Sustainable Lens
Resilience on Radio
Chris Preist

 Helping people who are motivated by social good to frame it in terms business will understand.

Dr Chris Preist is Reader in Sustainability and Computer Systems at the University of Bristol.  In this role he is working on tools to “bridge the gap”, he hopes to help provide “a way of thinking about their concern for [...]

Andy Williamson

Dr Andy Williamson is founder of Future Digital, an Associate at Involve, and a Visiting Fellow at the University of Manchester.   He is author of the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s Social Media Guidelines for Parliaments.   He explains why he thinks politics is fundamentally broken, and what we have to do to fix it.      

Louis Brown

Louis Brown mobilises people to do good. Passionate about getting more people off the couch and active on important community issues, Louis Brown is an inspirational social entrepreneur. Louis Brown won his first job at the age of 11 in the tiny West Coast village of Fairdown skinning discarded dead calves for $1 a pop. [...]

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Previously on Sustainable Lens Emeritus Professor Sir Alan Mark (pod) described work towards the Wise Response campaign.   This call to face up to New Zealand’s critical risks was launched in Dunedin recently with a series of speeches. Sustainable Lens highlights these messages (Part 1 last week). Russell Tregonning: (OraTaiao: The New Zealand Climate and Health Council). Climate change [...]

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Previously on Sustainable Lens Emeritus Professor Sir Alan Mark (pod) described work towards the Wise Response campaign.  This call to face up to New Zealand’s critical risks, was launched in Dunedin recently with a series of speeches.  This week and next on Sustainable Lens we highlight those messages: Hoani Langsbury What sustains life essence? [...]

bethKarlin

Beth Karlin is director of the Transformational Media Lab within the Center for Unconventional Security Affairs at University of California Irvine. We talk about social action campaigns, documentary, using new information and communication technology to understand and empower environmental change, and what we can learn from psychological perspectives in communication research.

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Sustainability at the Dunedin City Council is increasingly being seen as part of everyone’s role. The role of sustainability at the council itself is twofold, they have to reduce their own footprint, and help lead the city to a sustainable future. We explore what one of the world’s greatest small cities is doing to [...]

billHarris

Syria is in the news. But not enough says Professor Bill Harris. After his introduction to the Middle East, Bill comes back to provide us with Syria 101. What is going on? (long story but Bill walks us through it, short story: at least 100,000 dead) Can we just wait for this to play [...]

Hordur Torfason

Hordur Torfason describes himself as a reluctant activist. He would rather be writing lyrics than organising a revolution. But while the former make him famous in Iceland in the 70s, the latter has made him globally famous in the new millennium. Trained as an actor, he sees the role of the artist is to criticise, [...]

Bill Harris

To most of us, the Middle East is a puzzling, complex, and often contradictory part of the world. We ask Professor Bill Harris to help make it more understandable to those of us who don’t know anything like as much about it as he does. Bill unravels sectarian tensions, global recession, oil, wheat prices, [...]

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Associate Professor Etienne Nel is a geographer at the University of Otago who specialises in economic geography. He chairs the International Geographic Union’s Commission on Marginalization, Globalization and Local and Regional Response. As he grew up in southern Africa, we take the oppportunity for a lesson in the geography of development. Shane’s number of [...]

Sylvia Nagl

Dr Sylvia Nagl is a transdisciplinary scientist specialising in systems thinking. Her research focuses on complexity of the human body and its interrelations with natural and built environments across multiple scales. We talk about the basis of systems thinking as it is applied to scales ranging from the cellular to the landscape and community [...]

AlanMark

Emeritus Professor Sir Alan Mark is New Zealand’s first Knight honoured for services to conservation. We explore the relationship between science and championing change. So long as you have the science behind you, Sir Alan has no problem with taking an activist role – indeed, he says, it is an obligation of the privileged [...]

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Associate Professor Bob Lloyd is Director of the Energy Studies Programme at the University of Otago. This interview is a tour de force of the role of energy and its importance in a sustainable world. We revisit the tragedy of the commons, understand the Jevons paradox, and examine why growth is a delusion.

PeterHolland

Professor Peter Holland‘s new book “Home in the Howling Wilderness: Settlers and the Environment in Southern New Zealand” explores the relationship of early settlers and the environment. Peter tells us of his journey through his career in biogeography in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Africa and back to New Zealand. Shane’s number of the week: [...]

Megan Williams

Megan Williams is the Otago coordinator for Conscious Consumers. We talk about Megan about background in sustainable tourism and Sustainable Wanaka. Conscious consumers is a non-profit sustainbility and ethical accreditation programme in New Zealand. Initially based in Wellington, Conscious Consumers has recently expanded nationally, including Otago. We talk about the recently released smartphone app [...]

Lesley Hughes

Professor Lesley Hughes is an ecologist in the Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University who researches the impacts of climate change on species and ecosystems. She is a lead author on the IPCC fourth and fifth assessment reports, a member of the Australian Government’s Land Sector Carbon & Biodiversity Board and commissioner on the [...]

Danyl Strype

Active in both the Permaculture in New Zealand and the creative commons movements, Danyl Strype describes himself as a permageek. We spend an enjoyable hour wallowing in sustainable IT (without mentioning virtualisation).