Tyndall Centre
(Self-Description: August 2008)
THE Tyndall Centre brings together scientists, economists, engineers and social scientists, who together are working to develop sustainable responses to climate change through trans-disciplinary research and dialogue on both a national and international level - not just within the research community, but also with business leaders, policy advisors, the media and the public in general.
Vision
To become an internationally recognised source of high quality and integrated climate-change research, and to exert a seminal influence on the design and achievability of the long-term strategic objectives of UK and international climate policy.
Purpose
To research, assess and communicate from a distinct trans-disciplinary perspective, the options to mitigate, and the necessities to adapt to, climate change, and to integrate these into the global, UK and local contexts of sustainable development.
Medium-Term Objectives
Advancing the science of integration ….. to develop, demonstrate and apply new methodologies for integrating climate-change related knowledge.
Developing responses ….. to seek, evaluate and facilitate sustainable solutions that will minimise the adverse effects of climate change and stimulate policy for the transition to a more benign energy and mobility regime.
Motivating society ….. to promote informed and effective dialogue across society about its ability and willingness to choose our future climate.
Emerging Strategies
- To demonstrate, by conducting integrated, trans-disciplinary, and frontier research, rather than through specialist studies in well established fields, that the Tyndall Centre can deliver insights about possible responses to climate change that could not have been achieved by the constituent parts working on their own.
- To conduct a selection of strategic assessments of complex problems created by climate change in a framework of both horizontal (across disciplines) and vertical (from problem to solution) integration.
- To initiate, and contribute to the development of, new trans-disciplinary research agendas relating to climate change and stimulate the necessary institutional, human and financial resourcing.
- To engage new elements of society in open and informed debate about the choices presented by climate change.
- To foster an international pool of talented young researchers who have the capacity to work at the interfaces of natural, social and engineering sciences and who can apply this creativity to further assist society in responding in sustainable ways to climate change.
- To seek matching funding during the initial five-year period and to secure expansion and diversification of financial resourcing over the following 10 years.
- To evaluate and pursue opportunities for founding fully or semi-commercial organisations that, while distinct from the Centre, will be able to apply new insights and tools generated by the Centre to the competent solving of climate-change management problems.
These strategies will require us to: i) engage widely with stakeholders in public and private sector organisations; ii) collaborate closely, and/or form strategic partnerships, with researchers outside the Centre in the UK, Europe and globally; and iii) listen carefully to the perceptions and aspirations of all peoples in relation to the risks created by climate change.
http://www.tyndall.ac.uk