Regards croisés: Better understanding the challenges of the ecological transition - 3 lecture series

Better understand the challenges of the ecological transition

For several years now, the Institute has been increasingly taking environmental issues into account in its overall strategy. This was illustrated by the publication of a roadmap in early 2021 called Horizons. The main objective of this strategy is to make the Institute a major player in the transition to a sustainable society. The training of our staff and students in these issues is one of the key actions we have identified. Indeed, the multidisciplinary and complex aspects of environmental issues require appropriate training to be able to understand them and integrate them coherently into our future actions.

For this purpose, we offer 3 cycles of conferences with experts on different themes.

Conference n°1: How do we overcome the planetary limits?

An intervention on the subjects of Climate (and in particular its warming) and Biodiversity (and in particular its erosion) presented by two scientific references:
Valérie Masson-Delmotte, paleo-climatologist and co-chair of the IPCC Group N°1. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is the organization that synthesizes scientific work on climate change and presents the major trends. In this work, group n°1 studies the physical principles of climate change. Their latest report was published on August 9, 2021.

Bruno David, Director of the French National Museum of Natural History, speaks about the decline of biodiversity and its causes and consequences. Before becoming Director of the MNHN, Bruno David was a biologist.

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Conference n°2: What availability of resources?

We were fortunate to welcome two engineers whose interventions have received a lot of media attention in recent years, particularly in engineering schools, where they have helped raise awareness of environmental issues.

Jean-Marc Jancovici is also an engineer (Polytechnique then Télécom Paris). He has been particularly active in recent years on the subject of decarbonisation of society with the creation of the Carbone4 consultancy (ecological transition consultancy - 2007), the think tank The Shift Project (lobby whose objective is the decarbonisation of society and the anticipation of potential disruption of fossil fuel supply - 2010). Earlier, he participated in the emergence in France of the carbon footprint method or contributed to the creation of the association Avenir Climatique (objective: to make energy-climate issues a priority at the level of higher education).

Philippe Bihouix, a graduate of the Centrale Paris engineering school, has worked in various industrial sectors (energy, chemicals, transport, construction, telecommunications, aeronautics, etc.) as a consulting engineer, project manager and in management positions. He is currently managing director of AREP (a multidisciplinary architecture agency, a subsidiary of SNCF Gares & Connexions). He is also the author of several books, the latest of which, published in 2019, deals with issues of resource availability and contributes to the emergence of the low-tech concept in France.
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Conference n°3: How to adapt our socio-economic systems?

We will discuss the adaptation of our socio-ecological systems. After having discussed the overshooting of planetary limits, it is now crucial to anticipate their consequences and to mitigate this overshooting.

Gwenael Podesta came to talk about the French strategy to reduce and adapt to global warming: the National Low Carbon Strategy (SNBC). Mr. Podesta is an engineer at the Directorate General for Energy and Climate (DGEC) and works on the modelling of the National Low Carbon Strategy.

Julia Steinberger is a researcher in ecological economics at the University of Lausanne. She is the lead co-author of IPCC Group 3 and a specialist in societal issues related to the impacts of climate change. She is leading a research project entitled “Living well within planetary limits”.)

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