KTH Climate Action Centre at the Swedish Climate Symposium in Lund
The inspiration was tangible as, from May 20 to May 22, over 300 participants from academia and industry got together at the Swedish Climate Symposium in Lund to share the latest insights in climate science and climate related research. With the theme “Climate Research: Science, Society, Actions”, this year's edition of the biennial symposium highlighted the need to integrate cutting-edge climate science with societal perspectives and actionable strategies to accelerate climate solutions.
Highlights from the KTH Climate Action Centre’s contributions as a proud first-time co-organizer of the symposium included a keynote session on the consequences of missing the Paris Agreement and another well-attended session on the future of international climate and sustainability agreements. Moderated by Åsa Persson and Karin Larsdotter respectively, with Åsa Persson also participating in the panel of the latter session, these sessions drew on the Road Map for Extending the Sustainable Development Goals to 2050 (Fuso Nerini et al, 2024) to highlight the need for an updated Sustainable Development Agenda in which financial architecture, Artificial Intelligence and cross-border impacts and spillovers of work towards achieving specific SDG’s are taken into account, with clear interim targets set for 2030 and 2040. Further topics discussed included the strengths and weaknesses of the voluntarism that characterizes global climate governance today; the move from a multilateral consensus-based approach towards a system of plural pathways, and the role and implications of insecurity in contemporary climate action.
Other participants from KTH included Ingrid Campo Ruíz and Emma Riesne, who shared findings from a project funded by Engineers of Sweden with the presentation Visualising climate–poverty dynamics: machine learning and geospatial patterns. The program also featured lively discussions on such diverse topics as land use and terrestrial ecosystems; ocean climate and marine systems; carbon storing in land use policies and practices, and the value of indigenous knowledge for climate resilience – to mention but a few.