Green Recovery Dialogues: From COVID19 to COP26

Abstract

In Autumn of 2020, Glasgow City Council partnered with the University of Glasgow’s Centre for Sustainable Solutions along with Policy Scotland to deliver a series of three Green Recovery Dialogues (GRDs). The primary aim of these dialogues was to ensure a just and sustainable recovery from the extremely challenging period of the COVID-19 pandemic, in a context of increasing awareness of the relationship between human and planetary wellbeing. The University of Glasgow and Glasgow City Council working together on this agenda highlights a significant partnership where the knowledge and research ability of the University is combined with the Council’s capacity to implement change.
The financial difficulties experienced throughout the COVID pandemic meant that a key priority has revolved around economic recovery and subsequent growth. The revival of the Scottish economy poses an opportunity to draw on lessons learnt from the 2008 financial crisis, where recovery packages were offered. However, the COVID crisis has had structurally different impacts on the supply and demand side. The widely discussed transition to net-zero emissions has been at the forefront of global political discourse since the Paris Agreement in 2015, and although COVID-19 brought a wealth of negative consequences, it also saw measures taken that helped to decrease greenhouse gas emissions and presents an opportunity to accelerate the transition to net-zero emissions. The aim of the dialogues was to assist in enabling better-informed partnership working for the City’s and the University’s carbon neutrality targets of 2030.

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DOI

https://doi.org/10.36399/gla.pubs.346786

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https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/346786/