In July 2023, Pippa Heylings, Liberal Democrat Candidate for South Cambridgeshire, and Sheryl French, Assistant Director, Climate Change and Energy Services, Cambridgeshire County Council, addressed the Cambridge Zero Policy Forum to discuss the role that Locally Determined Contributions can play in tackling climate change.

Richard Gleave, UK Health Security Agency, and Professor Sharon Peacock, Department of Medicine, University of Cambridge, discussed the wider implications of the COVID-19 pandemic, reflecting on the success of the UK’s COVID-19 Genomics Consortium (COG-UK) in pandemic response and, more broadly, on the evolving role of scientific advice in times of public crises.

We are delighted to announce the names of the successful applicants to the CSaP Policy Fellowship for Michaelmas Term 2023

CSaP partnered with the Natural History Museum (NHM) in July to hold a unique event bringing together Policy Fellows working in climate and sustainability to discuss the challenges of tackling the biodiversity crisis.

In April 2023, the Centre for Science and Policy (CSaP), in conjunction with the the Cambridge Zero Policy Forum and the Centre for Landscape Regeneration (CLR), ran a policy stakeholder visit to CLR, addressing the challenges and trade-offs associated with land use in the Cambridgeshire Fens. This event brought together key academic, policy, third sector and business stakeholders to discuss the CLR’s engagement and collaboration with strategic partners, and to learn about the issues and questions facing policy decision making in the Fens.

A panel discussion chaired by Halima Khan from the Bennett Institute for Public Policy, called for government to invest in infrastructure that supports people in changing their health behaviour, allowing citizens to be more involved in the policy making process, and developing a better understanding of everyday lived experiences.

At this fourth and final session of the reading group, participants were delighted to be joined by the author, Simon Sharpe, who was introduced by his mentor and friend, Sir David King (Founder & Former Chair, Centre for Climate Repair), who also provided some opening remarks on the book. The goal of this session was to move beyond the individual sections and recommendations of the book and assess the larger question of what pragmatic steps could we at the University of Cambridge take to implement the changes we know we need to make?

During a recent Policy Leaders Fellowship visit day, Professor Nick Pearce called for governments to adopt a more strategic approach in the face of the multiple interlocking crises of climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation, and the war in Ukraine.

In July 2023, the Cambridge Zero Policy Forum met for the third of four reading group sessions on Five Times Faster: Rethinking the Science, Economics, and Diplomacy of Climate Change, by Simon Sharpe, Senior Fellow at the World Resources Institute. The session focused on economics and included opening remarks by Dimitri Zenghelis, Special Advisor, Bennett Institute for Public Policy, University of Cambridge.

In June 2023, Craig Bennett (CEO at The Wildlife Trusts and former CSaP Policy Fellow) met with the Cambridge Zero Policy Forum to discuss the Global Biodiversity Framework agreed at the 2022 UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15) and what this means for the UK.