happen to walrus in the context of rapid climate change. This will help scientists to better understand the impact of climate change on populations of this iconic species and help safeguard their future.

Our collective actions add up to something powerful, and we want you to be some of the first of the 500,000 people we hope to take part in this project as ‘citizen scientists’ over the next 5 years.

The sessions will begin with a presentation from one or more of the scientists leading the project, displaying imagery of walrus in the Arctic. Followed by a Q&A with the scientists and the opportunity to take part in the project and become a walrus scientist yourself!

Join us for a journey into the mysteries, wonders and climate emergencies of the high Arctic.

Scottish Composers, Emma Donald and Isbel Pendlebury, in collaboration with poet and playwright Nick Drake, have created a compelling, informing and emotionally powerful event of music and poetry for COP26. Award-winning Scottish actor, Peter Mullan will read the poems inspired by Nick's voyage around the Svalbard archipelago. ‘The Farewell Glacier’ gathers together voices both human and non-human from across the Arctic's past, present and future to tell a story of exploration, exploitation and imagination. From the first European explorers and whalers to ice-cores, mercury and even the Future herself, this is a story of the power and beauty of ice, the calamity of its loss, and a call to the imagination of every one of us to change the future for the better.

The Company

Peter Mullan - Reader

Nick Drake - Poet/Playwright

Emma Donald - Composer/Fiddle

Isbel Pendlebury - Composer/Clarsach

Serena Hill - Creative Associate

Edel Rae - Producer

The Farewell Glacier’ is performed by kind permission of the publishers Bloodaxe Books Ltd. Music copyright Emma Donald and Isbel Pendlebury We gratefully acknowledge the support and generosity of: The Pebble Trust The Highland Museum of Childhood The individual supporters who, for the sake of the climate, invested their trust and money in our story.

The High Commission of Canada in the UK presents an exclusive IMAX screening of the multiple-award winning Canadian documentary, Anthropocene: The Human Epoch, a cinematic meditation on humanity’s massive reengineering of the planet.

From concrete seawalls covering 60% of China’s mainland coast to the psychedelic potash mines of Russia’s Ural Mountains, Canadian directors Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier and Edward Burtynsky take us on a provocative journey exploring our species’ impact on the planet.

The Anthropocene Project is a multidisciplinary body of work combining art, film, virtual reality, augmented reality and scientific research to investigate human influence on the state, dynamic and future of the Earth.

For more details please visit https://theanthropocene.org/ Screening will be accompanied by introductory remarks and a post screening discussion. Details will be released closer to the event. Presented by the High Commission of Canada in The UK, with grateful thanks to Motion Picture Solutions and The IMAX Corporation.

This session seeks to empower the generation who will be most impacted by the effects of climate change. Young people’s voices are crucial to adaptation and resilience and film provides a powerful tool to convey their hopes and fears. Professor Alison Anderson will discuss innovative ways in which young people can be engaged with climate change. Through this event participants will be introduced to an ‘interactive game’ using illustrated visual icons created by Carey Marks of SCARLET Design, used in a series of workshops held with young people aged 16-18 in South West England. The game provides a visually exciting means to engage young people in discussing the issues, including how mainstream media are covering them.

Following this there will be a screening of a film produced by Fotonow – capturing the voices of a selection of the young people from diverse backgrounds as well as journalists and editors. The session will be of particular interest not only to young people but also to teachers, journalists and policymakers.

The team
Professor Alison Anderson (School of Society and Culture, University of Plymouth, UK, and Adjunct Professor in the School of Social Sciences, Monash University, Australia)
James Ellwood (film-maker and Director of Fotonow CIC)
Carey Marks (photojournalist and science communication designer, SCARLET Design)

Nature is behind every drop of water that we consume, keeping us healthy and fed, powering industry and the economy. Our aquifers, lakes and wetlands provide us with water storage; our rivers and streams convey water along vibrant wildlife corridors; while our coastal saltmarshes serve as both a natural barrier against storms and as a sink for carbon.

In 2020, water companies in the UK spear-headed the industry’s low-carbon journey with the publication of the Net Zero 2030 Routemap – the world’s first detailed sector-wide plan to reach net zero by 2030. At the heart of the Routemap is a desire to move away from traditional concrete and steel solutions to a variety of nature-based solutions that bring wider co-benefits beyond net zero.

In this event, we will bring together representatives from the business and environmental communities to explore the opportunities and co-benefits of developing nature-based solutions in support of a Blue Recovery, and the key barriers to success. We will also offer insights around the challenge and opportunity of delivering net zero alongside nature recovery, providing attendees with leading examples from around the UK and exploring the role of regulatory frameworks and green finance in supporting the roll out and scaling up of nature-based programmes.

Hosted by: Christine McGourty, CEO, Water UK
Keynote: Tony Juniper, Chair, Natural England
Panellists: Douglas Millican, CEO, Scottish Water
Darren Moorcroft, CEO, Woodland Trust
Ronan Palmer, Associate Director – Clean Economy, E3G
James Robinson, Director of Conservation, Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT)
Becky Speight, CEO, RSPB

“Our Place in the Cosmos” is a planetarium show about the special, fragile place of the Earth in our Galaxy, the only habitat we yet know able to sustain life.

Our home needs to be in the right place of our Galaxy to be safe from violent activity like supernovae. Yet we needed such activity in the past for the elements that support life, produced inside stars, to be seeded in the proto-solar nebula from which the Earth formed.

Our home also needs to be in the right place of the Solar System to be in its habitable zone, a place capable of sustaining liquid water its surface for eons. We compare Earth to our nearest planetary neighbours, Venus and Mars, which also began their lives in the habitable zone. Soon after their birth, over 4 billion years ago, these three planets looked similar – rocky worlds with flowing lava and water under an atmosphere.

Yet their subsequent evolution followed very different paths. Venus turned into a Hades, the oceans boiling away to create a thick, hot toxic atmosphere. Mars lost its atmosphere and the oceans evaporated into space, to leave a dead world, yet where evidence of past liquid flows is still apparent.

We illustrate these contrasts in the show, we delve beneath the atmospheres to show how oceans might have looked on Venus and Mars. We contrast them to the Earth, and we show what would happen to our continents should sea level rise.

Finally, we show Planet Earth today and see how we can monitor planetary health from space, providing a global view of the land, oceans and atmosphere. We see how fragile planet Earth is and the imperative to protect our home from further damage.

Oxera, Europe’s foremost economics and finance consultancy, will bring the Economics of Climate Change to life through the film lens as we hear from six guest CEOs and founders of some of the fastest-growing start-ups that are tackling the climate challenge. A short film will show you what investors, economists and GreenTech start-ups are doing, before we begin a lively interactive discussion of the Economics of Climate Change, moderated by Oxera Partners Jostein Kristensen and Sahar Shamsi.

Oxera has advised governments and businesses for nearly 40 years on improving the functioning of markets to achieve important policy objectives. This visually engaging and wide-ranging session will illustrate how economics can provide the toolkit for harnessing the multi-disciplinary skills that will ultimately make decarbonisation possible.

Our cinematic presentation will bring you into contact with deep insights, taking you from the use of worldwide geo-mapping of climate risk exposure to land and buildings, to the harnessing of the power of the oceans for achieving decarbonisation. We will discuss data driving carbon offset quality and ratings, supporting investors in the space now and in the future. We will look at the economics issues resulting from new innovative local low-carbon freight delivery systems, and at batteries that do not need recharging for decades. We will see how economics is a study of positive trade-offs that is key to bringing vital solutions and technologies to market.

Join several of tomorrow’s great leaders and investors to navigate the Economics of Climate Change. Alongside the Partners from Oxera, you will meet:

Iggy Bassi, Founder and CEO, Cervest
Sam Gill, Co-founder and COO, Sylvera
Steve Whitehead, COO, Infinite Power Company
Michael Naylor, Chairman, Jupiter Green Investment Trust
Sam Roch-Perks, Co-Founder and Managing Director, Simply Blue Group
Phill Davies, Co-Founder and Commercial Director, Magway

WITH THANKS TO OUR PRINCIPAL PARTNERS

Join one of the UK’s leading children and youth choirs for a performance of songs inspired by climate change. Directed by Patrick Barrett, members of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra’s Junior Chorus will perform a selection of Green Songs by Bob Chilcott and a trio of Assembly Songs by Errollyn Wallen, Shruthi Rajasekar and Claire McCue, specially commissioned for COP26.

Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE) is the world's largest environmental education organisation, with 100 members in 79 countries. Through five ground-breaking programmes, we empower people to take meaningful and purposeful action to help create a more sustainable world.

The theme of COP 26, ‘Together for Our Planet’ provides an important platform to showcase the impacts being created by the network of FEE and explain how each programme is driving the agenda of Climate Action. FEE has prioritised Climate Change, along with Biodiversity Loss and Pollution, as key areas of urgent action for its 10-year strategy – GAIA 20:30.

Through panel presentations, the event will showcase stories of positive actions from around the world. It will bring together voices of different stakeholders such as youth leaders from Eco-Schools, managers of Green Key awarded establishments, municipalities with Blue Flag accredited sites, and Young Reporters for the Environment.

The event will explore how the FEE network is able to make an impact at a global scale with common principles and goals to achieve a sustainable world. It will connect the global impact FEE is creating through stories of change supported by local examples from stakeholders from the UK.

Keynote – Ms Lesley Jones, President FEE
Session Moderator – Mr Daniel Schaffer, CEO FEE

A conversation and artistic intervention on the effects of global warming that threaten the livelihood of Indigenous peoples in the arctic region. For this panel the Goethe-Institut invites experts to discuss ‘Green Colonialism’ and Indigenous self-determination in the North.

The hybrid event is part of the cross-border, interdisciplinary project focusing on the Arctic and Boreal regions “The Right to Be Cold”*: It negotiates questions of Indigenous rights, ecology, climate justice and culture. The project brings together the voices of those who stand up for self-determination and climate-justice and connects artists and institutions from Nunavik, Sápmi and Yakutia and other places in the Arctic region. Besides the multilingual online platform https://www.goethe.de/prj/eco/en/rbc.html , the residency relay and other activities contribute to share knowledge and connect discourses in the global North with those in the South.

* The title of the project comes from the long battle of Inuit to have their rights linked to climate change. The book of the same name by Sheila Watt-Cloutier (2015, Allen Lane Publication), testifies of her pioneering work in connecting climate change to human rights. Okalik Eegeesiak, Former Chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) used the expression in her discourse at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change COP 21 December 3, 2015 in Paris, France.

What is the role of factual, current affairs and news programming in telling the stories of climate change? With such a powerful platform to educate and inspire, how do broadcasters make global climate change stories relevant to audiences? Can you report the challenges our planet faces without overwhelming or demoralising viewers? And how can broadcasters maintain impartiality and inspire positive change?

We’ll hear from a range of presenters and journalists who will share their insights and personal stories, giving testimony to the climate issues they’ve witnessed around the world.

Speakers
Tom Heap, Presenter, Countryfile and 39 Ways to Save the Planet, BBC
Liz Bonnin, Science, Natural History and Environmental Broadcaster
Rachel Corp, Editor, ITV News
Ciaran Jenkins, Scotland Correspondent, Channel 4 News
Sarah Whitehead, Deputy Head of Newsgathering, Sky News
STV speaker tbc

Chair: Mary Kinyua, Oserian Flowers, Kenya and Fairtrade International representative to the COP President’s Civil Society and Youth Council

Speakers:

• Benjamin Franklin Kouamé, Cocoa Farmer and Fairtrade Africa
• Andres Gonzales, Sugar Farmer and Latin American and Caribbean Network of Fair Trade Producers and Workers
• Muniraju Shivanna, Sugar farmer and Fairtrade Network of Asian & Pacific Producers
• Cheryl Pinto, Global Values Led Sourcing Manager, Ben & Jerry’s

A live, interactive panel discussion with Fairtrade farmer representatives from the Producer Networks and business leaders to discuss what further action is needed from citizens, business and governments to scale-up global efforts to adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change.

In order to achieve global climate targets, we need to transform the global food system and its relationship with global trade. Those already facing the harshest effects of the climate crisis must be a central part of building solutions for a just transition to a truly sustainable global food system.

Farming communities in climate vulnerable nations across the Global South are amongst those already experiencing the worst effects of climate change. We’ll hear some of the ways they are already taking action to adapt and support their communities and transition to more climate-friendly farming methods.

The Award-winning IMAX film, A Beautiful Planet is a breath-taking portrait of Earth from space, providing a unique perspective and increased understanding of our planet and galaxy as never seen before. Made in cooperation with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the film features stunning footage of our magnificent blue planet — and the effects humanity has had on it over time — captured by the astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Narrated by Jennifer Lawrence, produced by IMAX Entertainment and Toni Myers — the acclaimed Canadian filmmaker behind celebrated IMAX® documentaries Blue Planet, Hubble 3D, and Space Station 3D.

