This session presents an opportunity to collectively think through local governments as a nexus for climate action. Local governments are crucial agents in translating and actioning national or global policies on the ground; they are the ones tasked with actually delivering infrastructure and behavioural changes. They are also key venues where concerned citizens can get involved in climate action. Yet local governments (in the UK) are disempowered by drastic funding cuts as well as limited statutory powers, and are themselves, of course, shaped by local politics and interest groups.
The session consists of three parts. Pauline von Hellermann will begin with a 50min talk that draws on ethnographic insights gained during several years of active engagement in the “Carbon Neutral 2030” campaign of Eastbourne, the provincial UK seaside town where she lives, as well as a current research project on local marine governance. There will be 15 min presentations from urban sustainability planners from Helsinki. We will then open the floor, for everyone to participate in identifying key conditions that enable local governments to fulfil their crucial role linking wider policies and citizens; to explore what is possible.
Thursday 10th April 2025, 10:00 – 12:00
Location: University of Helsinki Main Building, room 3010, Fabianinkatu 33, 00170 Helsinki. Register here.
Pauline von Hellermann is an environmental anthropologist working at the intersection of research, policy and action. After completing her PhD on forest governance in Nigeria (Sussex 2005), she held a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at Sussex and a Marie Curie Fellowship within HEEAL (Historical Ecologies of East African Landscapes) at York, before joining Goldsmiths University as Lecturer and Senior Lecturer 2011-2024. From 2018-22 she was a Leverhulme Major Research Fellow with Red Gold: A Global Environmental Anthropology of Palm Oil. During this time, she also became involved in local citizen and council environmental action and connected to academic climate activist networks (XR Social Scientists). Since her redundancy in July 2024, she has been working as a consultant as well as researching and writing. The author of numerous articles, a monograph and an edited volume, her Environmental Anthropology: The Basics, is due to be published by Routledge in 2027.