The route to net zero: Workshop 3, South West

Overview

Following two recent workshops attended by over 200 people, the South West Infrastructure Partnership (SWIP) has opened registration for the third and final online route mapping workshop. Entitled ‘Joining it up and removing the barriers,’ participants will be asked to appraise and populate the draft route map.

The previous workshops highlighted that decarbonisation is a poorly understood, ‘wicked’ system-of-systems problem in which beneficial actions on one part of the system can produce perverse outcomes in other parts if not holistically designed. The often-parochial business-as-usual (BAU) approach is blind to the fundamental complexities of the problem. BAU has created the existential challenge of climate change and is ill-suited to solve it.

A new holistic and systemic mindset and set of capabilities are needed.  The scale of the complex net zero challenge and its urgency demand brave, ambitious, knowledgeable leadership of innovative, holistic, and systemic change at all levels.

The emerging proposition is that the SWIP Integrating Route Map should guide South West infrastructure stakeholders in building their new mindset and supporting capabilities to equip themselves with the capacity for brave, ambitious, knowledgeable leadership of Net Zero thinking and practice.

The third workshop will test this proposition. It will critically appraise and populate a draft route map  architecture that is founded on fundamental learning and collaboration principles. The opening session will explain these principles, which were established by recent co-produced urban living research, funded by UKRI and led by the University of Bristol and the University of the West of England, who worked in partnership with many city-region stakeholders.

Subsequent to the workshop, the SWIP team will refine the route map and accompanying commentary document, which will be reviewed and approved by the SWIP Steering Board before being launched during ICE President Rachel Skinner’s virtual visit to the ICE SW Region on 13 May 2021. Details of the launch will be announced soon.