Cabot Institute for the Environment blog

Last night the Cabot Institute hosted a recording of the BBC Radio 4 programme Saving Species from the Great Hall here at the University of Bristol. The panel comprised the philosopher and activist Dr. Vandana Shiva , the Executive Director of the European Environment Agency Professor Jacequeline McGlade , Professor Aubery Manning of the University of Edinburgh and the Cabot Institute's own Dr. Jon Bridle , who is a Senior Lecturer in Bristol's School of Biological Sciences . As Cabot's Director I was delighted to welcome such an eminent panel to the University and to run an event with the very dynamic Julian Hector from the BBC Natural History Unit which is based here in Bristol. The topic of the show was "Saving species: sustaining life" which the panel debated in response to audience questions. The idea was to explore the extent to which an increasing human population can be made compatible with efforts to preserve the natural world. The thing that...

My name is Steve Simpson and I am a marine biologist in the School of Biological Sciences . My focus for some time has been on how global environmental change influences fish, fisheries and marine ecosystems. At the moment my work in Bristol focuses on the effects of warming on European fisheries and the impacts of anthropogenic noise on marine ecosystems. The first two months of my NERC/Cabot Knowledge Exchange fellowship, which builds on these themes, has presented some fantastic opportunities to explore how my research, and that of all my collaborators in Bristol and beyond, can feed into UK policy and industry. I was lucky that our study on the effects of warming over the last 30 years on the European fish assemblage came out just as I was starting. This meant I was able to spend a day with the Guardian at Brixham fishing port in Devon talking to trawlermen, wholesalers, fishmongers and restaurateurs about how their catches have been changing. After 3 years of staring a...

Blogs are about ideas and conversations - sharing ideas and starting conversations with interested, and interesting, people. Cabot is about the same things; we want to help find new ways to address some of the biggest challenges we face as a society - how we live with environmental uncertainty - and we want to bring together the broadest possible group of people to do that.  So although we're based at the University of Bristol, and students and researchers here are our primary constituency, we also feel very strongly about engaging beyond the institution, with business, industry, third sector, public sector and community organisations, as well as interested individuals.  We'd be delighted if you wanted to join the conversation. The blog is a space to freely discuss ideas - nascent research ideas, ideas provoked by current affairs, events, other people's writing.  You're welcome to comment on anything, or if you want to post to the blog then let me know and I will ad...