UCL Grand Challenges & UCL Global Engagement Office Small Grant Award

GGI Deputy Director Dr Tom Pegram (with GGI Researcher Julia Kreienkamp) and Oxford University’s Professor Nathalie Seddon have been awarded funding from UCL Grand Challenges and the UCL Global Engagement Office for a project that will explore the need for an integrated agenda across the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) related to the natural environment. It is one of eleven projects across UCL focusing on pathways to facilitate the achievement of the UN SDGs.

Accelerating global warming and mass biodiversity loss are urgent challenges, critical to the achievement of the UN SDGs. Although these challenges are closely related and mutually reinforcing, they are generally approached as separate issues. This is problematic because many policy responses to climate change and biodiversity loss have implications for the other, both positive and negative.

The funded project explores the scope for better global collaboration across the three SDGs related to the natural environment – i.e. those focused on climate action (SDG 13), life below water (SDG 14) and life on land (SDG 15) – exploring also why this is key to the achievement of other SDGs, in particular SDG 3 on good health and well-being. 

Over the coming months, the project will involve a range of activities, including an interdisciplinary workshop, a public panel discussion, a student essay competition, a student-led debate 'podclass', and more. All project outcomes will be made available on the GGI website.