Presented by the Global Climate Uprising Festival, the film contains warnings regarding climate change and environmental degradation using IMAX footage of Earth from space and time-lapse photography. While showing the impact of Earth’s warming climate, the film also offers positive reasons to take better care of our planet to depict how Earth's warming climate is causing global disasters and how we are finding solutions in research from deep space to lunar explorations on the bottom of the ocean floor.

IMAX veteran Jackson Myers, son of the film’s director, the late Toni Myers, will join us for a post screening discussion and Q&A. Captain Samantha Cristoforetti, European Space Agency Astronaut has been invited to address the audience. Captain Cristoforetti holds the record for the longest uninterrupted spaceflight by a European and is the first Italian woman in space.

On Finance Day at COP26, the Insure Our Future campaign will host an event presenting how the finance industry, specifically insurers, can stop supporting fossil fuels and accelerate the clean energy transition.

Speakers will release the 2021 Fossil Fuel Insurance Scorecard, providing the latest assessment on the shift of the insurance industry away from underwriting and investing in coal, oil and gas. Climate campaigners from around the world will present the leaders and laggards in the global insurance industry, identify areas of progress and inaction, and discuss the climate wrecking fossil fuel projects that insurers are enabling.

The Insure Our Future network is a global coalition of NGOs and social movements advocating for insurance companies to exit coal, oil and gas. Insurance companies are a critical pillar of support for the fossil fuel industry. Without their cover, most new fossil fuel projects cannot be built, and many existing operations will have to be phased out. Thus, the insurance industry has a unique power to drive the transition to a low-carbon economy by limiting cover to projects that are consistent with a pathway to 1.5°C. Yet, despite many commitments to climate action, the insurance industry continues to underwrite the expansion of fossil fuel production and invest in fossil fuel companies.

Speakers at this event will include:
Peter Bosshard, Global Coordinator of Insure Our Future
Joseph Sikulu, Pacific Managing Director, 350.org
Lucie Pinson, Founder and Director, Reclaim Finance

Investors have the power to drive solutions to climate change and support a transition to a net-zero carbon world. With 1% of pension savings across the 37 OECD countries representing US $320 billion, there is great potential for pension schemes to capitalise upon investment opportunities that have positive impact and drive the transition to a net-zero economy while making a financial return.

The shift to a net-zero carbon economy will have practical consequences on people and communities, for example, job losses in some sectors, and growth opportunities and new skills required in others. This is one reason why the transition to net-zero needs to be a just transition, considering the social impacts of tackling climate change.

The Impact Investing Institute has developed four Impact Investing Principles for Pensions, which provide practical guidelines on how pensions can pursue an investing strategy that can contribute to delivering a just transition, and how pension trustees, advisors, fiduciary managers and asset managers can adopt a ‘transitional mindset’ – considering the risks and opportunities within their portfolio presented by the transition to a more sustainable world. The Principles have been adopted by a number of pension schemes and investment consultants and are supported by key industry bodies.

Join the Impact Investing Institute and hear from a range of voices in the industry who will share the investment opportunities and case studies presented by adopting a just transition investing approach, the advantages for institutional investors, such as pensions funds, in adopting a transitional mindset and how that can help to build socially and environmentally resilient economies in the future.

As the University for the Common Good, Glasgow Caledonian University has adopted the Sustainable Development Goals as a framework for its research strategy. Its flagship Centre for Climate Justice is committed to addressing the overarching objective of the SDGs of ‘leaving no one behind’.

This event will shine a spotlight on the need for Advancing Equitable, Just & Gender Sensitive Climate Finance. How can we accelerate and promote the practical action and radical change that is required to help the poorest communities and particularly women and girls get access to climate finance? How can we enable them to build resilience and reduce their vulnerability to climate-related disasters at all levels; households, the community and the economy?

This thought-provoking conversation will connect world-leading experts with the public to inspire participation and discuss locally-led action plans on gender-sensitive, climate just and inclusive climate financing needs.

Former President of Ireland Dr Mary Robinson will deliver a key-note address providing insights on the challenges faced by communities as they try to access finance and the success stories of women’s negotiating skills around accessing climate finance.

Macro-perspectives into how financing structures have changed and what remains to be done to bridge the climate just financing gap for women will be explored. We will deep-dive into the processes developed via the Climate Justice Lab in Brazil for progressive social change.

This event will be opened by Professor Pamela Gillies, Principal and Vice-Chancellor Glasgow Caledonian University and Chaired by Professor Tahseen Jafry, Director of the Centre for Climate Justice at GCU.

What does it take to win a £1m Earthshot Prize? Where
do ideas come from and how can you come up with
solutions to repair the planet?

All these questions and
more will be explored in an interactive event for school
students (aged 10-14) to meet and find out more about
some of the 2021 Earthshot Prize Finalists.

The Finalists will be interviewed by representatives of
“Generation Earthshot” - young climate champions.
They will also explore why learning should always be the
first step to action and share their own tips for getting
involved in the climate and environment movement.

This event will mix live and digital participation through
panels, interviews, teaching and film.

“Our Place in the Cosmos” is a planetarium show about the special, fragile place of the Earth in our Galaxy, the only habitat we yet know able to sustain life.

Our home needs to be in the right place of our Galaxy to be safe from violent activity like supernovae. Yet we needed such activity in the past for the elements that support life, produced inside stars, to be seeded in the proto-solar nebula from which the Earth formed.

Our home also needs to be in the right place of the Solar System to be in its habitable zone, a place capable of sustaining liquid water its surface for eons. We compare Earth to our nearest planetary neighbours, Venus and Mars, which also began their lives in the habitable zone. Soon after their birth, over 4 billion years ago, these three planets looked similar – rocky worlds with flowing lava and water under an atmosphere.

Yet their subsequent evolution followed very different paths. Venus turned into a Hades, the oceans boiling away to create a thick, hot toxic atmosphere. Mars lost its atmosphere and the oceans evaporated into space, to leave a dead world, yet where evidence of past liquid flows is still apparent.

We illustrate these contrasts in the show, we delve beneath the atmospheres to show how oceans might have looked on Venus and Mars. We contrast them to the Earth, and we show what would happen to our continents should sea level rise.

Finally, we show Planet Earth today and see how we can monitor planetary health from space, providing a global view of the land, oceans and atmosphere. We see how fragile planet Earth is and the imperative to protect our home from further damage.

Translink is leading the transport transformation in Northern Ireland, aiming to operate a net zero emissions fleet by 2040 and creating advanced services and networks to be your first choice for travel today, for tomorrow.

This event will give an account of Translink’s actions to revolutionise and decarbonise NI’s public transport system, transitioning to renewable energy technologies and accelerating net zero emissions across their bus and train fleet and wider business by 2040.

Showcasing a compelling innovative case study and panel discussion on the ground-breaking work to deliver the first hydrogen double decker fleet and the first hydrogen refuelling station on the island of Ireland alongside next steps with 100 new zero emission (electric / hydrogen) buses due to be in service next Spring.

Panellists will also share their views on how collaboration has ignited and fuelled ambitious energy solutions to create zero emission public transport coupled with how we need to change attitudes and behaviours towards greater utilization of greener public transport to reduce emissions and free up space in our cities and urban areas for people and active travel, creating cleaner air to breathe for a healthier place to live, work and visit.

Through partnership we can accelerate climate actions within the transport industry and make a bigger impact on our planet for generations to come.

Keynote Speaker: Chris Conway, Group Chief Executive, Translink

At COP26 Dettol will be bringing to life Dettol Hygiene Quest - their brand-new hygiene programme for primary schools. Dettol Hygiene Quest has been created in collaboration with medical experts, curriculum designers and gamification specialists to build long lasting hygiene habits amongst children aged 6-9.

Dettol Hygiene Quest Live will contain a mix of drama entertainment, film and high-profile speakers. The live show will:
● Allow Dettol to showcase the Dettol Hygiene Quest programme
● Demonstrate how Dettol are taking the lead in equipping young people with the skills to combat germ transmission and improve health.
● Create a memorable spectacle that will announce the arrival of the Dettol Hygiene Quest in Glasgow schools.

The Science Show Theatre at Glasgow Science Centre will become an immersive environment for the audience reflecting one of Hygiene Quest’s key locations: The Hidden Reach. The show will comprise:
● Presentations (inc. film and PowerPoint)
● Guest speakers: Kris Licht (Reckitt exec leadership), Humza Yousaf (MSP)
● Drama-based scenarios and kinaesthetic activities (inc. props, sound & lighting)
● Audience participation (inc. demos and whole audience activities)
● Opportunity for photography & PR
Dettol Hygiene Quest Live will complement the roll out of the Dettol Hygiene Quest resources and workshops which will be delivered to ten Glasgow primary schools across the duration of COP26

Gaze down at the Arctic and see walrus, from space!

Join scientists from Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) and British Antarctic Survey (BAS) to discuss the Walrus From Space project and learn how YOU can help them better understand the impacts of the climate crisis on walrus.

The climate crisis has put the Arctic in meltdown, with this polar region warming almost three times faster than the rest of the world. The sea ice walrus depend on is melting beneath them and we need to know more about how their populations are impacted.

WWF and BAS are asking the public to become ‘Walrus Detectives’ and help contribute to conservation science by searching for walrus in the thousands of satellite images taken from space. Over the next 5 years the project aims to carry out the first ever census of the Atlantic and Laptev walrus population using satellite imagery and explore what might happen to walrus in the context of rapid climate change. This will help scientists to better understand the impact of climate change on populations of this iconic species and help safeguard their future.

Our collective actions add up to something powerful, and we want you to be some of the first of the 500,000 people we hope to take part in this project as ‘citizen scientists’ over the next 5 years.

The sessions will begin with a presentation from one or more of the scientists leading the project, displaying imagery of walrus in the Arctic. Followed by a Q&A with the scientists and the opportunity to take part in the project and become a walrus scientist yourself!

The event seeks to generate a space for dialogue and analysis to highlight the importance of the role of indigenous peoples and their territories in the achievement of government´s climate commitments in a context of green, fair and resilient recovery, post COVID 19.

For this, solutions based on communities and nature will be socialized, emphasizing the importance of the territory´s defense strategies and taking into account a context of extractive industries, infrastructures and "exclusive conservation".

In this sense, the session will show the route that indigenous peoples are taking, as well as their actions in order to give recommendations to guide and articulate with the States for a green, fair and resilient recovery, conserving the territories through practices and traditional and ancient knowledge. These recommendations will be key inputs both for the region and for each of the Amazon countries' institutions.

In addition, key issues for indigenous peoples that contribute to inclusive conservation will be addressed, such as climate financing, the implementation of the Leticia Pact in indigenous territories, increasing climate ambition through NDCs and Territorial Governance. There will be a space to present indigenous peoples' own initiatives such as Tambores de la Selva, a community training program in Communication and leadership for young Amazonians, whose purpose is to strengthen professional capacities for the benefit of their community.

Speakers:

• José Gregorio Díaz Mirabal -General Coordinator - COICA
• Tabea Cacique - Education, Science and Technology Coordinator -COICA, and part of Aidesep Board (Perú).
• Other indigenous and institutional representatives to be confirmed

Your money is so powerful. It could help tackle the climate crisis or fan the flames. It’s one of our biggest weapons in the fight against the climate crisis, and it’s time people unlocked that hidden superpower to build a better world.

Take pensions. Make My Money Matter’s research shows that having a green pension is 21x more effective at cutting your carbon than stopping flying, going vegetarian and switching energy provider COMBINED. Imagine if the $50 trillion in our pensions was helping tackle the crises our world is facing, rather than supporting business as usual?

So join Make My Money Matter, Count Us In and WWF-UK to hear from a range of exciting speakers who will give you real examples on how your savings, your bank and your pensions are impacting the world. And most importantly what you can do to ensure it’s having a positive impact.

Introduced by Richard Curtis, there will be a series of rapid-fire speeches followed by exciting short films to help you understand the power of your wallet. There will be a chance to quiz our speakers on everything you ever wanted to know about money but were too scared to asked. Then we’ll close with a screening of Our Planet: Too Big To Fail – a cinematic masterpiece inspired by the Netflix Our Planet series and created by WWF and Silverback Films – featuring the one and only Sir David Attenborough.

Many other events during COP26 will focus on the problems. Join us and learn how you can be part of the solution.

The languages we speak shape how we understand the world around us, including our connections to land and nature. But as fast as we’re losing species from our planet, so we’re losing languages that offer different ways of seeing. What connections, ideas and wisdom are we losing as those languages are lost? What powerful strategies for sustainable living might they offer, to help look afresh at our environmental crisis?

living-language-land is a journey through endangered and minority languages that reveal different ways of relating to land and nature. Through 26 words shared in the run-up to COP26 we are giving a global audience fresh inspiration for tackling our environmental crisis.

