The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on the SDGs and Global Development
Centre for Global Development
Dr Paul Bolger presents a seminar on: ‘The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on the SDGs and Global Development’.
| Date | 9th of November 2021 |
| Time | 1-2 pm |
| Location | Online via Teams, Join Here |
Our economy and society depends on an uninterrupted flow of natural resources and materials, including water, crops, timber, metals, minerals and energy carriers. In the next 20 years, the total demand for these limited resource stocks will be over 300 percent of the Earth’s total carrying capacity. There is increasing recognition within business that that systems of production and consumption need to be fundamentally transformed to an economy and society that lives “well within the limits of our planet”.
This talk will discuss the circular economy concept which aims to keep products, components and materials at their highest utility and value at all times, and progressively decouples economic growth from the consumption of finite resources. The talk will explore how circular economy is shaping future innovation agendas for new technologies, processes, services and business models, changing how we produce and how we consume.
About Dr Paul Bolger
Dr Paul Bolger is a Manager of the Environmental Research Institute at UCC. He has a PhD in Chemistry and a Masters in Business Administration and has worked across academia, industry and government developing long term research solutions for global sustainability challenges. He is currently principal investigator on a number of research projects on climate change and the circular economy including Imagining 2050 which is envisioning pathways for a zero carbon Ireland, and NEWTRIENTS which is exploring the valorisation of dairy industry wastewater. Dr Bolger is interested in how inter- and trans-disciplinary approaches can be used to create more impactful outcomes for environmental and sustainability research. He teaches a module on Leadership for Sustainability as part of the HDip for Sustainability in Enterprise for at UCC. He is a US-Ireland Fulbright Scholar and a member of the Royal Irish Academy Climate Change and Environmental Sciences Committee.