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[Week 8] Return of the PAF

  • Writer: Andrew Lansley
    Andrew Lansley
  • Jan 11
  • 6 min read

Week 8

11/01/25

 

Return of the PAF

 

That was a LOT of reading, but here I am refreshed and ready to get some serious miles on the clock / words on the page for my doctoral efforts in 2026!

 

To start the year, I wish to offer a ranked review from my Top Five research reads over the break:

 

1. Peril and Promise: Tackling Climate Change in Latin America and the Caribbean – this is a brilliant piece of work, taking multiple economic perspectives on a variety of environmental policy and practices. There is a great focus on climate mitigation being a development accelerator, rather than an unnecessary cost commitment – as well as framing some great inverses of our current understanding of the global carbon cycle, what if the Amazon turns from carbon sink to source? There is much criticism around political processes being to blame for stagnation in innovation, it is largely understood the social motivations and technologies exist, but a competing social schema (presumably structured from years of culture wars) and governance failure are roundly centred upon as the big baddies that would inhibit progress. There’s a really interesting section on finance reform (largely missing from the MIT report, see “4”) that is something that I need to revisit with the Doughnut Economics lens as it feels there’s some potentially harmony to be found here. I think this is an insightful and important book for anyone working in climate mitigation and adaptation to read no matter where in the world they might be – hard recommend 10/10

 

2. The dynamics of coworker envy in the green innovation landscape: Mediating and moderating effects on employee environmental commitment and non-green behaviour in the hospitality industry Ah! My “leftfield choice” for festive reading. I was hoping this research was geared more towards interrelations from a behavioural analysis perspective, seeking clues as to how promoting harmony within the events sector in implementing change together. I learned two new phrases from this work in “employee green innovation behaviour (EGIB) and “envy driven backlash”. Long story short – environmental programmes can fail because they’re human. It establishes the foundation that green innovation is not socially neutral (I agree) and by integrating Social Comparison Theory (SCT) you can explore how rewarding green champions can generate envy/backlash through upward social comparisons; this holds true and organisational level. To be honest, it was really refreshing to read something that actually took the issue of co-worker / co-sector envy (where greener = better, quicker = kinder) and proposed how the frameworks we generally use for measuring achievement and progress in environmental issues might indeed be at least part of the cause of any disharmony there may or may not be in the sector… 9/10 everyone should read this

 

Why people argue over climate solutions, academic edition
Why people argue over climate solutions, academic edition

 

3. Culture Makes Liverpool – There’s no shade putting this one fourth, it’s a great bit of work but just an update and something I think I’ll need to get to as I’m pulling together actions and priorities from UNAC into something a little more coherent. The main value I got from this document (to be fair I read UK local authority cultural strategies for funsies) was a) understanding where the city ‘is’ in its strategic cultural outlook, but b) also a clue to where my research might sit. Serendipity struck just before Christmas when I was at the LIVE Awards and mid-hug with Orphy Robinson when I poured a full non-alcoholic cocktail into the seat of a very lovely gentleman called Tom. All was fine in the moment, but I got more and more worried the longer I spent autopsying the bad etiquette in my mind, so used my top-tier LinkedIn stalking skills to find him to apologise. Turns out the lovely Tom was Tom Wilcox from Counterculture – author of the Culture Makes Liverpool document – and now we’re going to go and have a coffee next time I’m in town. If you live in Liverpool, this is a great way to understand the direction in which things are headed in the city, and to see what future lies ahead for Liverpool’s culture industries. 8/10 for everyone else, but 9/10 for Liverpudlians.

 

4. MIT’s Climate Machine This was the work I was most looking forward to digging into and I was genuinely sad I had to put this report as my second least favourite from my Xmas reading pile. There is some really useful stuff in there of course, but it definitely left my brain being hungry. I opted for the full ‘white paper’ experience and on the surface, there is much to like, certainly in the methodological framework and how the outputs have been presented. The complementary frameworks piece (decision, activities and events based) is definitely something I’ll be coming back to, as will some of the top line figures that will make for handy quick comparisons when discussion emissions in context of other sectors and industries.

 

I also quite liked the AI Chatbot function provided (designed to aid with navigation of the report) but it appears the understanding of how this technology works continues to outpace its employers, even if these people work at the 2nd highest ranked university on the planet. A quick example is through one Key Insight that is offered up early in the findings that states “Emissions from food can't be attributed to decisions made by the venue and its owners and operators.” which feels like a less-than-stable statement to even the casual observer. Despite the considerable sector voice built into this work, it’s like concepts such as menu design, procurement controls and commercial incentives don’t exist. Audience travel creates the biggest emission from events? Yep. We need systemic solutions? No shit! Ask the MIT chatbot where emissions CAN be attributed to decisions made by the venues and its owners and operators and it will instantly pull evidence of numerous ways in which this can happen, all pulled from it’s own report.

 

Similary, the suggestion that a venue would be unable to access information about its water usage could only come from someone who has never dealt with Severn Trent. The concept of shared responsibility/collectivism also appears to function largely as a one-way dynamic of absolution, which certainly limits the opportunity for future researchers to explore the systemic solutions recommended within the report itself. A rudimentary acknowledgement to the endemic influence of capitalism, current geo-political instability and wealth inequity being the greatest impediment to societal shift seems to be a missed opportunity in underlining the greatest challenge we share as a species and where change could occur. It’s almost as if a global corporation funded this research.

 

My overall takeaway was a message to both audience and media alike that ‘you need to reframe this as a you problem’, which perhaps could have been detailed further into a systemic solutions focus geared towards policy change. Perhaps I just torpedoed my enjoyment of this work having maybe pre-hyped a little too much in my brain before it was published and expected new or distinct narratives to have been established, where the result instead offers a slightly renewed perspective (and updated numbers) for some already well-evidenced trends. Throughout both reads of this white paper I couldn’t help the creeping suspicion that the funders group behind the work would have made much more impact by simply investing in the solutions for the challenges for which they are obviously already aware. Let’s see how the UN Accelerator City recommendations fair in comparison. A generous 7/10

 

MIT Climate Machine Chatbot vs MIT
MIT Climate Machine Chatbot vs MIT

 

5. Local Authority Climate Action Beyond Carbon Budgets – this was a recent position paper published by the Tyndall Institute providing insights for local authorities, it is only in last place because I didn’t realise I’d read it before and couldn’t work out for most of the re-read why it all seemed so familiar. Literally used this for the Lit Review in the PAF for my masters. Solid update and looking to understand if Tyndall’s efforts can be aligned with the upcoming efforts in Liverpool to decarbonise. Also a 7/10 but only because this felt like a white paper plate spin where in fact, I wanted more information, deeper insights and more everything from this research!

 

That’s it, that’s my Xmas read reviews, and next week I’m off to the Netherlands whilst re-drafting my PAF (after all the festive reading) whilst preparing for the upcoming DCMS visit whilst organising political and academic guests (including my PhD supervisors) for a parliamentary event in February.

 

Feels very full time this PhD!

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