Policy@Manchester
Policy@Manchester is our University’s sector-leading policy engagement institute.
It connects researchers with policymakers and influencers, nurturing long-term policy engagement partnerships and impact.
Directory of activities
Search these pages to explore a selection of our directory of activities. You can use the keyword search and filter buttons to discover how we are addressing each of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals and the five priorities in our Social Responsibility and Civic Engagement Plan. You can also filter activities by location and function.
searching subjects: Environmental sustainability
We partner with a range of organisations to carry out meaningful public engagement with diverse audiences and share ideas and research as well as inspiring informed discussion, debate and creativity. Examples include:
We’re committed to empowering students with the knowledge, skills and opportunities to address all of the SDGs through partnerships with public, private and civil society organisations. Our University Living Lab platform connects student projects with external organisations to address the SDGs. Our Volunteer Hub acts to advance partnerships between hundreds of charities and our student volunteers. And many academic programmes offer service-learning partnerships, where external organisations benefit from practical student interventions in areas such as dentistry, optometry, pharmacy, business and legal advice.
The Firs is located on the University’s Fallowfield campus and houses a suite of facilities for environmental research, monitoring and engagement. Our UNESCO World Heritage site, Jodrell Bank, is another area rich in biodiversity. To help promote biodiversity on campus, we’ve developed: We’ve also transformed a former road into Brunswick Park – a pocket park to enhance green space and wellbeing on campus.
The Whitworth created the UK’s first dedicated post of Cultural Park Keeper. This has led to the creation of a Natural and Cultural Health Service programme of outdoor activities to raise awareness, educate and inspire our diverse visitors to connect with and protect life in our park. At Jodrell Bank we work with community and voluntary groups, including the RSPB and the Cheshire Beekeepers Association, to protect and enhance our natural environment.
A renowned engagement expert from our School of Environment, Education and Development is using her Ketso Connect community and stakeholder engagement toolkit to help the government’s Natural England advisers launch their National Recovery Network. This network aims to restore 75% of protected sites and to create or restore 500,000 hectares of additional wildlife-rich habitat. The project is piloting public and civic engagement models with local libraries across Manchester.
Our Manchester Museum Vivarium is dedicated to the conservation of reptiles and amphibians. We recently partnered with Panama Wildlife Charity PWCC on non-invasive research and conservation education involving local communities in the Santa Fe National Park in Panama. This led to a world first in 2021: one of the world’s rarest toads, the Harlequin Frog, was successfully bred in captivity outside its country of origin, at our museum. We also curate a world-famous FrogBlog and deliver a digital Learning with Lucy conservation programme for schools.
As part of our partnership with the local NGO, Manchester City of Trees, students can use our Volunteer Hub to sign up for one-off or weekly tree planting sessions or even become a Citizen Forester. Our student volunteering is supporting their mission of planting one tree for every person across Greater Manchester, creating a healthier and more sustainable city region.
Deforestation is the second leading cause of climate change after fossil fuels, accounting for almost a fifth of planet-warming emissions. Our researchers led an international and interdisciplinary team of ecologists, economists and political scientists in the largest ever study of community forestry. Studying 18,000 community-led forest initiatives in Nepal we found that community-forest management led to a 37% relative reduction in deforestation and a 4.3% relative reduction in poverty.
Researchers in our Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences have examined degraded soils of grasslands in Kenya and China to understand the role of soil biodiversity in creating and supporting healthy ecosystems. We’ve scaled up novel approaches to harness ecological connections between native soil microorganisms (bacteria, fungi, algae) and native plants to accelerate recovery from degraded to healthy soil. Tools have been developed to provide accessible and practical knowledge for local communities to repair soils and public and policy awareness has been raised of the vital importance of soil biodiversity on a global scale.
Leading the way in achieving the University’s pledge to eliminate avoidable single-use plastic usage, staff in our School of Biological Sciences are reducing single-use plastics in the lab through adoption of a 6R approach. This has included:
We’ve implemented watershed management strategies based on location-specific diversity of aquatic species. These ensure flow rates of water run-off in our urban environment are decreased and water quality is improved, including reducing flow into our local River Medlock on campus. At our rural Jodrell Bank site, we’ve also reduced flow into our local watercourses, protecting the great crested newt – a protected species that relies on aquatic life.
At our Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre, we partnered with IncredibleOceans to deliver outreach talks and programmes to raise awareness of how oceans are facing threats from development and overfishing, climate change, pollution, acoustics and more. We teamed up with scientists, creatives, community organisations, campaigners, companies and broadcast media to maximise the impact of this educational outreach activity.
