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Durham Energy Institute
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Countdown to COP26 – Leading the debate on climate change and public health

29 September 2021
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How can the world tackle the climate crisis and achieve a sustainable recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic in order to protect and promote public health? This autumn Durham University is leading a range of events exploring this issue.

Sustainable and healthy post-pandemic recovery

Our Law School recently hosted a conference exploring whether international law is equipped to support a sustainable pandemic recovery that promotes public health and a healthy ecosystem, to achieve the climate goal of the Paris Agreement.

The event brought together experts from international law, climate science and epidemiology, to discuss the linkages between air pollution, climate change, biodiversity loss and human health.

Speakers from the UK, USA, Europe and Asia explored ways to emerge better from the Covid-19 pandemic, learning from past global health crises such as SARS, and how this can support responses to the climate crisis.

Climate change and human health

In mid-October we will host the next in our series of international Knowledge Across Borders webinars which will see climate experts from Durham University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences explore the potential for extreme climate events, and how these could impact on human health.

The webinar will consider how climate modelling can help inform action plans around extreme climate events and why reducing greenhouse gases is vital to protecting our health.

At the forefront of climate education

The recent conference hosted by our Law School was the latest event in our STEAM for ACE  series, which stands for Sciences, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths (STEAM) for Action on Climate Empowerment (ACE).

Since April this series has explored aspects of climate finance, green investment, the Paris Agreement rule book, energy solutions and sustainable poverty reduction.

Together with events such as our Knowledge Across Borders webinar in October, and our upcoming post-COP26 roundtable event in November, which is part of our Festival of Social Sciences, this series sees us debating head-on the grand challenge of climate change and putting climate education at the forefront of our thinking.

Find out more