Our contributors from across the world share, in their own voices, what their powerful words mean to them and their communities. And they explain how the environmental crisis is challenging the deep bonds with land and nature that their words express. Together the words form a rich word bank that offers a fresh, evocative perspective on our environmental crisis – one that’s beyond the scope of the Western-dominated conversation.

Our event includes films and visual content contributed to the project from communities across the world. It also includes conversations with some of our international contributors, allowing the audience to directly engage with the people and experiences that may lead us into a different relationship with our land and nature.

The project will be presented by creative producers Neville Gabie and Philippa Bayley, with contributions from our project partners and contributors.
https://living-language-land.org

The living-language-land project is funded by the British Council COP26 Creative Commissions programme.

The Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) will host a panel discussion with Inuit youth from across Inuit Nunaat, Inuit homelands and territory, to explore answers to the question of how existing Inuit knowledge and Inuit innovation and technologies might help better inform climate-resilient infrastructure. Most of Inuit Nunaat already has an infrastructure deficit that connects to climate resilience and adaptive capacity. For example:

• Education: Most Inuit must travel far from home for post-secondary education.
• Power: Many Inuit communities are reliant on diesel generators to provide power.
• Housing: Lack of sufficient housing is chronic in Inuit communities. In 2017, there were almost 900 people in Greenland with no permanent housing.
• Marine infrastructure: Inuit are coastal people and rely on marine resources. With an Arctic Ocean open for more of the year, the seas present opportunities for traditional harvesting pursuits, and other opportunities from increased shipping access. But this require appropriate infrastructure that is currently sparse in Inuit Nunaat.

Climate change is a challenge to the integrity of various aspects of our community infrastructure. In Alaska, whole Inuit communities are threatened, as big storms are no longer buffered by protective shore ice. In other communities, there are concerns about the integrity of roads, pipelines, water and sewer pipes, and runways. The whole connective tissue of Inuit Nunaat is being challenged by climate change. This event will engage Inuit youth in thinking about and describing the sorts of infrastructure that will be necessary to withstand the changes already occurring in their home communities.

“Our Place in the Cosmos” is a planetarium show about the special, fragile place of the Earth in our Galaxy, the only habitat we yet know able to sustain life.

Our home needs to be in the right place of our Galaxy to be safe from violent activity like supernovae. Yet we needed such activity in the past for the elements that support life, produced inside stars, to be seeded in the proto-solar nebula from which the Earth formed.

Our home also needs to be in the right place of the Solar System to be in its habitable zone, a place capable of sustaining liquid water its surface for eons. We compare Earth to our nearest planetary neighbours, Venus and Mars, which also began their lives in the habitable zone. Soon after their birth, over 4 billion years ago, these three planets looked similar – rocky worlds with flowing lava and water under an atmosphere.

Yet their subsequent evolution followed very different paths. Venus turned into a Hades, the oceans boiling away to create a thick, hot toxic atmosphere. Mars lost its atmosphere and the oceans evaporated into space, to leave a dead world, yet where evidence of past liquid flows is still apparent.

We illustrate these contrasts in the show, we delve beneath the atmospheres to show how oceans might have looked on Venus and Mars. We contrast them to the Earth, and we show what would happen to our continents should sea level rise.

Finally, we show Planet Earth today and see how we can monitor planetary health from space, providing a global view of the land, oceans and atmosphere. We see how fragile planet Earth is and the imperative to protect our home from further damage.

The panel will include Amandeep Kaur Mann (EcoSikh UK), Rajesh Purohit (Hindu Climate Action), Kamran Shezad (Bahu Trust) and Olivia Fuchs (Eco Dharma Network). It will be followed by a response from Olivia Hanks, a Quaker representative from Faith for the Climate's Steering Group, and chaired by Canon Giles Goddard, founder and Chair of Faith for the Climate and member of the Church of England’s Environment Working Group.

The panel members are part of the Faith for the Climate capacity building project - a unique case study of the power of interfaith and intra-faith collaboration on climate action in cities and the built environment. Action on climate change is urgent, but it is also a new and confusing area for many people, who need an entry point to feel connected to the issue and to take ownership of their responses and contributions.

The four partner organisations have strong relationships with diasporic communities within their cultural and religious traditions, including in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, North America, Europe, East Africa and Southeast Asia. This event will showcase how emerging grassroots leaders from minority backgrounds in the UK have transformed and empowered themselves and their communities to take more effective climate action.

The Environmental Investigation Agency, If Not Us Then Who and Rainforest Foundation UK, along with Kaoem Telapak and the Tenure Facility, present a showcase of short films highlighting the role local communities play in forest protection, and the urgent need to include them as partners to protect the threatened forests of the world.

The films will present challenges and solutions in trying to protect forests in Indonesia and the Congo Basin. Forest advocates and local community leaders will give presentations to accompany the films that will highlight recent challenges and ongoing efforts by communities protecting and managing their forests.

If Not Us Then Who will premiere a film produced by
Indigenous People in Indonesia with an Indigenous Leader presenting alongside it. EIA will present clips from their new film Indonesia: the Fight for the Remaining Forest alongside presentations by Indonesian forest advocates Mardi Minangsari and Abu Meridian. Rainforest Foundation UK will present films on community forestry and the steps communities are taking to protect forests in the Congo Basin and West Africa.

Women and girls are hit hardest by climate impacts around the world. They are also hugely under-represented in climate negotiations.

Join Aviva CEO Amanda Blanc as she convenes the Women in Finance Climate Action Group - a collective of women leaders from around the world - to set out how we can tackle the connected issues of gender inequality and private climate finance.

The event will feature senior women from business, the public sector and civil society exploring how private finance can and must support both climate action and gender equality. It will focus on the tangible actions that are needed, underpinned by the first ever research report to look into the connection between these issues in depth.

Audience participation will be encouraged, with the Climate Action Group looking to connect and strengthen the network of women looking to help solve these issues around the world.

An event bringing together Indigenous communities, financial leaders, and policy makers to find solutions to the deforestation epidemic.

There is no end to the climate crisis without stopping tropical deforestation. Our forests are our key ally if we’re to keep to our climate goals. In 2020 the tropics lost 12.2 million hectares of forest cover. Of that 4.2 million hectares, an area the size of the Netherlands, occurred within humid tropical primary forests, which are hotspots for biodiversity, home to indigenous communities and vital in halting climate breakdown.

For many years Global Witness and Global Canopy have exposed the international demand for commodities - soy, beef, palm oil and timber - that are driving this destruction and the human and environmental abuses that go alongside it. The financial sector plays a key role in this global trade and must now work closely with the guardians for the forest who are Indigenous Peoples.

Our event will put policy makers, financial leaders, and Indigenous communities in one room, exploring the problem and coming up with solutions. What can policymakers do to address the accountability gap for finance on deforestation? How can responsible financiers benefit from tackling the problem? What do Indigenous Peoples need from financial institutions to protect their homes?

There is a growing global call to end the financing behind the abusive environmental and human rights practices in forest-risk commodities. By highlighting the crucial role Indigenous Peoples and local communities play in preserving forests, the event aims at creating a space for discussing solutions that would best protect the world's forests and the people who depend on them.

Meeting Ground Theatre & Faith-bridge ‘Camino to Cop” invite travellers from around the world to share stories, songs & poetry of Resilience & Hope for the Future.

Featuring Coat of Hopes “Stitching Event”, Fiddlers Carolyne Francis & Anne Wood, & The Old Crone & her apron of spells!

Hosted by planetSHINE founder and CEO, Rachel McClelland and Scottish entrepreneur and Prickly Thistle founder, Clare Campbell, The Voiceless Revolution will be an entertaining, inspiring and inclusive mix of real talk,
film and action focused on the communities who, until now, haven’t had a voice amid the climate emergency.

We are bringing together a committee of real people; 21 st century heroes of all races, ages, genders and species, and with an emphasis on the working classes, to represent the planet and its diverse mix of people and other species. Young and old will be welcome to share their stories, their struggles, their hopes and dreams.

Our heroes – people from all walks of life - face a huge problem; a broken society and a devastated planet and they are the ones who will suffer the most. Not only that, but they have one thing in common - they have been powerless for too long. Overwhelmed by the scale of the climate emergency combined with sometimes living on the fringes of society, they haven’t had a voice…until now.

The Voiceless Revolution is a coming together of the disenfranchised, the marginalised and the unrepresented.

Whilst the greatest minds on the planet - governments, business leaders and entrepreneurs – have been trying in vain to solve the problem, there is still much to do and not much time in which to do it.

We now need to listen to the planet, to marginalised communities, to all species. We need to collaborate at every step of the way and we need to listen and learn from each other.

The Voiceless Revolution will ensure that everyone is listened to. The backbone of the world, of industry, of life is ready to take centre stage.

The grafters, the creators, the refugees, the cleaners, the sweepers, the homeless, the machinists, the miners, the care experienced, the child birthers, the taxi drivers, the lions, the worker bees, the companion dogs. We are bringing them all to the conversation and through a mix of discussion, film, the arts and a huge positive call to action, we aim to ensure that everybody, who is being impacted or will be impacted by the climate emergency, is included.

This is humanity, and other species, at their finest.

It’s time for drastic measures.

It’s time to listen to the voiceless.

Join us, be heard and be a part of a new revolution!

The panelists, the top off-grid sector experts and players, will explore the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on provision of decentralised clean energy access in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Global South more broadly. They will discuss what the off-grid energy sector now needs to ensure the inclusive, resilient, and green recovery required for reaching climate-related goals, and specifically SDG7 – clean energy for all.

In a rich and wide-ranging discussion, panelists will interrogate different emerging hypotheses from the ‘Chapters of Covid’. These takeaways will be published in post-COP26 report, co-authored by a range of leading off-grid companies, investors and fund managers. Jonathan Phillips of Duke University’s Energy Access Project will moderate the panel and Duke will lead the development of the takeaways report.

The built environment is responsible for c40% of global carbon emissions. Significant investment will be needed to decarbonise commercial buildings and make real estate assets resilient to the physical impacts of climate change.

This event will provide an insight into the critical role that the commercial real estate sector plays in addressing climate change, highlighting some of the toughest challenges and exploring how meaningful progress can be accelerated through:

• Collective Commitment: Showcasing the Better Buildings Partnership Climate Commitment (covering over £370bn AUM), we’ll discuss how sector commitments can expedite action and investigate what is required to deliver on this ground-breaking commitment.

• Sustainable Finance: Focusing on the role of the finance sector in driving action, we’ll consider how financial instruments can be used to mobilise capital and scale-up investment in decarbonising commercial buildings and protecting them against climate risk.

• Collaborative Action: Emphasising the critical role that building occupiers play in driving demand, the event will bring owners and occupiers face to face to align their climate change ambitions.

Culminating in a panel discussion focused on urgent near term action, the event will bring together senior leaders from the real estate industry alongside investors and occupiers of commercial real estate assets to inspire cross-sectoral action on climate change.

Confirmed speakers:

• Neil Slater, Global Head of Real Assets, Abrdn

• Sarah Ratcliffe, CEO, Better Buildings Partnership

• Caroline Hill, Managing Director, Europe Head of Real Estate ESG, Blackstone

• Sam McClary, Editor, Estates Gazette

• Janine Cole, Social Impact & Sustainability Director, Great Portland Estates

• Miles Keeping, Chair, Green Property Alliance

• Stephanie Hyde, CEO, JLL UK

• Shuen Chan, Head of ESG, Real Assets, Legal & General Investment Management

• Bek Seeley, Managing Director, Development, Europe, Lendlease

• Michael Neal, European CIO, Nuveen

• Paul Dunne, MD Group Ops, SEGRO

Supported by The British Property Federation.

Founded by contemporary artist Olafur Eliasson, Little Sun is a nonprofit organization that works to deliver affordable clean energy solutions and inspire climate action. In this session, Little Sun will screen its latest culture project, Fast Forward, a series of short films that explore five artists’ dreams for a regenerative world.

Featuring voices from Ethiopia, Senegal, and the United States, the series turns an often data-driven and technically heavy conversation surrounding the climate crisis into an open, intimate dialogue, creating new motivation for change.

Following the screening, Fast Forward’s curator Alex McClure will host a conversation about the role of art in stewarding a just transition to a net-zero world.

Young people from across Scotland are invited to make their voices heard at a live discussion event. They will work together to create their own Net Zero Energy Policy for Scotland for 2045. Policy actions selected will be considered for use in future COP engagement by ScottishPower Renewables.

