47th TB Macaulay Lecture – with Professor Frank Biermann

The 47th TB Macaulay lecture will be delivered by Professor Frank Biermann, a leading scholar of global sustainability and the founder and first chair of the global Earth System Governance research alliance. The lecture will take place at the National Museum of Scotland, Wednesday 21 October 2026.

Hosted by the Macaulay Development Trust in partnership with The James Hutton Institute, the TB Macaulay Lecture aims to connect scientific evidence with civic society on the big issues affecting our land and people and specifically to reach those who influence and make decisions on policy.

This year’s speaker, Professor Biermann, is the founder and first chair of the global Earth System Governance research alliance – a network focused on advancing knowledge at the intersection of global environmental change and governance. Since its launch twenty years ago, the initiative has grown to include more than 600 researchers from around the world. It hosts major annual conferences, supports book series with MIT Press and Cambridge University Press, publishes a high-ranking academic journal and coordinates influential international research initiatives. In 2024, Professor Biermann became the first political scientist to receive the prestigious Volvo Environment Prize for his work “defining new pathways for international environmental governance in a period of global change”.

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.