Macaulay Lectures

Each year the Trust, in partnership with The James Hutton Institute, organise the annual Macaulay lecture.

The aim of the lecture is to stimulate thinking and dialogue about contemporary environmental issues in order to honour the vision of Dr T B Macaulay from whose endowment in 1930 both the Trust and the Hutton trace their origins. Further information about Dr Macaulay can be found here.

The lectures are aimed at an informed, professional audience and each one is given by a world renown academic. An archive of recent lectures is available here.

47th TB Macaulay Lecture – with Professor Frank Biermann

Through his lecture, the scholar will explore how accelerating climate impacts, geopolitical tensions, democratic backsliding and persistent inequalities have rendered traditional approaches to environmental governance insufficient.

He will outline how planetary politics offers a fresh perspective for understanding and navigating the profound transformations shaping our future, and how plurilateral coalitions of like-minded countries can succeed in a world where global consensus is out of reach.

The talk will also highlight Professor Biermann’s extensive research on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with a specific focus on the critical period leading to 2030, when the current framework expires and new global goals must be negotiated.

About the Lecture

The annual T.B. Macaulay Lecture is held to honour the vision of Dr Thomas Bassett Macaulay, President and Chairman of the Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada, whose benefaction founded the original Macaulay Institute for Soil Research in 1930. He was a descendant of the Macaulays from the Island of Lewis and his aim was to improve the productivity of Scottish agriculture. This vision continues today in its successor the James Hutton Institute, a world leader in land, crop, water, environmental and socio-economic science.