Following a programme of classroom learning to build knowledge on the topic, secondary students will gather in the Green Zone to hear from renewable energy professionals, share their ideas and select their own policy actions.

This unmissable event will be facilitated by Glasgow Science Centre’s learning team and strengthened by guest and energy sector expert panellists including:
• Keith Anderson - CEO Scottish Power
• Lindsay McQuade - CEO ScottishPower Renewables

This COP26 Indigenous Renewable Energy Microgrids for Just Energy Transition session is focused on strengthening global networking to accelerate energy transition through Renewable Energy Microgrids (REMs) in Indigenous communities through an all-encompassing approach. The session will be inclusive of civil society and community leadership to exemplify how a people's agenda can be brought to REMs allowing for local capacity and empowerment. All forms of leadership (community, governance, policy, utility, business) are needed to build just, sustainable energy futures and thus, this session will reflect that.

The session shall profile how Indigenous REM’s can integrate and advance the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), put forth by the United Nations notably SDG 13, Climate Action and SDG 7, Affordable and Clean Energy, as well as those SDGs related to the conservation and restoration of Nature. The session embodies the concept of ‘Just Climate Energy’ which represents a climate protective clean energy future that also respects the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

“Our Place in the Cosmos” is a planetarium show about the special, fragile place of the Earth in our Galaxy, the only habitat we yet know able to sustain life.

Our home needs to be in the right place of our Galaxy to be safe from violent activity like supernovae. Yet we needed such activity in the past for the elements that support life, produced inside stars, to be seeded in the proto-solar nebula from which the Earth formed.

Our home also needs to be in the right place of the Solar System to be in its habitable zone, a place capable of sustaining liquid water its surface for eons. We compare Earth to our nearest planetary neighbours, Venus and Mars, which also began their lives in the habitable zone. Soon after their birth, over 4 billion years ago, these three planets looked similar – rocky worlds with flowing lava and water under an atmosphere.

Yet their subsequent evolution followed very different paths. Venus turned into a Hades, the oceans boiling away to create a thick, hot toxic atmosphere. Mars lost its atmosphere and the oceans evaporated into space, to leave a dead world, yet where evidence of past liquid flows is still apparent.

We illustrate these contrasts in the show, we delve beneath the atmospheres to show how oceans might have looked on Venus and Mars. We contrast them to the Earth, and we show what would happen to our continents should sea level rise.

Finally, we show Planet Earth today and see how we can monitor planetary health from space, providing a global view of the land, oceans and atmosphere. We see how fragile planet Earth is and the imperative to protect our home from further damage.

Join Student Energy for the launch of the inaugural Global Youth Energy Outlook report. Youth are calling for leaders in all sectors to move beyond tokenism and engage with youth through equitable and meaningful partnerships. How can decision-makers work with youth to accelerate climate action and the sustainable energy transition? The Global Youth Energy Outlook presents insights from 30,000+ youth from around the world, on what young people envision for their energy future and how they want to work with decision-makers to get there.

The launch event will break down key insights from Student Energy’s youth-led research, and will include a tangible guide for decision-makers on how to actually work together with young people in an equitable way. Featuring global and regionally specific insights collected from 30,000+ young people globally, the GYEO is a powerful data-backed advocacy tool for both youth advocates and decision-makers.

Event overview and speakers:

The GYEO Launch will feature an intergenerational and global lineup of speakers who will outline how the GYEO can be effectively mobilized at the grassroots level, within government institutions, and in the energy sector:

• Student Energy’s youth Regional Coordinators who have been leading this research in their regions throughout 2020 and 2021
• Representatives from several national governments, including Canada, Denmark, and Sweden
• Representatives from companies in the energy sector, such as DNV

Learn more about Student Energy and the Global Youth Energy Outlook: www.studentenergy.org

Lunch will be provided at the end of the event.

Climate change is impacting all of us, but the severest and most immediate impacts are already being felt by the most vulnerable. The event will focus on the challenges facing women in the transition to a green economy.

We will explore, among other areas, the issue of energy. As COP President, Alok Sharma, has said, “the clean energy transition is central to tackling climate change”. Clean energy is also an important driver of social impact and a lever for empowering women.

Join us to learn from the latest thinking on empowering women through a green transition, with practical examples from leading businesses and practitioners. Take actionable insights back into your organisation and deepen your understanding of how your organisation can increase the impact and effectiveness of its efforts to address climate change and empower women, through partnerships between business, government and civil society.

Clean energy is key to increasing energy access for rural communities in Africa - with direct benefits for people's lives, livelihoods, and learning. African rural women and girls are the most impacted by a lack of access to energy, and evidence suggests that COVID-19 has made this situation worse.

Clean energy also provides opportunities for women entrepreneurs - such as building and selling solar lamps and installing and maintaining solar panels. This can help build their economic resilience, and break barriers by placing women at the forefront of innovative technology and sustainable energy, helping to close the gender gap in STEM, and ensuring women in rural communities are included in the green economy.

This event is hosted by Business Fights Poverty, a business-led collaboration network focused on social impact, in partnership with The Corporate Responsibility Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School and The Green Girls Organisation, an NGO that empowers women to provide renewable energy to rural communities.

See how climate change will have an impact on sport, and how the immense power of sport can help to combat the climate crisis, with Sky Sports News presenter Mike Wedderburn and guests. Plus, an exclusive first look of a brand new short-form documentary created by Sky Sports – Cricket’s Climate Crisis.

Gaze down at the Arctic and see walrus, from space!

Join scientists from Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) and British Antarctic Survey (BAS) to discuss the Walrus From Space project and learn how YOU can help them better understand the impacts of the climate crisis on walrus.

The climate crisis has put the Arctic in meltdown, with this polar region warming almost three times faster than the rest of the world. The sea ice walrus depend on is melting beneath them and we need to know more about how their populations are impacted.

WWF and BAS are asking the public to become ‘Walrus Detectives’ and help contribute to conservation science by searching for walrus in the thousands of satellite images taken from space. Over the next 5 years the project aims to carry out the first ever census of the Atlantic and Laptev walrus population using satellite imagery and explore what might happen to walrus in the context of rapid climate change. This will help scientists to better understand the impact of climate change on populations of this iconic species and help safeguard their future.

Our collective actions add up to something powerful, and we want you to be some of the first of the 500,000 people we hope to take part in this project as ‘citizen scientists’ over the next 5 years.

The sessions will begin with a presentation from one or more of the scientists leading the project, displaying imagery of walrus in the Arctic. Followed by a Q&A with the scientists and the opportunity to take part in the project and become a walrus scientist yourself!

Fear of the Green Planet is a multimedia and participatory music project by Co-Founder of May Project Gardens and Artist KMT Freedom Teacher; permeating the whole-systems thinking that permaculture inspires. Launching the development of a new genre that advocates for solutions oriented social and climate justice.

This project is a full length album through the creation of new tracks, music videos and performances etc. Fear of the Green Planet is a multimedia art project consisting of (a) music tracks, (b) Presentations, (c) Participatory Live Performance, (d) Online Showreel performance, (e) Question and Answer and (f) Demonstrations. Inspired by 15 years of Grassroots Community Eco Solutions via May Project Gardens (Award Winning Community Hub) that reconnects people to Nature for Personal, Social, Economic Transformation and still operates from a council house in South London (which was self funded for 9 years).

Hip-Hop Garden (award-winning inner city youth programme) reconnects young people to nature via 5 key modules which includes wellbeing, employability and entrepreneurship. ‘Come We Grow’ events are an immersive celebration of our creative approach to environmentalism. Bee Rooted Consultancy’s approach to diversity and inclusion via training and consultancy is rooted in and supported by nature. D&I sessions are held at May Project Gardens, making use of the garden.

Moreover, nature is utilised as a lens through which to view diversity and inclusion in a seldomly appreciated way. Specifically, sessions are underpinned by a Permaculture design methodology which is based on whole-systems thinking and informed by ethics (caring for the earth, caring for people and equity). Permaculture principles 10: Use and value diversity and 11: Use edges and value the marginal are of particular relevance, demonstrating that diversity is implicit in healthy thriving ecosystems – as it should be in human communities.

Europe’s coal regions have a story to tell. Once the backbone of industry, their traditional livelihood is under threat as countries end fossil fuels. Europe’s coal regions know the damage it does if people and their livelihoods are forgotten in coal exit plans.

Coal is on its way out, but a just transition isn’t guaranteed: WWF, together with Bankwatch, are bringing this story to COP26.

During this multimedia event, participants will view witness statements gathered from coal regions around Europe and hear from those leading the charge for a socially fair transition.

We will welcome mayors from EU coal regions, including the deputy mayor of Pernik in Bulgaria, as well as the deputy mayor of Bytom in Poland, to tell of their regions' quest for a just transition to a more sustainable future.

After this, we will hear how that quest is replicated beyond the EU's borders and how the challenges to secure a just transition are the same and how they are different.

This will lead to a discussion on what works and what’s needed to ensure that ending coal leads to a fairer, healthier and more resilient future for all.

Speakers:
Stefan Krastev - deputy mayor of Pernik in Bulgaria
Michał Bieda - deputy mayor of Bytom in Poland

Scottish EDGE, the UK’s biggest funding competition for high growth potential businesses brings their 2021 Net Zero EDGE award final to COP26. Sustainable companies across Scotland have applied to pitch live to secure funding of up to £100,000, thanks to additional support from the Royal Bank of Scotland.

The new Net Zero EDGE award reflects Scotland’s drive to be net zero by 2045. It celebrates the role that innovative business people and entrepreneurs are playing in making this target achievable. This award offers well deserved recognition for those organisations leading the way in the transition to net zero – and inspires others to do the same.

Successful finalists will provide a short overview of their business, to a panel of high-profile judges including Sir Tom Hunter – Entrepreneur & Philanthropist and Alison Rose - Chief Executive, Natwest Group.

Join us to witness history in the making, as growing Scottish businesses pledge for funding to help create credible change, building awareness of the importance of making sustainability and climate friendly practices core to thrive.

SSE will premiere Hydro: Powering a Net Zero Future, a film celebrating the rich heritage of hydro power and looking ahead to its vital role in combating climate change. The film will look at the transformative social and economic impact hydro power had on the north of Scotland following WW2, the continued role it plays and the potential for this almost 80-year-old technology to support a decarbonised electricity grid.  Following the film’s premiere there will be a panel event with UK and international experts discussing hydro’s role in reducing carbon emissions.

“Our Place in the Cosmos” is a planetarium show about the special, fragile place of the Earth in our Galaxy, the only habitat we yet know able to sustain life.

Our home needs to be in the right place of our Galaxy to be safe from violent activity like supernovae. Yet we needed such activity in the past for the elements that support life, produced inside stars, to be seeded in the proto-solar nebula from which the Earth formed.

Our home also needs to be in the right place of the Solar System to be in its habitable zone, a place capable of sustaining liquid water its surface for eons. We compare Earth to our nearest planetary neighbours, Venus and Mars, which also began their lives in the habitable zone. Soon after their birth, over 4 billion years ago, these three planets looked similar – rocky worlds with flowing lava and water under an atmosphere.

Yet their subsequent evolution followed very different paths. Venus turned into a Hades, the oceans boiling away to create a thick, hot toxic atmosphere. Mars lost its atmosphere and the oceans evaporated into space, to leave a dead world, yet where evidence of past liquid flows is still apparent.

We illustrate these contrasts in the show, we delve beneath the atmospheres to show how oceans might have looked on Venus and Mars. We contrast them to the Earth, and we show what would happen to our continents should sea level rise.

Finally, we show Planet Earth today and see how we can monitor planetary health from space, providing a global view of the land, oceans and atmosphere. We see how fragile planet Earth is and the imperative to protect our home from further damage.

Classified as "clean energy", large hydropower plants located in tropical forested regions may lead to significant carbon dioxide and methane. Running over human rights, profound impacts on biodiversity and traditional communities, violation of international laws and agreements and allegations of widespread corruption are some of the examples that have been observed about the construction of hydroelectric plants in the region. In addition to all these problems, Hydroelectric power plants installed in tropical forest areas emit considerable amounts of greenhouse gases as a result of the degradation of flooded vegetation and soil. With all these impacts on the scale, it is impossible to classify hydroelectric as clean energy. The Brazilian Indigenous people have denounced the impacts and risks in their areas, yet these same communities are often generating innovative, just, and scalable clean energy solutions.

This session is an invitation to hear from the front lines about the social, environmental and economic impacts of hydropower dams, that are being falsely portrayed as “clean and renewable” energy and a solution to the climate crisis. Indigenous leaders whose ancestral lands and lifeways are impacted by hydropower development in Brazil will tell their stories. Hear about how the Amazonian indigenous people are developing their own clean energy solutions contributing to the community development and at the same time tackling the needed energy transition. Hear how they are developing their own clean energy solutions contributing to the community development and at the same time tackling the needed energy transition.

