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Dr Stuart Parkinson, Executive Director, SGR
MAKING PEACEBUILDING WORK
Prof John Sloboda, Executive Director, Oxford Research Group
IMPLEMENTING SUSTAINABLE ENERGY AT A LOCAL LEVEL:
BUILDING SOLAR VILLAGES AND ELIMINATING FUEL POVERTY IN KIRKLEES, WEST YORKSHIRE
Dr Philip Webber, Head of Environment Unit, Kirklees Metropolitan Council
These sessions are to allow more in-depth discussion of issues, and will feed into SGR’s ongoing activities.
SCIENCE AND POSITIVE SECURITY: TOOLS FOR CHANGE – Dr Chris Langley, SGR
INCOMPATIBLE OR MUTUALLY INDISPENSABLE? SGR AND TRADE UNION MOVEMENT – Dr Martin Levy, Northumbria University
FINDING AN ETHICAL CAREER IN SCIENCE, DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY – Dr Stuart Parkinson, SGR
Kate Macintosh MBE, Vice-Chair, SGR
MAKING PEACEBUILDING WORK
Prof John Sloboda, Executive Director, Oxford Research Group
There is now a wealth of experience of how to prevent or contain violent conflict, gained and implemented at the local level. Characteristics of successful peacebuiling include the inclusion of all parties in dialogue, real listening to and addressing of grievances, and leadership and resources to provide alternative employment for those recruited for violence (often children and very young adults). But successes tend to be small scale and fragile, with lessons learned not transferred elsewhere, or undermined by factors not under local control. Sustained peace requires simultaneous and long-term attention to many large-scale factors such as economic development, fair trade, non-discriminatory aid and debt regimes, development of infrastructure, environmental protection, education, security guarantees, trusted police and justice systems, etc. Effective action on these issues is not often within the capacity of local actors alone. They require costly and sustained effort from those countries with the greatest economic and military muscle. Local peacebuilding must therefore be supported by policy work at government and transgovernmental levels. Examples of such work will be given. Two factors provide some signs of hope. First, current interventionary security policies of the USA and its allies are manifestly not working, and this is being acknowledged at the highest levels. Second, global communications and increased access to accurate information have facilitated large shifts in public awareness, understanding, and the will to demand better alternatives. Action for trade justice and environmental protection are, for example, essential contributions to global peacebuilding. It will therefore be necessary for the peace, environmental, global justice and development movements to work together much more closely than hitherto.
John Sloboda has been Executive Director of Oxford Research Group since January 2004. He is also Professor of Psychology at the University of Keele, and an honorary research fellow in Keele’s School of Politics, International Relations and the Environment. His research interests include the psychological factors motivating the UK anti-war movement. In 2003 he co-founded the website, www.iraqbodycount.org - which remains a primary source of information about civilian casualties in the ongoing Iraq conflict. He undertakes regular speaking engagements, and is an author for the opendemocracy.net website. He is co-author, with Chris Abbott and Paul Rogers of "Global Responses to Global Threats: Sustainable Security for the 21st Century" (Oxford Research Group, June 2006).
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IMPLEMENTING SUSTAINABLE
ENERGY AT A LOCAL LEVEL:
BUILDING SOLAR VILLAGES AND ELIMINATING FUEL POVERTY IN KIRKLEES, WEST YORKSHIRE
Dr Philip Webber, Kirklees Metropolitan Council
This presentation will give the inside story of how much can be achieved in implementing sustainable energy at a local level given the political will. I will look at what we have done in the Kirklees Metropolitan District (which includes the towns of Huddersfield, Dewsbury and Batley near Leeds), most notably:
the installation of solar photo-voltaic (pv) panels so that the district is now responsible for 5% of the UK’s total pv generation;
the UK’s largest programme to combat fuel poverty; and
the installation of solar water heating and wind turbines on many council buildings and schools.
I will outline how we got the money – and from where – as well as what worked, what didn’t and why (and what we’re doing about it). I’ll also look at what the government role should be. Comparisons will be made with practices and experience in other European countries, and suggestions made for how changes within the current UK policy and funding framework could transform our renewable energy performance. The presentation will also cover what Kirklees plans to do next. Having learned from some years of intense effort, the council is now considering much bigger projects to change the energy picture across the district, including district heating, a local wind power company, and small hydro. These will take advantage of the major redevelopment of large areas of Huddersfield and will include public sector and private partners. Finally, I’ll discuss how we need a new generation of architects, engineers, scientists, venture capitalists and developers working together to design and make it all work within an affordable price, quickly.
Philip Webber is Head of Environment Unit at Kirklees Metropolitan Council, where he runs a £6 million per annum award-winning programme of renewable energy, energy conservation, grants and the Kirklees Council Eco-Management and Auditing System (EMAS). He has also been Chair of Scientists for Global Responsibility for twelve of the last fourteen years. Philip has written widely on environmental and military issues including several books critical of European Defence Strategy and arms, nuclear weapons and civil defence, and missile defence technology. He spent twelve years as a research scientist at Imperial College, where he gained his PhD in surface science and first became involved in the UK peace movement during the Cold War of the 1980s. From 1981, Philip was active in Scientists Against Nuclear Arms (SANA), one of SGR’s founder organisations, and during this period co-authored London After the Bomb and Crisis Over Cruise. He was one of the organisers of the London Nuclear Warfare Tribunal (1983). In 1990 he wrote New Defence Strategies for the 1990s. Then he took the opportunity to work on positive action to better the human condition through work in the environmental field.
