Brilliant to see our @openuniversity.bsky.social Environmental Management: Pathways to Sustainability module reach fruition. The result of several years of research, writing, filming - and lots and lots of Teams meetings! Books are just one small - but very tangible - part of the OU experience #T330

My wife Naoko Mabon is working in partnership with a number of artists and arts practitioners to develop a new curatorial initiative by and for Zambia. Please consider supporting and sharing if you can: whydonate.com/fundraising/...

Terrific day at @ouscotland.bsky.social @howdec.bsky.social Mock COP in Inverness today. Talked to a group of students from all over the Highlands about what will happen at #COP30 - as well as the merits and drawbacks of the COP process, and what they can do as citizens. Feeling very energised!

Through our @openuniversity.bsky.social partnership with the BBC, I've been working with The One Show on the future of fisheries in the UK. Wonderful to see Hans Unkles' fully-electrified boat, which fishes out of Tayvallich just down the road from me, featured: connect.open.ac.uk/the-one-show/

An excellent paper by Anna Lena Bercht on navigating scepticism towards qualitative research in quantitative- or positivist-oriented fields. Good advice on how to advocate for one's methodological approach. Could have done with citing this earlier this week 😅 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Yes! This is also why I get so irate in online meetings when a session runs over and the chair says something like "let's just take a very quick three-minute comfort break". Some people - for a whole variety of reasons - need longer.

Keeping to time is an accessibility issue! People need breaks between sessions in conferences for all sorts of accessibility reasons - whether for cognitive load, to take medication, needing bathroom breaks, check blood sugar or anything else! Making an effort to keep to time is inclusive.

How can urban nature support fair and effective climate action? British Academy-funded research by @ljmabon.bsky.social worked with communities in Glasgow’s Pollok and Govan, to explore who has access to land, who shapes decisions, and who benefits from greener spaces. Read more 👇 bit.ly/3Lky8H8

⚽ Football, Climate Change, and Identity 🌍 How the game’s industrial past—from coal and steel to oil—is shaping its sustainable future. Leslie Mabon discusses football’s role in the global energy transition. 🎧 Listen here → www.buzzsprout.com/2253650/epis... #Football #ClimateChange #Sustainability

Our latest @footpolpodcast.bsky.social episode is out! I spoke to @ljmabon.bsky.social about his work on football clubs' links to the energy sector, both old and new as well as what the future could be. It was a fascinating conversation that ranged from Scotland to Germany to Japan. Have a listen!

Very interesting documentary about population decline and lifeline rural railways in Hiroshima Prefecture. The irony of a train with a 'Rail is Baton' livery running on a line where the operator is pushing to shrink services due to lack of profitabilty. www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3WH...

FIFA were crowing about how Club World Cup was the most "merit-based" competition in the world. The World Cup? Not so much when it comes to Asia. Qatar and Saudi given home advantage for two mini group playoffs. Now Qatar maximise this by playing crunch UAE game in tiny stadium to limit away fans

This is hardly surprising when the operators of many social media platforms have filled their sites with so much advertising, clickbait and junk that you hardly see any of the content you signed up to see. In a desire to generate revenue, they've rendered their platforms unattractive and unusable.

The Ferret’s article gives a sobering look at the lived experiences of communities like Brechin, which are still grappling with the aftermath of Storm Babet and inputs from Carol Raeburn from the Scottish Flood Forum & @uofglasgow.bsky.social's Prof Larissa Naylor. theferret.scot/communities-...

A study published in Nature stated that the global carbon storage capacity is 10 times less than the amount fossil fuel companies claim can be processed by CCS. beyond-coal.jp/en/news/ccs-... #beyondcoal #脱石炭

A very full week in Aceh as part of @britishacademy.bsky.social supported study into evidence + policy for seawalls in Indonesia, building on @raeng.org.uk research. Great to see students of our partner Universitas Syiah Kuala learning how to check the characteristics and performance of seawalls.

📢We're hiring!📢 We have a permanent Lecturer in Earth Sciences position available in @OU_EEE @OpenUniversity £47,389 to £56,535 Closing Date: 20 October 2025* We are a friendly, research intensive school with supportive colleagues and great labs. jobs.open.ac.uk/job/Lecturer...

A pleasure to be in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, to progress @britishacademy.bsky.social work on evidence-driven policy for seawalls with @openuniversity.bsky.social, Syiah Kuala Uni + London South Bank Uni. Honoured to deliver keynote for Aceh Intl Symposium on Civil Engineering today during our visit.

Maybe I'm being too grumpy, but I foresee a time in the near future in the UK where only the most elite unis and depts are allowed to apply for open research funding, with the rest of us only eligible for select industry- and policy support calls. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-r...

Cycled from Oban to the former aluminium smelting town of Kinlochleven and back, 100 miles all-in including a couple of scenic detours on the way home. Now incapable of any form of movement.

Mitsubishi Shoji's president visits Akita Prefecture to apologise for withdrawing from large-scale offshore wind projects. I am not an energy economist, but it is clear there is a LOT of disappointment among local government and potential supply chain companies: www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgLF...

Mitsubishi has pulled out of 3 big offshore wind projects in Japan. Meanwhile, other Japanese companies are investing in Scotland's offshore wind. The will and knowhow for Japanese businesses to do offshore wind is there - what's needed is supportive domestic policy. asia.nikkei.com/business/ene...

Mitsubishi Shoji is withdrawing from major wind power projects off the coast of Akita and Chiba. The firm says projected costs have doubled since it won the bid in 2021. The government will have to put the work out for tender again. www.asahi.com/ajw/articles...