Movement is fueled, and inspired, by renewable energy in this new dance experience from multi-award winning choreographer, filmmaker and director Corey Baker.

Renewable Moves harnesses the urgency of the moves we must all collectively make towards renewable energy. Embodied by world-class dancers, the message behind Renewable Moves is clear, simple and fun; an engaging and accessible event for audiences of all ages.

In addition to a live dance performance, Renewable Moves features a stunning dance film, filmed in the Scottish Highlands, that marries the beauty, mystery and majesty of the dancers, the landscape, and the engineering marvels of a wind farm.

Dancers (Live Performance): Emma Holt, Lauren Jenkins, Luke Hodkinson, Sam Reeves
Dancers (Film): Emma Holt, Lauren Jenkins, Luke Hodkinson, Sam Reeves, Jacob Wye, Jenna Anne Nathan, Ena Yamaguchi, Joey Barton, Harry Ondrak-Wright,
Beatboxer: Bigg Taj
Choreographer/Director: Corey Baker
Assistant Choreographer: Joey Barton
Dramaturge: Amy Baty
Stage Manager: Mickey Graham
Producer: Susan Hay
Education Officer: Hayley Earlam
Costumes and Styling: Pia Gloria
Film producers: Anne Beresford, Lindsey Douglas, Ali Ellam
Development Producer: Clare Lee Davis
Executive Producer: Tim Wood

With thanks to Creative Scotland, Arts Council England, Falck Renewables, Scottish Renewables, Achlain and Aberchalder Estates and MC Overalls.

Climate change is “code red for humanity”. We aim for ‘Net Zero’ but if the world continues at this pace, there will be no Planet left – Planet Zero.

A recent University of Bath global survey revealed, 60% of today’s youth feels overwhelmed by climate anxiety. Global temperature increases will result in the forced displacement of billions of people, global resource conflict and threaten humanity’s very way of life. This is not the world the Next Generation wants to inherit. They want to be heard. They want a better future. They want to be part of the solution.

This SCI forum provides a platform for the Next Generation of scientists and inventors who are actively developing scientific solutions, to showcase their work and its impact on climate change. It is an opportunity for those anxious about the climate crisis, to challenge these entrepreneurs. This conversation will raise the audience’s awareness of solutions being developed in the following areas:

• Fuels of the Future
• Turning Waste into Gold
• Engineering Nature

Speakers and supporters will come from: Croda, Unilever, GSK, AstraZeneca, Sphera and others.

This Next Generation of scientists and inventors have the power to change our world’s tomorrow. Please do join us at this event.

SCI
Science is critical for everyday life and science-based companies must show leadership in the drive to Net Zero. Tackling climate change means managing carbon and this needs science, specifically chemistry. Without science being applied by industry, we cannot achieve this.

SCI is a place where science meets business – an innovation hub, which brings organisations together to collaboratively develop scientific solutions to address the societal challenges of today.

Learn more about us here: https://www.soci.org/

This year the annual Ashden Awards celebration will tell visitors to the Glasgow COP and a global online audience the inspiring stories of climate champions from around the world. Champions whose exciting initiatives can fire us towards a low-carbon future.

At 6pm on 4 November, the nine 2021 Award winners will be announced, and we will premiere a film highlighting and celebrating their personal journeys.

Join us in the Green Zone cinema or online to see ground-breaking initiatives in the forests and fields of Africa and India, among refugee camps brimming with energy and entrepreneurship, and in towns and cities up and down the UK. Hear what it takes to become a true climate champion – and how the world can boost these initiatives, and many others like them.

From clean and affordable energy to new jobs and green skills, Ashden Award winners show the awesome potential of climate action. So reserve your tickets now or register online for a whirlwind tour of wonder and inspiration.

From rainforests to renewables: The 2021 Ashden Awards are:
Humanitarian Energy
supported by the Linbury Trust; Alan and Babette Sainsbury Charitable Fund and a public appeal
Natural Climate Solutions
supported by the UK Government Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Energy Access Innovation
supported by the UK Government Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Cooling in Informal Settlements
supported by Clean Cooling Collaborative/ClimateWorks Foundation
Energy Access Skills
supported by The Ashden Trust
Regenerative Agriculture
supported by The DOEN Foundation
UK Climate Innovation
supported by Impax Asset Management
UK Green Skills
supported by Garfield Weston Foundation
UK Green Communities
supported by Esmée Fairbairn Foundation

To be sustainable and just, climate adaptation efforts need to be gender inclusive and locally led. Faith-based actors are an integral part of crisis-affected communities, and are present before, during and after a climate induced crisis. What role does the faith perspective play, and what is needed to allow and spur faith actors to be a positive force for ensuring gender and climate justice?

The needed agreements, principles and plans are already in place. These include the Gender Action Plan adopted at COP25, and the Principles of locally-led adaptation formulated by World Resources Institute (WRI) and International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), to which Islamic Relief and Act Church of Sweden were among the first signatories. Faith is a frame of values, ethics, attitudes and behaviours which is an important foundation for understanding and assessing climate action and societal transformation.

However, progress is slow and climate finance is lacking. It is high time to transform words into action.

During this event, arranged by Islamic Relief Sweden in collaboration with Act Church of Sweden, we will share examples of climate adaptation from local contexts and listen to the experience of communities affected by climate change. A panel of experts, including representatives of faith-based organisations, will provide comment on current efforts to transform policies into action. We will discuss the interconnections between locally-led climate adaptation, gender-responsive programming and faith, and what can be done by faith actors and others to put affected people at the centre of discussions on adaptation, inclusive decision-making and accountability. Drawing on the inter-religious statement “Sacred People, Sacred Earth”, we will explore what can be done by faith actors and the international community to ensure that faith becomes a catalytic force for climate- and gender justice for crisis-affected people and communities.

Speakers:
Dr Antjé Jackelén, Archbishop, Church of Sweden.
Sheikh Hassan Rabbani, Imam, chair of Scottish Muslim Forum.
Patriciah Roy Akullo, climate and gender expert, DanChurchAid, Uganda,
Nouhad Awwad, Ummah for Earth Project Campaigner, Greenpeace-MENA
Waseem Ahmad, Chief Executive Officer, Islamic Relief Worldwide
Erik Lysén, Director, Act Church of Sweden
Moderator:
Shahin Ashraf MBE - Head of Global Advocacy, Islamic Relief Worldwide

This interactive event challenges young people around the globe to think about the part they can play in creating a low carbon future.
By questioning world-leading experts who are developing sustainable solutions to reduce energy use at British Antarctic Survey research stations school children will learn how human ingenuity, creativity, and technology can help people live with and adapt to climate change. Its key message to students is ‘you can help ensure a greener, more resilient future for us all’.

Across the world, artists and arts organisations are mobilising around the climate crisis and discovering a deeper connection to the planet. This in-conversation event, chaired by Alison Tickell, founder and CEO of non-profit Julie’s Bicycle, explores the vital role that arts and culture must play in climate transformation.

Composed of artists, activists and environmental experts - including author, Elif Shafak, Friday's For Future India founder, Disha Ravi, and Nova Ruth, founder of Arka Kinari - the discussion will centre on creative and cultural responses to the climate crisis and art’s unique capacity to raise awareness and create action. With Love Ssega (musician and EarthPercent ambassador) as MC, performances from poet Selina Nwulu, and musician Nova Ruth, and scientist and climate communicator Ed Hawkins as a key witness.

Join us in person, or online, to hear how creativity can inspire communities and individuals to participate in reshaping the world, to imagine a sustainable and just future and support adaptation and resilience. Alongside the conversation, a short film showcasing artists and activists from around the world, sharing their messages for COP26, will premier. We will also hear about how Season for Change, a cultural programme inspiring urgent climate action, has engaged hundreds of organisations and communities across the UK. This event is delivered with thanks to partnerships with the British Council and Arts Council England.

Join youth climate activists from around the world as they talk about the impacts of climate change they are experiencing and the action and campaigning they are part of. Campaigners from Mock COP26 and Fridays for Future MAPA (Most Affected People and Areas) will join in-person and youth who cannot attend COP26 via video. They will share what was achieved when hundreds of youth worldwide came together to show their climate ambition through Mock COP26, an online conference that filled the void left by the postponement of COP26 last year. During this event there will be a space for the young people on the panel to answer your questions and talk about their vision for real youth leadership on climate.

Instagram: @mockcop26
Twitter: @mockcop26

Gaze down at the Arctic and see walrus, from space!

Join scientists from Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) and British Antarctic Survey (BAS) to discuss the Walrus From Space project and learn how YOU can help them better understand the impacts of the climate crisis on walrus.

The climate crisis has put the Arctic in meltdown, with this polar region warming almost three times faster than the rest of the world. The sea ice walrus depend on is melting beneath them and we need to know more about how their populations are impacted.

WWF and BAS are asking the public to become ‘Walrus Detectives’ and help contribute to conservation science by searching for walrus in the thousands of satellite images taken from space. Over the next 5 years the project aims to carry out the first ever census of the Atlantic and Laptev walrus population using satellite imagery and explore what might happen to walrus in the context of rapid climate change. This will help scientists to better understand the impact of climate change on populations of this iconic species and help safeguard their future.

Our collective actions add up to something powerful, and we want you to be some of the first of the 500,000 people we hope to take part in this project as ‘citizen scientists’ over the next 5 years.

The sessions will begin with a presentation from one or more of the scientists leading the project, displaying imagery of walrus in the Arctic. Followed by a Q&A with the scientists and the opportunity to take part in the project and become a walrus scientist yourself!

On The Edge: young people aged 18-26 from the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain’s national network present a creative exploration of young people’s eco-anxiety in the face of climate uncertainty through a performance of spoken word, poetry, music and short film.

National Youth Theatre (NYT) is enabling the voices of young people from marginalised communities to be heard in this international setting, building their agency to manage the competing challenges of flood risk, high socio-economic deprivation and unemployment, and to develop youth-led solutions to help them build resilience in their communities and adapt to climate change.

“On The Edge” incorporates the double meaning of young people’s eco-anxiety and of coastal communities, both their marginalisation and their ability to look outwards (to the sea and the windfarms located there) to where the solutions may be found, with an emphasis on green recovery jobs.

On The Edge will be led by Adeola Yemitan, NYT Member, Actor, Writer & winner of the 2021 Samsung Spotlight competition for young performers; Paul Roseby OBE, NYT’s Chief Executive & Artistic Director; and Professor Briony McDonagh, Professor of Environmental Humanities at the University of Hull’s Energy & Environment Institute.

On the Edge is a crucial part of MELT, NYT’s major three year programme launched in 2020 to platform the voices of young people on climate change. MELT is working with climate scientists, academics and the renewable energy sector to provide creative provocation and outputs. With the University of Hull’s Energy & Environment Institute, we are addressing flood risk (through the AHRC funded research programme, Risky Cities, led by Professor Briony McDonagh) and community impact; and the needs and skills gap of the renewables sector to diversify and build awareness of sustainable energy employment opportunities for young people. MELT is supported by an Industry Advisory Panel that includes Jane Cooper of Ørsted; Melanie Onn of RenewableUK, and Danielle Lane of Vattenfall.

Failing to recognise and address the links between climate change, girls’ education and gender equality undermines both the Paris Agreement and the right to education for millions of students.

We know that many of the root causes of climate change contribute to gender inequality which can lead to girls being out of school - this year alone, at least four million girls won't complete their education due to climate-related crises (Malala Fund). Gender inequality also blocks girls from equal access to quality climate education, green jobs, leadership opportunities etc.

Through the Declaration on Children, Youth and Climate Action (2019), the MOCK COP26 Treaty (2020), youth activists have made it clear that education plays a critical role during climate disasters and displacement. It is also one of the most effective solutions we have to the climate crisis. Existing research reveals that every additional year of schooling for girls leads to significant improvements in a country’s resilience to climate-related disasters.

Yet existing commitments on climate education fall far short on delivering quality climate education - curricula are outdated and girls being left behind. In a recent survey, 82% didn’t know where to find information on the Paris Agreement and only 16% had learned about the gendered impacts of climate change (Plan International).

COP26 is a critical opportunity for world leaders to work in partnership with youth and youth-led organizations to target the connections, particularly through the review and enhancement of the Doha Work Programme on Action for Climate Empowerment.

Targeting the Connections will bring together youth activists with world leaders, experts and artists to share experiences, priorities and solutions for building a greener, fairer future. Invited speakers include UNFCCC Executive Director Patricia Espinosa, Malala Yousafzai and Vanessa Nakate.

This event is hosted by Malala Fund, Plan International, Transform Education, UNGEI, UNICEF, YOUNGO and others.

