Episode 3 - Acting on sustainability with Professor Anne Robertson

Our guest for today is Professor Anne Robertson. Anne is a professor of ecology at the University of Roehampton in London. Water ecosystems are in the centre of her research and teaching, including topics like freshwater biodiversity in particular in groundwaters, the impact on freshwater ecosystems of disturbances such as climate change and monitoring and conservation of groundwater ecosystems.

Highlights of the podcast include

3:10: changing water qualities - changing expectations

6:30: state of our rivers globally

8:10: river contamination in Zambia: https://www.birdlife.org/news/2025/03/07/environmental-disaster-unfolds-in-zambia/

9:10: should industrialisation and pollution go necessarily hand in hand?

10:10: education, motivation and mobilisation to act on saving the environment

11:10: do we need another pandemic to reconnect with nature?

12:45: mindfulness and connecting with nature

14:35: Rights of Nature: https://www.garn.org/rights-of-nature/

https://www.lawyersfornature.com/blog/rights-of-nature-in-the-uk-from-vision-to-viability

17:08: about the River Ouse, Sussex: https://loveourouse.org/

18:22: guardians of rivers and AI driven sensors for citizen science

https://sheffield.ac.uk/news/cloud-based-ai-helps-reduce-river-pollution

19:58: More than Human - exhibition in the Design Museum, London: https://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/more-than-human

21:00: worldviews on nature and the rights of nature movement

24:58: about the state of our groundwaters

26:30: where is our water coming from

30:42: Thirst, in Search of Freshwater  - exhibition of the Wellcome Collection, London  https://wellcomecollection.org/exhibitions/thirst-in-search-of-freshwater

31:47: slowing down the water and setting fresh flowing rivers:

https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/nature-and-biodiversity/nature-restoration-regulation_en

35:12: overstepping planetary boundaries: https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries.html

38:38: tension between the word sustainable and the word development

39:30: C letter words:

• Climate scepticism
• Carbon sink
• Collaboration
• COP movement

45:36: teaching sustainability and the problem with siloed education

48:00: taking up volunteering opportunities 

50:30: limiting one’s time on the screen and spending more time in nature

54:00: reducing your footprint, reducing your consumption