Partha Dasgupta at Vatican Climate Change workshop

The Chair of our Management Committee, Sir Partha Dasgupta, helped co-organise a workshop at the Vatican on Health of People, Health of Planet and Our Responsibility: Climate Change, Air Pollution and Health.

The Workshop Declaration says:

"With unchecked climate change and air pollution, the very fabric of life on Earth, including that of humans, is at grave risk. We propose scalable solutions to avoid such catastrophic changes. There is less than a decade to put these solutions in place to preserve our quality of life for generations to come. The time to act is now."

It was covered extensively, including in the New York Times. Particularly notable were the remarks made by the Governor of California, Jerry Brown, who said:

""Until religious leaders from every part of the globe and from every denomination are engaged, we're not going to be able to move aside the huge rock of indifference, complacency and inertia. Going forward we're going to have to find the pathway to awaken the world to get done what needs to be done."

"Climate change caused by fossil fuels and other human activities poses an existential threat to Homo sapiens and contributes to mass extinction of species. In addition, air pollution caused by the same activities is a major cause of premature death globally."

The workshop was held from the 2nd-4th November. It is the third in a series of workshops with the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. The first in 2015 influenced the landmark Papal Encyclical on Climate Change. The second earlier this year on 'Biological Extinction' is being turned into a book for Cambridge University Press.

Overview.

Booklet and agenda.