One Young World, the global forum for young leaders, in collaboration with the Future Generations Commission for Wales, is hosting an immersive panel on the topic of carving a path to net zero, where young leaders and innovation play a key role in the vision and establishment of a green future. Too often legislation regarding sustainable development plans - the creation of smart cities, changes in infrastructure, sustainable travel and urban expansion - are made without the consultation and expertise of young people who will be most affected by these designs and targets. Including young people as key decision-makers when creating the literal blueprints for their futures is crucial.

The Welsh government is one of the first to meaningfully incorporate the wellbeing of Future Generations into current policymaking. The Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 is a ground-breaking piece of legislation which requires public bodies to put long-term sustainability at the forefront of their thinking.

Join us for a dynamic panel featuring expert speakers and young leaders, offering key insights into the future of sustainable development, the path to net zero, and the essential role young people will play in achieving these goals.

“Our Place in the Cosmos” is a planetarium show about the special, fragile place of the Earth in our Galaxy, the only habitat we yet know able to sustain life.

Our home needs to be in the right place of our Galaxy to be safe from violent activity like supernovae. Yet we needed such activity in the past for the elements that support life, produced inside stars, to be seeded in the proto-solar nebula from which the Earth formed.

Our home also needs to be in the right place of the Solar System to be in its habitable zone, a place capable of sustaining liquid water its surface for eons. We compare Earth to our nearest planetary neighbours, Venus and Mars, which also began their lives in the habitable zone. Soon after their birth, over 4 billion years ago, these three planets looked similar – rocky worlds with flowing lava and water under an atmosphere.

Yet their subsequent evolution followed very different paths. Venus turned into a Hades, the oceans boiling away to create a thick, hot toxic atmosphere. Mars lost its atmosphere and the oceans evaporated into space, to leave a dead world, yet where evidence of past liquid flows is still apparent.

We illustrate these contrasts in the show, we delve beneath the atmospheres to show how oceans might have looked on Venus and Mars. We contrast them to the Earth, and we show what would happen to our continents should sea level rise.

Finally, we show Planet Earth today and see how we can monitor planetary health from space, providing a global view of the land, oceans and atmosphere. We see how fragile planet Earth is and the imperative to protect our home from further damage.

Political consensus provides the foundation for consistent, long-term climate action. Consensus has helped successive UK governments deliver the Climate Change Act, Net Zero legislation, and the basis to host COP26. All-Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs) and Caucuses have played a role in building and sustaining that consensus – helping parliamentarians understand the issues and engage with and scrutinise government, convene expert dialogue, and generate fresh policy ideas.

Throughout 2020 & 2021, APPGs focused on climate change, the environment, energy and nature have worked together to engage a wide-ranging, diverse and representative parliamentary missions in support of a successful COP26. Join us for a special COP26 dialogue on building political consensus for climate action.

Bim Afolami MP will chair a cross-party non-partisan panel of UK and international politicians exploring how best to build and strengthen political consensus on climate, including priority areas such as energy, finance and nature – enabling governments around the world focus long term solutions and more ambitious delivery.

The panel will be followed by consensus-building dialogue across the event space – linking politicians from different political traditions and countries – facilitated by participating APPGs and Caucuses along thematic lines.

The session will close with speeches. · 2-3pm: Cross-party / Non-partisan Political Panel · 3-4.30pm: Facilitated Conversations – Building Consensus for Climate Action · 4.30-5pm: Speeches APPGs working together to deliver this session include All-Party Parliamentary Groups for Climate Change, Energy Studies (PGES), Environment, Net Zero, Intelligent Energy, Renewable & Sustainable Energy (PRASEG), International Conservation, Sustainable Finance and Agroecology, together with Peers for the Planet, the Conservative Environment Network, the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association UK, the British Group of the Inter-Parliamentary Union. The session will mirror the Global Legislator’s Summit taking place simultaneously in the Scottish Parliament. The session is aimed at politicians from all political traditions across all countries attending COP26, but open to all – including interested parties from industry, civil society, academia and beyond.

Our generation, and those that follow, will live with the consequences of the decisions being made now at COP26 in Glasgow.

The international collaboration between Malawi Scotland Partnership and 2050 Climate Group was announced by the First Minister Nicola Sturgeon in 2018 at the 2050 Climate Group Youth Summit. We’ve been supported by the Scottish Government since then and we are thrilled to have Màiri McAllan, Minister for Environment and Land Reform join our session to discuss the importance of supporting collaborations between Scotland and Malawi young leaders.

Our partnership is based on the premise that young people are at the forefront of climate action. We believe that the urgent work of addressing the climate crisis is one that needs collaboration and a global mindset.

Our session will cover the work that we do in our respective countries, our visions for the future and our key asks out of COP26. You will hear from leaders in Malawi and Scotland. Come and hear our stories.

Speakers:
Brenda Mwale – Malawi Climate Leaders network
Chloe Campbell – 2050 Climate Group
David Samikwa - Malawi Climate Leaders network
Emma Yule – 2050 Climate Group
Màiri McAllan - Minister for Environment and Land Reform, Scottish Government
Sarah Knight – 2050 Climate Group
Tom McKennna – 2050 Climate Group
Lotte Beekenkamp (Moderator) – 2050 Climate Group

This interactive event will bring together International Non-Governmental Organisations (INGOs), Organisations of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs), policymakers and other key partners involved in disability inclusive climate research and innovation.

The event has the following aims:

1 - to highlight the impact of climate change on the health and wellbeing of persons with disabilities;
2 - to demonstrate why national and international action against climate change must incorporate the participation of persons with disabilities;
3 - to offer practical suggestions from INGOs and OPDs on how climate adaptation and resilience measures (including disaster risk reduction and response) can be more inclusive, and incorporate proper consideration of mental wellbeing;
4 - to foster a changed mind-set about inclusion and mental wellbeing in climate action
The event will include presentations, group discussions, footage with persons with disabilities highlighting how climate change has impacted their lives, and feature the CBM Global Disability Inclusion papers: ‘Climate change, mental health and wellbeing: Examples of practical inclusive practices’ (due for publication in October 2021), and Climate Change: This Century’s Defining Issue

Confirmed speakers include:

Dr Julian Eaton, Mental Health Director, CBM Global Disability Inclusion
Sibusisiwe Marunda, Director at REPSSI (Regional Psychosocial Support Initiative), Zimbabwe
Joshua Abioseh Duncan, Programs Manager - Mental Health Coalition, Sierra Leone
Jennifer M’Vouama, Policy and Development Officer - Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation, Humanity & Inclusion (HI)
Elham Youssefian, Inclusive Humanitarian Action and Disaster Risk Reduction Adviser, International Disability Alliance (IDA)

The event will give the audience a unique insight into Indigenous knowledge holders’ reflections on the climate crisis. The voices of Indigenous women, men and youth from Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Myanmar will be heard at this screening of award-winning documentaries by the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs - IWGIA. The audience will also be given the opportunity to ask questions to Indigenous representatives as well as to the producer.

The Indigenous testimonies in the documentary films will make the audience put aside the negotiation texts for a moment, and refocus on the real and urgent reason of why we are gathered at COP 26. The reflections and wisdoms by Indigenous knowledge holders will provide insights into Indigenous Peoples’ environmental stewardship and sustainable living from which society ought to listen and learn.

IWGIA is a global human rights organisation dedicated to promoting, protecting and defending Indigenous Peoples’ rights. The event is co-organised by Promotion of Indigenous and Nature Together (POINT), an Indigenous Peoples organisation from Myanmar, and the Autonomous Territorial Government of the Wampis Nation (GTANW) from Peru.

The documentary films will have Spanish/English subtitles/dubbing, and interpretation will be provided for the Q&A session.

I stand for what I stand on is a dramatic presentation by four young climate activists from Gloucester supported by a global digital cast and produced by Strike A Light. Drawing on autobiographical experiences,a love of Harry Styles and Abba, an extraordinary understanding of the climate crisis and cardboard protest signs, this event shares the young international cast’s thoughts and fears about the climate emergency and explores the reality of being a teenager and growing up in the shadow of the climate crisis.

Strike A Light are an arts organisation based in the South West committed to making culture and creativity accessible to all and co-creating work with communities that has significant social impact. Strike a Light have been working with these young climate strikers since 2019 and I stand for what I stand on is touring nationally in 2021 supported by Arts Council England.

Youth4planet, in collaboration with Spring Films, TVE and InsightShare, will be curating an evening that highlights the voices of young people from all over the world, in their quest for a better and more hopeful future. The evening will be dedicated to showcasing films made by young people around the world, telling their own stories of both struggle and hope in the face of climate change.

These will include short films made through the Earthbeat Challenge, an international film challenge that invites young people to express their take on the theme, “restoring balance with nature”; films that have been gathered from a 2000 km bicycle tour a journey made by climate conscious young adults, across Europe and all the way to COP26; films authored by indigenous communities around the world who are on the frontline of the effects of climate change; and footage from a unique documentary project that has followed 11 children from around the world since 1992, the year of the first Rio Earth Summit, with the aim of tracking the promises of Rio in a rapidly changing world.

The evening promises to be engaging and interactive, with fishbowl call-ins from youth activists from around the world, with a clear call for action for the next years to come. This session will be asking of how to unlock the leadership skills in young people, make them aware of opportunities and get their voices heard in co-creating promising futures.

Mangrove forests are the ultimate nature-based solutions for both climate change mitigation and adaptation. They capture and store carbon dioxide - coastal blue carbon - and they do this at rates far greater than most tropical rainforests. Protecting and restoring mangroves is a highly efficient and effective way to simultaneously reduce GHG emissions, and supporting adaptation to climate change . Mangrove protection and restoration is a vital component of achieving the large-scale carbon drawdown essential if we are to have a chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C.

Coastal tropical nations and their citizens hold the key to mangrove conservation and restoration.
This panel will bring together governments, civil society and world renowned scientists from Colombia, Madagascar, Costa Rica, Seychelles and Indonesia for an interactive discussion that will promote south-south knowledge sharing by:

• Bringing to light the importance of mangroves in the context of global climate breakdown, from the perspective of coastal communities living on the frontline and governments working to ensure their countries’ blue economies are safeguarded
• Demonstrating how the conservation and restoration of coastal blue carbon can help ensure that countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement are sufficiently ambitious to tackle the climate emergency
• Explaining how, if the necessary policy and safeguarding frameworks are in place, carbon markets can be leveraged to fund and incentivise sustainable mangrove management and restoration
• Highlighting some of the policy and implementation barriers that must be tackled if mangrove blue carbon is to reach its full potential, as well as some potential solutions to these barriers
  The panel discussion will be supplemented by mixed media and interactive audience Q&A.

The destruction of nature is not contained within national boundaries, so why are our responses? This session will address the need for cross border collaboration to preserve the natural world and its biodiversity. There is a need for a cultural shift from one that separates people from nature to one which emphasises the symbiotic relationship between humanity and our environment.

This session is brought to you by One Young World, the global forum for young leaders, in partnership with the Government of Rwanda and will highlight some of the pioneering work on the frontlines of this fight that can guide future conservation efforts.

A fundamental systems-change is urgently needed to respond to the climate crisis. Growth at any cost is no longer an option and has led to disastrous consequences for our planet. Voices critical to our future are being lost in the conversation and local communities and their knowledge is being sidelined.

Drawing on the experiences of Ecosia and Patagonia, two purpose-driven companies focused on accelerating social and climate justice, this all female panel will discuss how we implement scalable, regenerative solutions that lead towards an inclusive future, where no one is left behind.

Part 1: Systems-change: putting people and planet before profit: The need for greater corporate accountability and government regulation to ensure consistent and effective delivery of climate objectives, a level playing field, and to build trust.

Part 2: Nature-based solutions: challenges, opportunities and what next? The role of business and governments in working and investing together in scalable nature-based solutions that have a positive impact on nature, climate, and society.

Three Scottish poets, Roseanne Watt from Shetland, with Pàdraig MacAoidh and Donald S. Murray, both from Lewis, will give readings of their work which reflects the challenges faced by island communities due to climate change and the ecological degradation it causes.

They also represent the diverse linguistic traditions of the Scottish islands which have persisted to this day despite many hardships and offer an insight into their unique form of resilience. The readings will be in English, Scottish Gaelic and Shetlandic with accompanying text for the English speaking and D/deaf audience members.

We wish to extend a warm welcome to all of the delegates and visitors to the COP especially to the indigenous peoples from around the world and hope that you will be able to attend. Ceud mìle fàilte! The event is chaired by Drew McNaughton, poet and former events coordinator for the Scottish Poetry Library and committee member of Seachdain na Gàidhlig.

We are grateful for the support of the Gaelic Books Council, Scottish Book Trust and Scottish Poetry Library. This event is also one of a number that have emerged out of Possible Dialogues, a collaboration between artists and indigenous people from Colombia and Scotland.

