GSI Seminar Series: Laurie Laybourn-Langton: Entering the storm: the policy and political challenges of the next stage of the environmental crisis

​Abstract:

In the coming decades, efforts to stabilise natural systems will themselves have to contend with the mounting consequences of accelerating environmental change. These consequences could surpass discrete shocks to encompass compounding destabilisation of interconnected socioeconomic and political systems. In turn, significant energy and focus could be drawn away from the primary necessity of rapidly mitigating anthropogenic impacts on natural systems. These and other complexities are often underdeveloped within mainstream policy and wider political frames beyond pockets within, for example, security communities, elements of the financial sector, and food system analysis. The resultant challenge facing future leaders is particularly acute. The current median age of European political leaders is around 50. Emerging Millennial-age leaders will reach this age around 2040, in a world that could have exceeded 1.5C of warming above the pre-industrial average and be suffering under the persistent overreach of other biophysical boundaries. Fighting against 2/2.5C in a 1.5/2C world could be considerably different from fighting against 1.5C at 1.2C, as is currently the case. Leaders in the coming decades could face an unprecedented challenge: to rapidly transform socioeconomic systems in an attempt to stabilise the biosphere while contending with accelerating environmental breakdown and compounding societal destabilisation. This workshop will explore a conceptual framework for understanding the accelerated consequences of the environmental emergency for policy and politics and stimulate discussion on this framework and what action can be taken to better pre-empt and be equipped for this future, particularly for future policy and political leaders.