Announcing Round 2 Flex Fund awardees

The ACCESS Network has announced new funding for three environmental research projects. Together they examine and evaluate opportunities to encourage people to get more involved in climate action

• By empowering young people in climate decision-making
• Strengthening pro-environmental values amongst British Muslims
• Improving our understanding of how acts of caring in communities can lead to a more sustainable future for us and the planet.

The three winners of the second round of the UKRI Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded Advancing Capacity for Climate Environment Social Science (ACCESS) Flex Fund competition will share £750,000. The projects will all start this autumn and run for approx. 18 months.

‘Unlocking the power of youth’ aims to bring global youth expertise into climate governance, ensuring young people and marginalised voices can be included in decision-making.

The team led by Kaya Axelsson at the University of Oxford will work alongside The British Standards Institution (BSI) to bring youth climate justice representatives across six continents to develop equity criteria for net zero governance. These will be produced with UK-Plc to address the policy gap that fails to define how companies can address equity concerns when they decarbonise their footprints. Read more

Kaya Axelsson explains “Youth are the engine of the global climate movement yet are frequently left out of the governance processes that determine our net-zero futures. With funding from the ACCESS Grant, we’re excited to begin our work with global youth, UK businesses and the British Standards Institution to define what an ‘equitable’ transition to net-zero might mean, and how corporates can enact this under the guidance of the voluntary net-zero standards landscape.”

Davide Pettinato at the University of Cambridge along with Mohammed Fezaan Azam from Cambridge Central Mosque will be looking at British Muslims and their pro-environmental values.

Together they will co-produce and evaluate a holistic programme of faith-literate environmental education to strengthen pro-environmental values, self-identity and personal norms among British Muslims. Cambridge is the first and only ‘green mosque’ in the UK and it is hoped it will become a model for other mosques in the UK and abroad. Read more

The last project looks at how we might build more harmonious people-planet relations. Taking a socioecological care approach, Dr Sarah Parry along with Dr Rachel Hunt at the University of Edinburgh will explore the transformative potential of everyday caring practices and relationships between people, nonhumans and places, and their characteristics like love, respect and solidarity.

This approach will bring to the foreground, marginalised voices; give attention to un/caring actions and how these are linked; the contexts in which care is possible or not; and in/equalities within caring relations.

Sarah and her team will explore three sustainability initiatives that are already engaged in socioecological care: a community amenity project, a regenerative farm and a landscape restoration project in Badenoch and Strathspey in the Scottish Highlands. In collaboration with Mhairi Hall, the research will inspire the composition of new Scottish music to bring people together and better understand how a strong foundation of care can be used to help build sustainability.

Sarah’s partners include the Cairngorms National Park Authority, Carrbridge Community Orchard, Fèis Spè, Highlands and Islands Climate Hub, Lynbreck Croft, and Scotland’s National Centre for Excellence in Traditional Music. Read more

Sarah Parry “We are excited to embark on this unique project working with partners and communities in Badenoch and Strathspey to elaborate socioecological care. The ACCESS funding affords opportunities to connect social scientific knowledge with those in communities with lived experiences of socioecological care to explore its transformative potential through academic, public and creative outputs.”

Professor Birgitta Gatersleben ACCESS Co-Director, from the University of Surrey, was impressed with the high quality of applications. “The large number of applications came from researchers across the UK and covered a wide range of different environmental social science challenges. It is very exciting to be able to support these three projects that address such different topics from “youth climate justice”, to the first “green Mosque” in the UK and socio-ecological care in the Scottish Highlands. I am very much looking forward to seeing the projects develop over the next couple of years”.

The ACCESS Flex Fund provides funding to test and develop new ways of thinking, new approaches and new networks that will advance the impact of the social sciences to address the transition to a sustainable and biodiverse environment and a net zero society. These were the second and last Flex Fund awards.