Life below water, in rivers and at sea, is threatened by waste flowing from urban river channels into the oceans. We’ve been highlighting the effect of microplastics – very small pieces of plastic debris including microbeads, microfibres and plastic fragments – on river systems and marine life through a range of pro-active media coverage, engagement with water companies and input into UK legislation on water management.
Our undergraduate students have assisted a study into the effects of warming ocean waters on the small-spotted catshark embryo’s freeze response: a technique whereby the embryo stops moving so that predators won’t detect them. The research found that with a 5°C water temperature increase there was a seven-fold decrease in the length of time the embryos froze for in the presence of a predator stimuli, indicating that as oceans warm, many shark and ray species may reduce in number due to increased predation.
Researchers in Chemical Engineering and Analytical Sciences have worked with our spin-out company Arvia Technology to develop an electrochemical process that has dramatically reduced wastewater pollution levels and enabled water recycling across numerous industries. The Arvia process has reduced pollutant levels from pesticides to match UK drinking water standards; removed 90% of pharmaceutical residues and natural hormones from industrial wastewater; and reduced the release of high microbial wastewaters which can cause anti-microbial resistance. Arvia Technology has now installed treatment systems in 25 companies across 11 countries, including the UK and China.
Through the Diverseafood project, our researchers are investigating how seafood can contribute to sustainable, healthy diets. They are assessing the best methods to transition to more diverse seafood intake by looking at the impacts of sustainable aquaculture at the levels of business models, policy, and consumer acceptance.
We’re ending investments in fossil fuel reserve and extraction companies by 2022, and ‘decarbonising’ all other investments by 2038. This policy was developed in consultation with the University’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and our Students’ Union.
The University has pledged to support Manchester’s climate change target for zero carbon by 2038. This involves reducing carbon emissions from a 2018 baseline of 54,000 tCO2 to at least 21,000 tCO2 by 2025 and placing carbon impact at the heart of strategic decision making in the University’s new strategic plan.
Climate scientists at our Tyndall Centre are partnering with Bristol-based band Massive Attack to jointly examine the carbon footprint of the music industry. Utilising data from the Massive Attack touring schedule will provide information and guidance to the wider music industry to reduce negative environmental impacts.
Our academics are involved in GrowGreen, a five year, EU-wide project that promotes nature-based solutions to climate change. The project involves a range of citizens, business and public-private partnerships in neighbourhoods and across cities to promote learning, sharing and replicating nature-based solutions and strategies to urban sustainability challenges.
Our Manchester Museum has been awarded Arts Council England and National Lottery Project Grant funding for an ambitious two-year partnership project in collaboration with Museum Development North West and the Carbon Literacy Trust. The project will accelerate the museum sector’s ability to respond to the climate crisis. The Museum will host the ‘roots’: creating a nationally significant co-working hub of cultural environmental action that will bring together museum staff, educators, environmentalists, artists, researchers, third sector organisations and students.
Our Students’ Union set up Climate Justice Fortnight, an initiative exploring the different ways that climate injustice manifests itself, and how we can tackle it. There are Teach-Ins throughout the fortnight where students and academic staff collaborate on delivering content on these issues in their current class times. Students also organise activities and actions through societies such as the People and Planet Society or Extinction Rebellion Youth; get involved in sustainability leadership roles such as the Students’ Union’s Ethical and Environmental Officer; take on environmental representation roles in halls of residence; and attend events and campaigns such as the youth strikes for climate action.
Our students are taking on the challenge of climate change across hundreds of undergraduate and postgraduate modules in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering. In addition, every undergraduate student has the opportunity to take Climate Change and Society, a unit offered by our University College for Interdisciplinary Learning, which explores the politics of climate change action and analyses the challenge from the perspective of multiple stakeholders and different nations.
Research by Alliance Manchester Business School has demonstrated how large-scale transitions are needed to deliver significant climate change. This has transformed how reducing greenhouse gas emissions is understood and addressed by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and has fed directly into policy recommendations made by the European Environment Agency.
Public engagement partnerships
Student learning partnerships
Biodiversity on campus
Cultural venues and nature
Nature Recovery Network
Species conservation
Manchester City of Trees
Community forestry in Nepal
Getting to the root of poor soil health and bringing it back to life
Making labs greener
Watershed management
IncredibleOceans
UK rivers and microplastics
Ocean warming and shark survival
Removing harmful pollutants from industrial wastewater with innovative technology
Diverseafood
Divesting from fossil fuels
Towards net zero
The carbon footprint of the music industry
GrowGreen project
Roots and Branches
Student campaigning and activism
Climate action in study programmes
Changing how international policy organisations understand and manage environmental problems