Actions for a Changing World

Soy is a major global agricultural commodity in terms of production, trade and value. In Brazil it is of enormous importance - accounting for 15% of national export value. However, its production also devastates crucial ecosystems and natural habitats.
To the public, the consumption of soy is often hidden and unknown. How are commodities traded and used around the globe to satisfy consumer demand? What can be done (and by who) to facilitate change for the better? We use trade models and various methods to understand how consumption behaviour drives environmental impacts in distant places.

Dr James Comerford is an experienced senior researcher at the Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence, University of York, specialising in sustainable plastics and plastics recycling technologies. His talk will focus on key questions such as: What makes plastic such a big problem? Why can’t we just recycle more plastic? And what role do bio-based plastics play?

I call myself a “biodiversity conservation scientist”. My research is mostly about the most diverse and threatened places in the world – the tropics. I have a degree in biology, but a PhD in both ecology and economics. I’ve visited extraordinary forests, from tropical rainforests in the Amazon basin to peat swamp forests in Sumatra. But, I’ve also spent lots of time on people’s farms - in oil palm and rubber plantations in parts of Asia - and it’s there that my scientific research interest lies. In today’s crowded world, how do people and nature fit together into tropical forest landscapes?