This event will see separate talks from The University of Manchester's Dr Jen O’Brien and Dr Andrew Welfle
Agenda:
14:00: Welcome and introduction with event chair (TBC)
14:05: Dr Jen O’Brien, Academic Lead of Sustainability Teaching and Learning, School of Environment, Education and Development at The University of Manchester
Education for Sustainable Development in a Living Lab approach
14:30: Q&A with Dr Jen O’Brien
14:40:Dr Andrew Welfle, Research Fellow, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Manchester Environmental Research Institute at The University of Manchester
Bioeconomy Sustainability Indicator Model (BSIM)
15:05: Q & A with Dr Andrew Welfle
15:15: Event Close
Presentation Overviews:
Dr Jen O’Brien | Students at the University of Manchester alone, are a 40,000 strong force for change. Imagine the global potential. To harness that force, we are deploying Education for Sustainable Development in a Living Lab approach to partner across and beyond the University to affect sustainable change. Students are equipped and empowered with skills and confidence as they engage in interdisciplinary applied research set by external partners. Our University Living Lab was established as the first of its kind in 2013. Since then students have worked with a huge range of partner organisations, including international consultants, governments, health bodies, charities and local businesses. Impacts range from work on urban resilience that was presented to the Rockefeller Foundation in New York, to establishing beehives in Manchester construction projects. The applied projects are framed around the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals and can be applied to any assessment at any study level.
Dr Andrew Welfle | Bioenergy is targeted within many country’s future energy and decarbonisation strategies. As a consequence there has been much interest in developing and deploying bioenergy technologies and with this a corresponding rise in demands for biomass resources. As the scale of bioenergy increases and ever more complex bioenergy schemes and feedstock supply chains are planned and established, there is a key repeating question – is it sustainable?
The University of Manchester have developed a new ‘Bioeconomy Sustainability Indicator Model’ (BSIM) to provide a flexible research tool to assess and compare the sustainability performances of biomass resources, technologies, supply chains etc. This presentation will introduce the BSIM and discuss results from case studies. Also highlighting how perceptions of ‘sustainability’ varies – for industry and government stakeholders sustainability requires the generation of jobs, economic growth; social scientist stakeholders place far greater importance on public acceptance of technologies and impacts on land, food and society etc.