In this session the filmmakers behind some of the most loved nature documentaries on the planet come together to discuss what role wildlife films could, and should, play to help create a safe and just future for the living world.

COP26 is an opportunity to have some brave conversations. It is time to explore if the films being made are doing all they can to help, if the large carbon footprint of making such films is justifiable, what these films are excluding from the frame and, most importantly, the potential they have to evolve and redefine success.

In a series of short films we will hear from wildlife filmmakers from across the globe that have witnessed the ecological crises unfolding and are exploring alternative paths. This will be followed by a panel discussion on next steps with some of the biggest players in the industry. Can the wildlife filmmaking industry rise to the challenge?

“Our Place in the Cosmos” is a planetarium show about the special, fragile place of the Earth in our Galaxy, the only habitat we yet know able to sustain life.

Our home needs to be in the right place of our Galaxy to be safe from violent activity like supernovae. Yet we needed such activity in the past for the elements that support life, produced inside stars, to be seeded in the proto-solar nebula from which the Earth formed.

Our home also needs to be in the right place of the Solar System to be in its habitable zone, a place capable of sustaining liquid water its surface for eons. We compare Earth to our nearest planetary neighbours, Venus and Mars, which also began their lives in the habitable zone. Soon after their birth, over 4 billion years ago, these three planets looked similar – rocky worlds with flowing lava and water under an atmosphere.

Yet their subsequent evolution followed very different paths. Venus turned into a Hades, the oceans boiling away to create a thick, hot toxic atmosphere. Mars lost its atmosphere and the oceans evaporated into space, to leave a dead world, yet where evidence of past liquid flows is still apparent.

We illustrate these contrasts in the show, we delve beneath the atmospheres to show how oceans might have looked on Venus and Mars. We contrast them to the Earth, and we show what would happen to our continents should sea level rise.

Finally, we show Planet Earth today and see how we can monitor planetary health from space, providing a global view of the land, oceans and atmosphere. We see how fragile planet Earth is and the imperative to protect our home from further damage.

Join us as ten award-winning young poets speak out against climate injustice and call for natural and humane solutions to the climate crisis.

We’ll hear from the winners of the Poems to Solve the Climate Crisis Challenge, run by The Poetry Society’s global Young Poets Network in partnership with People Need Nature. Writers aged 15-24 from across the UK, Canada, India, Philippines and USA will perform urgent new work.

Performing in person will be first-prize winner Maggie Wang, commended poets Aliyah Begum, Renée Orleans-Lindsay and Daniel Clark, and local Foyle Young Poet Mags Dixon. We’ll also beam in performances from the other winners across the globe: Jayant Kashyap, Brooke Nind, Sabrina Guo, Irma Kiss Barath and Yvanna Vien Tica.

Thanks to People Need Nature, poet Louisa Adjoa-Parker (who set the Poems to Solve the Climate Crisis Challenge) has worked closely with children at Damers School in Poundbury, Dorset. A short film of the children performing poetry about their feelings towards the climate crisis will be broadcast during the showcase.

Founded in 1909, The Poetry Society is the UK’s leading organisation for poetry. With innovative education and commissioning programmes, and a packed calendar of performances, competitions and digital projects, The Poetry Society champions poetry for all ages. Young Poets Network is its online platform for young poets worldwide up to the age of 25. poetrysociety.org.uk

People Need Nature is a charity which promotes the value of nature for people in their everyday lives. PNN also work to influence public thinking and policy to place a greater value on nature. peopleneednature.org.uk

This is the fourth partnership between Young Poets Network and People Need Nature, generously supported by Mrs J R King.

As seen on Britain’s Got Talent, S.O.S from the Kids are the children’s eco-choir that moved the hearts of millions in 2020 with their original and impactful form of climate action. Having received high praise from Sir David Attenborough, the choir has continued to go from strength to strength. Today’s dynamic performance will include spectacular visuals, showing the children of Phuyaklah Voices in West Papua -with whom the choir has been collaborating for their new song. Expect spine-tingling harmonies and beautiful live string accompaniment, all woven into a memorable live set, that delivers the choir’s compelling and important message.

The traditional knowledge of indigenous communities is crucial in the global fight for nature and against climate change. Science proves that indigenous peoples are the best guardians of the land. Chris and Olivia will discuss the importance of the protection of indigenous cultures in the conservation of biodiversity and the work that The Cultural Sanctuaries Foundation is doing to help ensure that we protect the protectors.

The presentation will be given against a backdrop of stunning photographs by National Geographic explorer and photographer, and Cultural Sanctuaries Foundation co-founder, Chris Rainier.

Followed by Q&A.

The need for change in the finance sector has never been greater. It’s estimated that between $1.6 - $3.8 trillion needs to be invested each year in order to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement and according to Banktrack 33 global banks invested $1.9 trillion into carbon intensive projects between 2016 - 2018.

It’s clear that something needs to change and women can play a catalytic role in bringing about the transformation that’s needed. Research studies have shown that women really care about the impact of their money. However, at the same time they are underrepresented in and underserved by the financial system.

This interactive workshop will empower women to take climate action with their personal finances, providing a unique opportunity to immerse people in thinking about green finance and the choices they have available to them. Empowering women to make changes with their personal finances offers a unique opportunity to support the financial resilience of women, but also protect our planet.

Workshop hosts who will facilitate these interactive discussions include: Mary Stevens, Experiments Programme Manager Friends of the Earth; Anneka Deva, Partnerships and Communications Director, Enrol Yourself; Naomi Naidoo, Advisory Board Member, OwnIt, Lisa Ashford, CEO, Ethex; Isona Shibata, Programme Manager, Energise Africa; Julie Dunn, Content Manager, Ethex and Rachel Mountain, Head of Communications, Energise Africa.

Trees are a key nature-based mechanism for delivering on Net Zero commitments to meet the 1.5°C global warming target in the Paris Agreement. The role of forests and trees is vital because of their moderating influence globally on carbon, their impact nationally for carbon accounting and locally for people’s livelihoods. We have choices that can make a difference but these need to be informed by the right observations and by the latest understandings of nature.

Speakers at this event are experts on global and national forest carbon inventories, Earth observations from space and value for net zero. They will:

• Explain how trees and forests make a difference to carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.
• Show how exciting new measurements from satellites inform our knowledge of the carbon content of forests and trees.
• Showcase the global status of forests and highlight examples of greenhouse gas removal in sustainable forest/tree developments.
• Provide a scientific basis for climate action and verifiable greenhouse gas removal through carbon stock increases in forests and trees.
• Bring the audience up-to-date on real world uses of satellite carbon data and plans to utilise this information for a low carbon future.

Speakers (in order of appearance):

John Remedios, Director of National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO), University of Leicester, UK
Frank Martin Seifert, Directorate of Earth Observation Programmes, ESA - European Space Agency, Italy
Paul Palmer, NCEO - University of Edinburgh, UK
Martin Herold, Wageningen University, Netherlands
Mathias Disney, NCEO - University College London, UK
Shaun Quegan, NCEO - University of Sheffield, UK
Laura Duncanson, University of Maryland, USA
Laurent Durieux, SDG Coordinator at Group on Earth Observations (GEO), Switzerland
Sylvia Wilson, US Geological Survey
Joana B. Melo, University of Sheffield, UK / Guinea Bissau

Watch exclusive screening of new Sky Nature show Shark with Steve Backshall, a revelatory series that celebrates the wonder of sharks as a key part of keeping our oceans and planet healthy. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Steve Backshall.

We Are the Voice Children's Environmental Choir campaigns for the environment through the medium of music. Lifting hearts and minds and inspiring hope, they sing for the climate, oceans and trees, for the species with which we share our world and for the children's futures.

Getting the message across: How do we increase the effectiveness of climate
communications? How do we use film and video to engage audiences and inspire action? How do we motivate individuals, communities and broader society to make changes and take action to protect our planet?

If these questions are relevant to you please come and be a part of the discussion with our raft of communication and impact experts at the Planetarium, for film screenings and panel discussions.

EnviroFest International is running a series of dynamic events around climate
communications at the Planetarium featuring the award-winning, immersive, fulldome film Climate Crimes. This provocative film was created using climate data and statistics to bridge art and science as it seeks to uncover the complex relationship between global air pollution, climate change and human migration.

Using this extraordinary film as a launch pad, each showing will be followed by a panel discussion featuring experts in climate science, communications, community engagement, and impact campaigning as well as the film maker herself, Michaela French. We will discuss how we communicate the urgency and threat of climate change whilst empowering communities to engage with effective solutions, and consider how approaches may need to vary across different cultures and communities.

With so much expertise from around the world gathered at COP26, EnviroFest International seeks to involve attendees with diverse experiences in bridging climate issues and public understanding and engagement. We look forward to exploring these important issues so critical to effecting change, with an engaged and collaborative audience. Please join us for one of our events during COP26.

*Speaker line up will depend on allotted days *

Continuing Drama has a long and proud history of tackling social issues on screen, breaking down complicated often divisive subjects for its audience and helping viewers to explore topics through the eyes of their favourite characters.

So can our soaps help save the planet? What is their role in bringing the complex issues that surround sustainability to our audiences (the masses)? And how can they empower communities to understand and debate the role they can play to mitigate the effects of climate change, if they choose to?

This inspiring session will bring together producers and talent from the UK’s most loved soaps to talk about the creative challenge they’re facing and how they’re tackling it.

Speakers:
Jane Hudson, Executive Producer, Emmerdale
Nader Mabadi, Senior Emmerdale Production Manager
Kate Oates, Head of Continuing Drama, BBC Studios
Rebecca Ramsden, Writer, Hollyoaks
Sean Batty, Broadcaster, STV

Food and land use systems currently contribute up to a third of greenhouse gas emissions globally. They are also the biggest driver of deforestation, conversion of natural ecosystems and habitats, and biodiversity loss.

Tackling these challenges whilst providing sustainable resilient livelihoods for food producers and nutritious, affordable food for a growing global population is therefore a critical challenge for this decade.

The Just Rural Transition (JRT) and Tropical Forest Alliance jointly present this technical event in support of the COP26 Nature Campaign. This event builds on two high-level events in the morning of Nature Day to announce ambitions and actions by members states and other stakeholders to reform agriculture and land use and take global action on forests and critical ecosystems.

It provides a platform for technical experts and representatives from governments, private sector, farmers, research organisations and other stakeholders to discuss options to contribute towards just rural transitions and deforestation-free commodity supply chains around the world. It showcases and celebrates our campaign successes and centres the perspective of producers, rural and indigenous groups, and the wider community.

Expect a mixture of live music, film from Louis himself, talks, a diverse interactive panel of brilliant young POC Experts & Climate Activists exploring why people of colour in the UK & the West have been purposefully alienated & disconnected from the Natural world & what we’re doing about it.

Through music & film and discussion we will explore the delicate balance between destruction and harmony of humans with nature from a British Black, Brown & People of Colour perspective & how we can learn from the past to move forward. Curated by Louis VI a young mixed race musician from London, Zoology Graduate, film maker & presenter & quickly becoming known as a strong voice Climate Activism from a diaspora perspective after his Father's ancestral island of Dominica was hit by Hurricane Maria in 2017.

Expect an open & exciting 90mins on what the young generation desperately feel needs to happen at COP26 and for Climate Change around the world with an emphasis on possibility, race, accountability & science

The Panel will include the incredible activists:

Nadeem Perera, (Flock Together) - A birdwatcher, who lends his 13 years of expertise to Flock Together, a birding watching group combating the underrepresentation of POC in nature. He has hit the seas with Greenpeace UK and works closely with underprivileged youth, showing them the benefits of nature. @birdnerdeem

Dr Mya-Rose Craig (Birdgirl) Environmentalist, climate and race activist @birdgirluk

Dominique Palmer, climate justice activist and student, an organiser in Fridays for Future, the global youth movement for climate action (@domipalmer)

Sumak Helena Gualinga, (Polluters Out & Tandari) Indigenous Environmental & Human rights Activist powerhouse from the Kichwa Sarayaku community in Ecuador, highlighting Indigenous and Environmental plights in the Amazon @helenagualinga

Chris Hines MBE Hon.D.Sc. (A Grain Of Sand & co-founder of Surfers Against Sewage), Environmental critic, Sustainability director at Eden Project, Environmental Activist and campaigner for over 30 years. http://www.agos.co/

As well as Louis J. Butler (Louis VI) himself, Musician, Environmental Activist & Filmmaker, Zoologist & Nature geek (@itslouisvi)

Unilever will be hosting a film screening about action towards a nature positive, net zero world.

The event will explore a combination of solutions including the role of technology, use of data, engagement of people and partnerships.

