Our guest for today is Filipe Machado Franca, a Senior Research Fellow at the School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, and Researcher at the Institute of Biological Sciences, Federal University of Pará, Brazil. Filipe is a native of Brasil, has a PhD in the science of tropical environments, and studies lives of the smallest insects to the largest tropical forests.

Highlights of the podcast include:

3:05: How does one become a researcher of tropical forests?

5:50: How to combine managing tropical fieldwork of 25 people with a university senior research fellow role at the University of Bristol

9:52: Fieldwork in Brazil, Ghana and Malaysia as UKRI’s Future Leaders Fellow

11:57: Tropical forests are not the lung, but the heart of the Earth!

14:00 COP30: The uplift of indigenous voices vs fossil lobbyists hindering the roadmap

15:00: About talking to Mary Creagh, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State of the UK, Marina Silva, Minister of Environment and Climate Change of Brazil and Sonia Guajajara, Minister of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil

21:10: Urban wildlife surrounds us

22:55: ‘I think insects’

23.10: The importance of urban forests

25:30: link to the Amazonia book of Sebastiao Salgado book: https://amzn.eu/d/fFHbVd7

27:10: link to the museum of Amazonias museum with an exhibition of Sebastian Salgado, showing planting of 3 million trees, to turn bare land to a restored tropical forest: https://www.instagram.com/museudasamazonias/

30:00: The risks of planting non-native species, co-authored and published in Science: https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.aba2225

31:45 - lessons from the temperate climate: forest management in Sweden and Romania

36:28 Reacting to terms starting with letter ‘D’, the 4th letter of the alphabet:

• decarbonisation
• durability
• diversity

41:00: Day dreaming about the ideal world: mobilisation of individuals, accountability of governments, responsibility of businesses

43:50: It is a problem that scientists and politicians usually have different timeframes

46:30: Importance of water footprint

Our guest for today is Professor Anne Robertson. Anne is a professor of ecology at the University of Roehampton in London. Water ecosystems are in the centre of her research and teaching, including topics like freshwater biodiversity in particular in groundwaters, the impact on freshwater ecosystems of disturbances such as climate change and monitoring and conservation of groundwater ecosystems.

Highlights of the podcast include

3:10: changing water qualities - changing expectations

6:30: state of our rivers globally

8:10: river contamination in Zambia: https://www.birdlife.org/news/2025/03/07/environmental-disaster-unfolds-in-zambia/

9:10: should industrialisation and pollution go necessarily hand in hand?

10:10: education, motivation and mobilisation to act on saving the environment

11:10: do we need another pandemic to reconnect with nature?

12:45: mindfulness and connecting with nature

14:35: Rights of Nature: https://www.garn.org/rights-of-nature/

https://www.lawyersfornature.com/blog/rights-of-nature-in-the-uk-from-vision-to-viability

17:08: about the River Ouse, Sussex: https://loveourouse.org/

18:22: guardians of rivers and AI driven sensors for citizen science

https://sheffield.ac.uk/news/cloud-based-ai-helps-reduce-river-pollution

19:58: More than Human - exhibition in the Design Museum, London: https://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/more-than-human

21:00: worldviews on nature and the rights of nature movement

24:58: about the state of our groundwaters

26:30: where is our water coming from

30:42: Thirst, in Search of Freshwater - exhibition of the Wellcome Collection, London https://wellcomecollection.org/exhibitions/thirst-in-search-of-freshwater

31:47: slowing down the water and setting fresh flowing rivers:

https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/nature-and-biodiversity/nature-restoration-regulation_en

35:12: overstepping planetary boundaries: https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries.html

38:38: tension between the word sustainable and the word development

39:30: C letter words:

• Climate scepticism
• Carbon sink
• Collaboration
• COP movement

45:36: teaching sustainability and the problem with siloed education

48:00: taking up volunteering opportunities

50:30: limiting one’s time on the screen and spending more time in nature

54:00: reducing your footprint, reducing your consumption

Our guest for today is Ash Goddard.

Ash is an experienced workshop facilitator and climate educator. He is Director of Climate Clarity whose mission is to raise awareness and empowerment around the climate and ecological crisis using mainly Climate Fresk workshops, and any other tools that effectively facilitate change.

Highlights and links of the episode:

3:30: One in every 25 participants at this COP 30 is actually a fossil fuel lobbyist: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/nov/14/fossil-fuel-lobbyists-cop30

7:48: Recent Pew Research on notable dip of number of people concerned about climate change: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2025/08/19/global-climate-change-as-a-threat/

14:00: I find that when people come to these sorts of workshops, it can create quite a big shift in kind of culture or experience in ‘oh, I'm now a person who talks about climate change, I've had experience of a climate conversation.

18:28: Top climate action tips:

• Grantham Institute, Imperial: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/stories/climate-action/
• Take the Jump: https://takethejump.org/six-shifts-help
• Natural History Museum: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit/galleries-and-museum-map/fixing-our-broken-planet.html

21:10: Personally, I have a big dream of engaging my neighbours on my street in a food cooperative where we're purchasing from a wholesaler nice organic food, at lower prices and then distributing on the street.

27:05: Sometimes there's a bit of a veil up between us and the organisation when working at this level, they might have a degree of secrecy or a level of keeping information private and not wanting to disclose too many secrets.

34:00: There were tears, there was guilt. There was a lot in the room of people wanting to have a living making the right thing and more. And I really appreciate that moment.

35:00: Rapid Fire Responses - letter ‘B’:

• Belém
• Banks
• Biodiversity
• Behaviour change

42:00: on green skills, sustainability skills and learning: https://www.isepglobal.org/sustainability-skills-map/#thirteencompetencies

43:40: on Axa Climate School

https://axaclimateschool.com/

48:50 Taking the time to understand what are major risks in your area and sit down with family and friends and asking what is our plan here. Given everything that we know, are we actually acting at a proportionate level?

49:35: recent news about the potential collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) where the UK might find sea ice down to Liverpool in the winter months: https://www.carbonbrief.org/ocean-current-collapse-could-trigger-profound-cooling-in-northern-europe-even-with-global-warming/

55:00: On the 27th of November, there's the National Emergency briefing in London aimed at high level decision makers, MPs and more. Briefing from 10 experts on climate security, and covering topics across energy, economics, food systems, climate, tipping points and more: https://www.nebriefing.org/