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SCIENCE AND POSITIVE SECURITY: TOOLS FOR CHANGE
Dr Chris Langley, Scientists for Global Responsibility (SGR)
What is positive security? How do the Millennium Development Goals, resource depletion, loss of biodiversity and climate change relate to and impact upon global peace and security? How can an ethical science and technology contribute to a more positive defence strategy for the UK and other countries? Are there areas where the signs are encouraging for the growth of such a contribution? What government or non-governmental examples are there of research which has the potential to contribute towards positive security? And what can we learn from these examples?
The workshop will look at these questions in light of the military investment in science, design, technology and engineering in the major military spending nations. Some comparisons will be made between military R&D budgets and research effort and other areas of government spending in the UK and elsewhere.
Using concrete examples - such as robotics, smart sensors and areas within nanotechnology - we will examine the steps which need to be taken to strengthen and build upon those areas which either show promise of technology making more positive contributions to security and where there needs to be more investment of funds and expertise. Participants will have ample opportunity to share their experiences of how emerging technologies or commercial activities can build a more ethical science and technology, contribute to a safer and fairer world and discuss how SGR might carry forward the outcome of these ideas.
Chris Langley has worked as SGR’s part-time Research Officer since 2003, with his main focus being the issue of the military involvement with science and technology. He is the author of the SGR report Soldiers in the laboratory and also the ethical careers briefing Scientists or soldiers? Career choice, ethics and the military. Chris is a freelance consultant and writer (operating as ScienceSources) and has undertaken a variety of projects for non-profit organisations in Europe and North America. He has more than twenty two years experience as a science communicator and facilitator for both lay and academic audiences. His first degree is from University College London in physiology and neurobiology and a PhD from the University of Cambridge where he also held a post-doctoral research post in neurobiology. He has held senior posts as Communications Manager, at the Leverhulme Trust and was Head of Information Services at the Novartis Foundation, during which time he established the Media Resource Service which widened and improved the access to science, medicine and technology for those working in the media throughout Europe. He was science advisor to the University of Cambridge, for National Science Week in 1999-2000. Chris has made numerous presentations and given invited lectures on science communication, ethical science and the military influence in science, technology and engineering.
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INCOMPATIBLE OR MUTUALLY INDISPENSABLE? SGR AND TRADE UNION MOVEMENT
Dr Martin Levy, Northumbria University
Trade unions are commonly portrayed in the media as conservative. Since their primary purpose is to represent the interests of their members in the workplace, it is inevitable that there will sometimes be conflict with what others call “progress”. GMB members at BAE Systems shipyard in Barrow, for example, will not immediately be enthusiastic about scrapping Trident; nor can that union be expected to campaign wholeheartedly for a non-nuclear future when it represents so many members at Sellafield. However, the trade union movement is far from homogeneous, and such examples should not in any case prevent SGR from engaging with it on a range of peace and environmental issues. In the mid-twentieth century, such a role was played by the Association of Scientific Workers, now a part of Amicus. In the 1970s, it was the initiative and support of the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science which led to the successful trade union campaign for the Health & Safety at Work Act. Nowadays many unions are opposed to the government’s military direction and have been more forthright than employers on environmental issues. They emphasise sustainable development, and are campaigning for Sustainable Workplace Framework Agreements and statutory rights for trade union environmental representatives. This workshop will examine the environmental and peace policies of different unions and look at ways in which SGR could work constructively with the trade union movement.
Martin Levy teaches and researches in physical chemistry at the University of Northumbria at Newcastle. He gained his PhD from Cambridge University in 1973, and undertook postdoctoral work at the Universities of Birmingham, Warwick and Southern California, Exxon Research and Engineering Company and Southampton University, before - after a spell of schoolteaching - arriving at Northumbria in 1986. His own research interests in reaction dynamics fall within the broad field of gas kinetics, providing him with a working knowledge of current issues in atmospheric and combustion chemistry. A lifelong trade unionist, he has for some years been Northumbria Branch Chair of the lecturers’ union, NATFHE (now merged into UCU), President of Newcastle upon Tyne Trades Union Council and an Executive Committee member of the Northern Regional TUC. He is also a member of the Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Britain and convenor of its Science, Technology and Environment Advisory Committee, which a few years ago produced the discussion pamphlet, A World To Save.
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FINDING AN ETHICAL CAREER IN SCIENCE, DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY
Dr Stuart Parkinson, SGR
This workshop will be a forum for discussing different approaches to and experiences of trying to find a career in science, design or technology that in some way contributes to peace, social justice or environmental sustainability. The workshop will include tips and advice for graduates as well as useful information for those wishing to change direction mid-career. In particular, the workshop will draw upon the wealth of experience gained by SGR’s ethical careers programme that has now been running for more than seven years.
Stuart Parkinson has been Executive Director of SGR for over three years, and has co-ordinated SGR’s ethical careers programme since 2000. He began his career studying for a degree in physics and electronic engineering. During an industrial placement, he worked on military engineering projects, and this caused him to question the ethics of his career path. On completing his degree, he changed direction and enrolled for a PhD in mathematical modelling of global climate change at Lancaster University. After obtaining this degree, he worked on a number of voluntary programmes in environmental and social areas, both in the UK and abroad. He then took a postdoctoral post at the Centre for Environmental Strategy at the University of Surrey, where his research mainly involved work on climate and energy policy, and environmental systems analysis. During this time he became an expert reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and provided advice to UK negotiators to the UN climate change convention. He then spent a year working for Friends of the Earth, co-ordinating research and policy work highlighting the link between environmental problems and social injustice, before moving to SGR.
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