The Habitable Air Project: Networking Reception

This networking reception aims to build connections between sectors that do not often speak to one another: policymakers, academics, tech start-ups, and communities. Building upon our expert panel at our official HLPF side event earlier in the day, we aim to catalyse action across leading figures working to tackle inequality and climate change by bringing them into informal conversations in a convivial atmosphere. Sectors do not often speak to one another because they are siloed within their own activities on these pressing global issues. At times, the activities of one sector can be perceived as harmful to another sector. For example, extractive materials used in new start-up technologies are protested by marginalised communities who are displaced by these processes. Or these technologies are regulated by policymakers seeking a delicate balance of demands and academia is left out where their technical expertise might be useful. Our project’s contention is that to tackle inequality and climate change, a cross-sector response is urgent and necessary. Without it, we will continue to be siloed and alone. With it, we create actionable knowledge and partnerships toward more equitable and sustainable future cities.

• Read more on the side event at lunch time the same date.

Habitable Air is a project that addresses the under-analyzed relationship between three urgent issues: (1) the rapid growth of urban inequality, (2) the amplification of political divisions in major democracies, and (3) the increasing impact of pollution and global warming. The project uses qualitative methods – including ethnographic participant observation, the analysis of historical archival documents and air quality monitoring data – at a scale that only quantitative studies of climate change have yet achieved by working within a clear network of scientists, policymakers, workers, and residents in transnational sites. Through major publications, teaching and training, a documentary film, policy briefs, media outreach, public workshops, and an international symposium, the project will produce actionable knowledge to build cooperation between the public, governments, marginalised communities, and the private sector. Our reception aims to accomplish this cooperation in real-time by literally bringing cross-sector conversation into the room in the spirit of advancing SDGs #1 and #13 together. Our motto for this event is: we are stronger together.

PROGRAMME

• Kerry Ryan Chance, University of Bergen: Short abstract for the event
• Sarah Renee Hamilton, University of Bergen: Short introduction on Environmental Humanities
• Laurence Ralph, Princeton University: On the importance of cross-disciplinary, cross-sector research and practice