Oshima Shipbuilding of Saikai City - one of the biggest builders of bulk carriers in Japan - has released a new series of commericals featuring former pop idol and Nagasaki native Neru Nagahama as their 'specially appointed director of PR': www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgfd...

Something quite unsettling about how impacts of climate change filter through into very banal and everyday aspects of our lives.

It's been exactly 10 years to the month since I first visited the Institute of Human Geography at the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences. Great timing to have our fourth paper together published, this time on just transitions and resource-dependent livelihoods: doi.org/10.3390/worl...

Something I find really curious is that this comes off the back of a spate of offshore wind projects being postponed or cancelled in Japan. Japanese companies are notably more enthusiastic about pursuing offshore renewables in Scotland than they are in Japan. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

This is an excellent point and, as with many posts about academia in other countries, holds true for the UK too if you change some of the wording.

My life in a nutshell: searching for information on the development of Onahama port in Iwaki, Japan for a book chapter takes me to Getty Images, where the "More Search Results" heading offers me a library of photos of Gregory Tade circa 2010.

NERC: We need to open up environmental science! Why is it not diverse? Also NERC: We're scrapping Independent Research Fellowships, New Investigator Grants, Small Grants, are limiting applications from institutions based on past success rates and will only allow you to submit your proposal once.

Not surprising that one of the conditions of the 'climate visa' Australia is providing to Tuvaluans is an effective veto over Tuvalu's national security decisions. Remember that Tuvalu is one of the nations that formally recognises Taiwan as a country, too. asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Im...

we would be in a much better state in this country if we stopped focusing on anointing a chosen few working class students into Oxbridge, and instead properly funded all the different sorts of universities that attract students from a wide range of backgrounds already

🎉Tyndall Centre's Roger Few + co-authors have won the Richard Macrory Prize for Best Article in the Journal of Environmental Law for 'Protecting Everyday Nature'. Judges called it 'conceptually fascinating': doi.org/10.1093/jel/... @drsophiah.bsky.social @ljmabon.bsky.social @odirilwes.bsky.social

I started reading this in strong agreement. But by the end I felt uncomfortable. "Useless papers" and "nothing new to contribute" are subjective judgements that smack of gatekeeping - especially as all but one interviewed are from 'prestigious' UK institutions. www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

'Environmental management: systems & sustainability - In our climate-changing world, the complexity of environmental & sustainability issues requires different ways of thinking & a variety of practices.' Some great tutors (!) if you fancy studying this. www.open.ac.uk/courses/modu...

Disasppointing. Would be good to know how many GHG emissions this produced and what these clubs are doing - if anything - to offset them. Thoughts @ljmabon.bsky.social? www.theguardian.com/football/202...

⚽️ The Guardian recently learned that Qatar is considering a ‘carbon neutral’ 2029 Club World Cup bid... Here’s why that’s unlikely. www.theguardian.com/football/202...

In my area of research, you're not going to be able to attract world-class researchers if the UK doesn't join things like Belmont Forum calls and Biodiversa+. You won't attract top global talent to the UK by retreating from European and global cooperation. www.ukri.org/news/uk-laun...

More exciting news from @ougradsch.bsky.social and @openuniversity.bsky.social as Meng-Chin Tsai publishes a lead-authored paper, which explores planning + governance arrangements for greening + resilience in Taipei. This is one part of her thesis, which is taking shape! doi.org/10.1080/1523...

New paper on relationships and responsibility in Fukushima coastal fisheries, and treated water releases from the Daiichi nuclear plant. We share interviews from before and during releases with fishers, managers, sellers +more working on the Fukushima coast. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

2 things about AI scare the crap out of me: 1. We're told to keep our mind active to avoid cognitive decline. Now we have tech being pushed which purportedly does our thinking for us; 2. If you use AI only for busywork, it won't free up time for long. Management will just give you more to do.

New article on #depopulation and #biodiversity Japan’s declining population in agricultural regions could be having a damaging impact on biodiversity – a trend that could spread through East Asia and Europe as global fertility rates fall. www.sheffield.ac.uk/las/news/dr-...

The really scary thing about this is that the proposal must have been good enough to get an interview for this to happen. How can you write a strong enough proposal to be short-listed for (presumably) a UKRI fellowship and think this is an appropriate or desirable thing to do? 🤯

Full day at the tiny forest in Pencoedtre Park in Barry, Wales yesterday, filming a case study of community environmental management for our new @openuniversity.bsky.social #T330 Environmental Management module. Really happy to be able to have our fantastic EDIA interns on-site working with us too!

This is a very useful article challenging some of the assumptions around the renewal of the Matsushima thermal power station in Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan - especially whether its power is needed, and whether the proposed tech is already out of date ⬇️

A privilege to be at @iaeaorg.bsky.social International Conference on Stakeholder Engagement for Nuclear Power Programmes, and to be on panel sharing insights from our decade+ of ongoing research with coastal and fishing communities in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. #LetsTalkNuclear #TrustTheDialogue

China has agreed to lift a ban on imports of Japanese seafood, which it imposed in response to the release of treated wastewater from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant into the ocean.

At the @iaeaorg.bsky.social International Conference on Stakeholder Engagement for Nuclear Power Programmes this week. Sally Njogu of @ougradsch.bsky.social doing a great job of introducing a framework to guide risk governance for decommissioning of nuclear sites. #LetsTalkNuclear #TrustTheDialogue

A common feature of 'rags-to-riches' conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic seems to be a burning desire to kick the ladder out from beneath them at all costs.

Also managed a day of fieldwork doing transects at Nijinomatsubara pine grove in Karatsu when in Kyushu, Japan - because I haven't seen enough coastal forests in the last six weeks. Looking forward to sitting down and comparing this to what we saw and learned in Lithuania and Scotland!