EGENIS seminar series: “The Greenpeace Research Laboratories and the role of science within a global environmental campaigning organisation”, Dr David Santillo (Greenpeace Research Laboratories, University of Exeter)

This seminar will provide an overview of the work of our laboratories, including the application of environmental forensics techniques, on a range of contemporary issues that are of particular relevance to the ways in which science can influence formulation of public policy.  Examples drawn from recent and ongoing studies of air quality, plastics pollution and the impacts of intensive agricultural production will be used to illustrate the links between the application of complex, perhaps seemingly abstract, analytical techniques and the ways in which different actors in society then communicate, perceive and react to the evidence that such studies can reveal.  It will also touch on the challenges in defining what is ‘responsible innovation’ and in developing appropriate governance for human interactions with the biosphere, such as proposed ‘geo-engineering’ of the climate and mining of the seabed, where uncertainties and unknowns dominate the data landscape.