Previous Macaulay Lectures

Environmentalists joined with academia and politicians to explore a future where our nature is viewed and valued as an asset.
 

World-renowned environmental scientist Professor Gretchen C. Daily laid out her vision for a world at one with nature at the 45th annual TB Macaulay lecture held in Edinburgh on Tuesday night (10th September 2024).

The lecture was held on Thursday evening (18th October 2023) in Edinburgh, where we were honoured to host Johan Rockström, who is internationally recognised for his work on global sustainability issues. We were delighted to welcome an audience of over 500 attendees to the event.
 

Johan's talk covered the latest scientific results of the health of the earth system, including the recent work of the Earth Commission and also an update on the "Earth for All" scenario, analysing pathways towards attaining the Sustainable Development Goals within planetary boundaries.

How do climate negotiations take place and why is progress so slow? How can governments, scientists and activists work together to tackle the climate emergency for everyone's benefit? These questions, and many others, were at the heart of the 43rd TB Macaulay Lecture, led by Christiana Figueres, former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in conversation with Scotland's First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon MSP, and youth climate activists Anuna De Wever, Lola Segers and Julieta Martinez.
 

With news about our climate, ecosystems and wildlife tending to be grim, there are few who could argue action must be taken and taken quickly. The 42nd TB Macaulay Lecture, Green and Prosperous Land, focussed on Professor Helm's radical but tangible plan for positive change.
 

The 41st TB Macaulay Lecture focussed on the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and Professor McGlade discussed the lives and experiences of those facing the day-to-day challenges associated with climate change. She shared insights from her work in Kenya, and drew on her experience at the UN, and shared lessons learnt during the development and implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, as well as their practical impact.
 

Professor Jackson’s book, “Prosperity without Growth”, is a world-renowned landmark in the sustainability debate. Originally published at the outset of the global financial crisis, Jackson's seminal work challenges orthodoxies, causing us to question the primacy of economic growth at all costs, and has drawn praise across the world from politicians to Nobel Prize-winning economists. 
 

The publication of the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015 is the public expression of a global consensus regarding a desired pathway for our future. The 17 goals and the 169 targets indicate the areas where progress is needed and help to focus the attention of researchers, policy-makers and practitioners. However, the publication fails to clarify how the goals and targets interconnect, including trade-offs and synergies that need to be resolved to avoid unintended consequences.

Soils are home to a vast diversity of life that is essential for a variety of ecosystem functions – from the tiniest microbes to larger soil animals and plant roots. The UN has designated 2015 as the International Year of Soils to acknowledge their importance and to raise awareness on the need to protect this valuable resource for future generations.

The lecture tackled the challenge posed by increased calls for policy developers and decision-makers in Scotland to base their decisions more firmly on the underlying science. Professor Sutherland argued that the current processes often lead to poor and slow decisions and the inefficient or problematic use of resources. He outlined various problems and described methods that can help individual policy developers and decision-makers and also improve the decision-making processes.
 

In the 21st century, the scale and intensity of human impacts on the biosphere and biodiversity are widely recognised: we live in the Anthropocene, the era of humankind. Through the 20th century the conservation movement developed strategies to defend nature from human pressure. There have been successes but human impacts continue to grow.
 

Achieving increased levels of productivity using existing land whilst causing minimal environmental damage is one of the greatest challenges of modern agriculture.  Sustainable intensification, as the concept is known, was the subject of the 35th T.B. Macaulay Lecture, delivered by Professor Jules Pretty OBE, Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Essex.
 

Europe’s populations and economies fundamentally depend on the supplies of food, water, energy, and material - from within and beyond the borders of Europe. But is this stock of natural capital being used sustainably and are the environmental resources secure enough to sustain today’s economies and people in good health? Are we using resources efficiently and can we really decouple further economic development from the use of resources and their environmental impacts?
 

Land use has generally been considered a local issue, but is becoming a force of global importance. Worldwide changes to land resources are driven by needs for food, fibre, water and shelter for six billion people. Global croplands, pastures, plantations and urban areas have expanded in recent decades, accompanied by increased energy, water and fertiliser consumption, and by biodiversity loss.

Recently, the OECD review of rural policy in Scotland argued that integration is needed between the many organisations involved – a conclusion that harks back to earlier models of Integrated Rural Development. This talk asks whether the concept of Integrated Rural Development still has any meaning in the context of the new approaches to rural governance being adopted within Scotland and more widely across Europe?

One of the great scientific challenges is trying to understand how the operations of ecosystems, on which we all depend, are regulated by their biological complexity. Nowhere is this challenge more intractable than in soil, site of many essential services such as carbon and nutrient cycling, and home to great - and largely unknown - biological diversity.

The most serious problem facing human society today is that the ecosystems in which we live are becoming unsustainable.Species are being lost and resources are being consumed at unprecedented rates-but just how much can we lose? The Serengeti ecosystem in East Africa has been well studied for nearly 50 years. Protected areas such as these act as ecological baselines where human-induced change is kept to a minimum.

The history of our planet is essentially a tale of two entities, the geophysical earth, and the life it supports, as well as their interactions. Through a cascade of entwined transitions, major geological changes and information-processing, life has co-evolved over billions of years to finally generate the habitat for Homo sapiens. We are, however, radically and abruptly transforming the Earth to the extent that we now live in an era that is unlike any that has gone before.

How much change can an ecosystem or society undergo and still function properly? Understanding the components and structures of systems is one thing, but knowing how to manage them in a desirable state for future generations is what lies at the heart of resilience management.
 

As the energy industry arrives at a pivotal crossroads, Karen de Segundo looks at whether renewable energies will help society solve the critical question of how to meet the world's increasing energy needs. Whilst many regions, including Scotland, look to a renewable energy future, the audience will hear a realistic examination of the pro's and con's of renewable energies including commercial viability, predictability, storage and competitiveness.
 

The lecture will look at the implications of the transition to sustainability for Scottish governance. It will reflect on the role of the Scottish Executive, the Scottish Parliament, the non departmental bodies, business and civil society. It will also introduce the role of sustainability appraisal as a policy evaluation mechanism. Finally, it will assess how far Scotland has come, and has to go to meet the transition to sustainability.
 

It could be argued, with some force, that the development of "Western" agriculture has represented an effective symbiosis between biology, chemistry and engineering. Understanding the basis of crop and animal production systems has led to the targetting of engineering advances and novel chemicals that have, together, sustained the productivity increases of the 20th Century.
 

The theme of the paper is 'countryside change - policies, practice and prospects', it is used to explore and discuss a number of topics that are important in relation to land use and the research undertaken at the Macaulay. The main drivers of countryside change over the next two decades, and how policies and technological opportunities will influence the likely direction of change and the rationale for research at the Macaulay is discussed.