This will be followed by a moderated panel discussion with 4-5 participants with a possible Q&A with the audience.

10 years after the world-wide success of his film HOME, Yann Arthus-Bertrand makes LEGACY, about his own life and 40 years of commitment to the planet. A personal film where the photographer and film-maker delivers a sensitive and radical vision of our world, which he has seen deteriorating during his generation. Behind the beauty of his images, he unveils a planet suffering more than ever before, a disorientated mankind, helpless in the face of the blunt reality of the new climate regime.

Today, we can no longer ignore the ongoing ecological disaster. Our survival on earth is at stake and we must accept our share of responsibility. LEGACY offers us the reasons and courage of facing the truth, in order to finally engage on an ethical ecological path and generate mankind’s capacity to imagine its future on Earth while respecting its environment.

The Green Career Pathways event examines and debates the roles of education, training and employment in delivering a resilient and equitable transition to net zero.

Following a keynote presentation on The Role of Education & Skills in UK and Global Climate Action the expert panel will provide insights into Navigating A Green Career Pathway.

Panellists will discuss the challenges their sectors face in terms of education, skills and jobs in a climate emergency, and the actions required to deliver green career pathways that ensure a fair and economy-wide alignment with the Paris climate goals.

Our panel represents leading expertise drawn from industry, education and policy arenas, and focussed on realising the net zero transition:

Rhona Turnbull, Climate, Environment and Emerging Issues Lead at NatWest Group

Charlotte Bonner, National Head of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) at ETF, and member of the COP26 Universities Education & Skills steering group

Catherine Barber, Deputy Director, Industrial Energy Transformation, BEIS, UK Government

Jenny Young, Head of Strategy, Policy & Insights, Engineering Construction Industry Training Board, and member of the COP26 Universities Education & Skills steering group

The panel will be chaired by Prof Dave Reay, Director of Edinburgh Climate Change Institute, University of Edinburgh, member of the UK Government’s Green Jobs Taskforce.

Join artist and author Oliver Jeffers for a screening of the Apple Original film “Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth,” available
on Apple TV+.

After the film, Jeffers will lead families in an interactive discussion about Earth, in celebration of the place we call home.

Film Synopsis: On the eve of Earth Day, a precocious seven-year-old learns about the wonders of the planet from his parents- and a
mysterious exhibit at the aptly named Museum of Everything. Based on the best-selling children’s book by Oliver Jeffers.

Join us for the premiere of an inspirational film highlighting coastal habitat restoration with examples from the UK, China, South Korea and the Cayman Islands, followed by an expert Q&A panel discussion.

Hosted by the RSPB and the Environment Agency, this event will showcase successful examples of habitat restoration in coastal wetlands and illustrate the benefits to climate mitigation, adaptation and resilience, the economy, and health and well-being of local communities. The event will share lessons learned from implementation and community engagement and facilitate discussion around the value of these sites.

Examples of projects illustrated will include the Central Mangrove Wetland in the Cayman Islands, Medmerry in the UK, Shanghai Chongming Dongtan National Nature Reserve and Jiangsu Yancheng Yellow Sea World Heritage Site in China and the South Korean Yellow Sea Getbol World Heritage Site. Through these projects, and others, this event will explore the ecological and cultural benefits that protecting these habitats can bring for the environment and local people.

The past 200 years has resulted in significant global loss of nature-rich, carbon-storing coastal wetlands, which provide a lifeline for millions of people. This event demonstrates how through restoring, protecting and creating these habitats we can make coastlines more resilient to sea level rise and coastal erosion, whilst providing significant benefits for people and nature, through using nature-based solutions.

We Are the Voice Children's Environmental Choir campaigns for the environment through the medium of music. Lifting hearts and minds and inspiring hope, they sing for the climate, oceans and trees, for the species with which we share our world and for the children's futures.

How can STEM Women, Entrepreneurs and Youth Address the Global Climate Crisis?
The International Network of Women Engineers & Scientists (INWES) is collaborating with Scottish Engineering and other partners to create a gender-inclusive global conversation about the role of the young in STEM addressing climate change. This hybrid (online, onsite, offline) event is for the young, across countries and cultures. Entrepreneurship provides a way for younger people to lead mitigating actions. We will be taking questions and comments from the young and not so young around the world taking part in the event.

Speakers include:

• Jayshree Seth, Corporate Scientist / Chief Science Advocate, 3M, USA.
  Time to STEM Scepticism! Hope for the future…
• Mhairi McCann, Entrepreneur / Founder and CEO, Youth STEM 2030
  STEM and Entrepreneurship: How YOUth Can Change the World
• Dillip Pattanaik, Computer Scientist /Executive Director, OSVAWA, India.
  Collaborative Action for Youth.
• Susan Scurlock, Digital educator / CEO, Primary Engineer, United Kingdom.
  Creative climate change solutions from the very young
• Evi Viza, Mechanical Engineer / Lecturer, University of West Scotland, with participation from Kenya and Uganda.
  Women and STEM in the Global South.
• Jane Tapel, Agricultural Engineer / Director, Bureau of Agricultural & Fishery Engineering, Philippines.
  Agricultural & Biosystems Engineering Solutions.
• Rufina Dabo Sarr, Biologist / Associate Professor, Virtual University of Senegal.
  Solar Energy in our Kitchens.

A panel, led by Gail Mattson, Sustainability Engineer, Immediate Past President of INWES, will discuss engaging the young in STEM and the impact of climate change. Panellists include:

• Sylvia Ortega-Azurduy, Social Scientist / Founder, Ayni, Bolivia and Netherlands.
• Lorna Bennet, Marine Technologist / Project Engineer, Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult, Scotland.
• Ifey Kanu, Civil Engineer / Food Waste Entrepreneur, IntelliDigestScotland.
• Belen Garcia de Pablos, Naval Architect / Chief Marketing Officer, Blue Ocean leading drivers (BOld), Spain.
• Roseni Dearden, Software Engineer / Activist in INWES, Malaysia and United Kingdom.
• and Mahashri Ranjith Kumar, Young Scientist / Summit Design Team Member, Youth STEM 2030, India.

Youth STEM 2030 will be providing more Voices of the Young through a vox-pop video, and the event is being facilitated by Sylvia Kegel, Telecomms Engineer / Entrepreneur, Ivatra Service GmbH/INWES, Germany, and Sarah Peers, Mathematician / Associate Professor, New Model Institute of Technology and Engineering, United Kingdom.

Young people and STEM women, join in the conversation:

• What are you doing about climate change? What local projects and programmes would you like to share?
• How does climate change impact you, your family, your community?
• If you could tell decision-makers at COP26 one thing, what would this be?
  

“Arctic Free”, a visually stunning multimedia presentation, reveals the urgency to safeguard the Arctic Ocean in its entirety for the sake of our collective survival. Presented by the international nonprofit Parvati Foundation, it features beautiful footage with testimonials by scientists, youth and luminaries about the importance of the ocean.

“Our Place in the Cosmos” is a planetarium show about the special, fragile place of the Earth in our Galaxy, the only habitat we yet know able to sustain life.

Our home needs to be in the right place of our Galaxy to be safe from violent activity like supernovae. Yet we needed such activity in the past for the elements that support life, produced inside stars, to be seeded in the proto-solar nebula from which the Earth formed.

Our home also needs to be in the right place of the Solar System to be in its habitable zone, a place capable of sustaining liquid water its surface for eons. We compare Earth to our nearest planetary neighbours, Venus and Mars, which also began their lives in the habitable zone. Soon after their birth, over 4 billion years ago, these three planets looked similar – rocky worlds with flowing lava and water under an atmosphere.

Yet their subsequent evolution followed very different paths. Venus turned into a Hades, the oceans boiling away to create a thick, hot toxic atmosphere. Mars lost its atmosphere and the oceans evaporated into space, to leave a dead world, yet where evidence of past liquid flows is still apparent.

We illustrate these contrasts in the show, we delve beneath the atmospheres to show how oceans might have looked on Venus and Mars. We contrast them to the Earth, and we show what would happen to our continents should sea level rise.

Finally, we show Planet Earth today and see how we can monitor planetary health from space, providing a global view of the land, oceans and atmosphere. We see how fragile planet Earth is and the imperative to protect our home from further damage.

Building on the success of previous events held at the Birdfair festival at Rutland Wildlife Reserve in East Anglia, the 'State of the Earth' Question Time event will be chaired by Born Free Policy Advisor and Wildlife Advocate Dominic Dyer and will be based on the format of the BBC current affairs programme, with questions for the speaker panel being led by the audience.

Speakers include:

• Deborah Meaden – Businesswoman and investor
• Nada Farhoud - Environment Editor Daily Mirror
• Craig Bennett – CEO Wildlife Trusts
• Pen Farthing – CEO Nowzad
• Will Travers OBE – Executive President Born Free

Younger Speakers:

• James Miller – Writer film maker and campaigner
• Bella Lack – Author campaigner and Youth Ambassador Born Free

The key focus of the event will be the importance of habitat, wildlife protection and animal welfare at home and abroad in a rapidly changing world where we face a growing climate emergency.

Key issues for discussion will include:

• Population growth and growing demands on worlds natural resources leading to destruction of wildlife and habitats
• Growing impact of climate change on natural world at home and aboard
• The role of the media, broadcasters, writers, and film makers in promoting awareness of the threats to the natural world
• The growing importance of animal welfare and recognition of animal suffering because of human actions
• How can public pressure lead to political change when it comes to protecting wildlife, animals and the natural world
• The growing threat from industrial livestock, farming and food production to the natural world
• How can a younger generation be motivated to stand up for wildlife and the natural world
• The role of education and science in nature conservation
• The negative impact of the hunting and shooting industry on our native wildlife and landscapes at home & aboard
• Is wildlife tourism sustainable or does it ultimately pose a threat to the natural world
• The need to tackle wildlife crime at home as well as abroad
• The growing threat to wildlife and landscapes from a huge increase in house building and major civil engineering projects like HS2
• The new generation of environment campaigners and their impact (Greta Thunberg, School Climate Strikes, Extinction Rebellion)

The speaker panel for the event will bring together influencers, thought leaders and campaigners from business, journalism, wildlife conservation and animal welfare across the age generations.

https://www.bornfree.org.uk/news/cop-26-event

As seen on Britain’s Got Talent, S.O.S from the Kids are the children’s eco-choir that moved the hearts of millions in 2020 with their original and impactful form of climate action. Having received high praise from Sir David Attenborough, the choir has continued to go from strength to strength. Today’s dynamic performance will include spectacular visuals, showing the children of Phuyaklah Voices in West Papua -with whom the choir has been collaborating for their new song. Expect spine-tingling harmonies and beautiful live string accompaniment, all woven into a memorable live set, that delivers the choir’s compelling and important message.

How can art and science come together to inform the future of climate action? How can we utilise learnings from Indigenous communities to inspire nature-based solutions?

In a fascinating event, Indigenous artists and experts from The Open University and Glasgow Life will explore the connections between culture, citizens, and climate by examining three works of art from Glasgow Museums’ World Cultures collection.

Indigenous artists will discuss the meaning behind these artworks in a series of three short films, which bring to life some of the cultural and creative practices in India, Ecuador and the Arctic. The in-person academic panel will examine the local climate adaptation actions championed by communities in these locations and invite participants to consider how the resilience they show can inspire a more sustainable way of life.

In a unique session which intersects the worlds of culture, science and technology, attendees will have the opportunity to speak directly with experts and to understand the bold actions we can all take locally to support global climate adaptation.

Leading researchers will share the technological innovations which citizens can use to record and protect local nature and explain how everyone can be empowered to play their role in combatting the climate emergency.

Compere:

Dr Heather Reid, Meteorologist and Science Education Consultant

Our contributors:

Advaith Siddharthan, Professor of Computer Science and Society, The Open University

Duncan Dornan, Head of Museums and Collections at Glasgow Life

Janice Ansine, Senior Project Manager Citizen Science, The Open University

Mark Brandon MBE, Professor in Polar Oceanography, The Open University

Susan Stewart, Director of The Open University in Scotland

Featuring film contributions from:

Gustavo Toaquiza Ugsha, Kichwa artist, Ecuador

Dr Carol Brown-Leonardi, Associate Lecturer and (Hon) Researcher, Faulty of Arts and Social Sciences, The Open University

Patricia Allan, Curator of World Cultures at Glasgow Museums, Glasgow Life

Rajesh Chaitya Vangad, Warli artist, India

The critical role that the food system plays in shaping our planetary and individual health is now undisputed. Our food systems are responsible for 30% of greenhouse gas emissions and the primary driver of biodiversity loss. Globally, 3 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet, whilst 1 in 3 people are living with overweight or obesity. Poor diets are responsible for 22% of adult deaths globally.