Institute for Sustainable Energy and the Environment (I-SEE)
2012 Seminar Series
Tuesday 26 June 2012
'Sustainability and Responsibility in the Asian Century'
Professor Malcolm McIntosh, Asia Pacific Centre for Sustainable Enterprise, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia
Speaker: Malcolm McIntosh is Professor and Director of the Asia Pacific Centre for Sustainable Enterprise at Griffith Business School, Queensland, Australia.
Professor Malcolm McIntosh is an international leader in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainable enterprise. Over the last twenty-five years he has pioneered the teaching of corporate responsibility and sustainability in business and management schools in the UK, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa and has been involved in publishing numerous books and articles in this area and producing documentary films for the BBC as well as establishing various businesses around the world.
Malcolm has been a Special Advisor to the UN Secretary-General’s Global Compact, and has worked for UNEP, the ILO and UNDP and many global corporations, including Shell, BP and Pfizer and has served on the stakeholder advisory boards of ABB, the BBC and AccountAbility. He has also worked for a number of INGOs and been an adviser to the governments of the UK, Norway and Canada on CSR public policy. He is primarily an entrepreneur and in a life of many parts he has set up business, civil society, academic and publishing organisations in Australia, Japan and the UK. He has a first degree from the University of London in Education and a Masters and Doctorate in Peace Studies from Bradford University. For the last twenty five years he has concentrated on sustainability, ethics, corporate responsibility and global governance issues. He is currently the Editor, and was the Founding Editor, of the peer reviewed Journal of Corporate Citizenship and Visions of Ethical Business and he is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Sustainability, Accountability, Management and Policy. He is on the Academic Board of EABIS, and a Board member and Deputy Chair of the UN Global Compact Network Australia
Malcolm joined Griffith Business School in 2009 and is the Director of the Asia Pacific Centre for Sustainable Enterprise. Griffith Business School’s MBA is rated 26th best in the world for its incorporation of sustainability, ethics and corporate responsibility, 5th best outside North America, and best in the Asia Pacific region, and 6th best in the world for the University’s research on these area in the Aspen Institute’s Beyond Grey Pinstripes 2011 survey. Malcolm McIntosh has also been a Finalist in the Aspen Institute’s Faculty Pioneer Awards in 2007 and 2011.
His latest books include: The Necessary Transition (2013) Edited by Malcolm McIntosh; A Year in the Life of Sustainability (2013) Malcolm McIntosh; SEE Change: The transition to the sustainable enterprise economy Sandra Waddock and Malcolm McIntosh (2011) and New Perspectives on Human Security Eds: Alan Hunter and Malcolm McIntosh (2010). Malcolm is also a Professor Extraordinaire at the Sustainability Institute, Stellenbosch University, South Africa where he has taught since 2001; Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Bristol, UK where he has taught since 1990; and the Centre for Peace and Reconciliation Studies, Coventry University, UK. He was Visiting Professor at Bath University in the 2000’s.
2 October 2012 - Professor Stephen Gough, Head of Education Department, University of Bath Title tbc
16 October 2012 - Speaker tbc
30 October 2012 - 'Water as if it really matters'
Dr Julian Dennis, Director of Compliance and Sustainability, Wessex Water
Abstract: Since before the Romans a clean fresh supply of water was recognised as essential to the well being and survival of settled communities. As populations grew and became urbanised this need became more acute as evidenced by the chronic affects of faecal pollution on outbreaks of infectious enteric disease that devastated families and the communities they lived in. The Romans built aqueducts to bring fresh water into their growing cities, but it was not until the 19th century that the role faecal pollution of water sources had in the cause of disease was firmly established. Great sewerage systems were developed in the Victorian era to ensure the separation of faecal waste from sources of drinking water to prevent pollution and subsequent disease. In parallel, water treatments were also developed to ensure the water was safe to drink. Many of these treatment systems were developed and applied somewhat haphazardly but a Victorian visiting a water treatment works today would readily recognise most of the processes we use to treat water today. The application of good public health engineering and the application of simple but robust treatment of drinking water to ensure its safety have consigned the horrors of epidemic disease in the UK to the annals of history.
However, an elephant in the room beckons. Since the 1940s the rise of chemical and pharmaceutical industries has seen the explosive development of the societal use of a wide variety of chemicals and pharmaceuticals. Whist many of these chemicals and pharmaceuticals have brought undoubted benefits to our world, what is their fate once used?
Do they get into our water supplies? Can they affect us? What is their fate in the environment and what effect, if any, do they have in the environments into which they are discharged?
If these modern pollutants are to be controlled and human health and the environment protected from their effects, how should they be controlled, who should be responsible and at what cost?
Can society afford to continue with the concepts of water treatment developed over 100 years ago, or is it time to think differently and treat water as if it really matters and not take its unlimited availability for granted.
Speaker: Dr P J L Dennis
Julian joined Wessex Water in 2003 and is Director of Compliance & Sustainability. A microbiologist, he studied for his Ph.D. whilst with the Public Health Laboratory Service at CAMR Porton Down. Later, in 1988, joining Thames Water where he was appointed Chief Scientist in 1999. He has published 59 research and review papers, contributed to several textbooks and was a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Applied Microbiology. He is a Director of UK Water Industry Research Ltd and is currently a Trustee of Sustainability South West (a Bristol based charity). He is a Fellow of the Institute of Directors and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
6 November 2012 - 'Do buildings need to use energy?'
Professor David Coley, Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, University of Bath
Abstract: Professor David Coley with discuss why buildings use energy, and how much they use. David will then address the question of how little energy a building might use and whether this can easily be obtained from on-site renewables. He will conclude by looking at whether the occupants present any particular challenges for low energy social housing.
Speaker: David Coley received a BSc in Physics in 1985 and a PhD in theoretical nuclear physics in 1989 (both from Surrey University). During this time he also worked briefly for the UK Atomic Energy Authority. He joined the Centre for Energy and the Environment at Exeter University in 1998 where he worked until joining Bath as Professor of Low Carbon Design in 2011. Whilst at Exeter his main interests were in low energy design (including Passivhaus), renewables, estimating of the impact of climate change on the built environment and evolutionary computation. He was also a founding member of a London-based hedge fund. His main research interests are in finding out why buildings use energy, how little they could use and where this energy might come from. In essence this means teasing out whether the issue for the mass production of low carbon buildings is the building or the occupant. He is a committee member of various national bodies on the built environment and on the editorial board of three journals. Alongside academic papers and reports for Government, he has written books on energy and climate change, genetic algorithms and rock climbing.
13 November 2012 - 'BaleHaus: lessons learnt and way forward for renewable construction materials'
Professor Peter Walker, Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, University of Bath
20 November 2012 - Speaker tbc