The Policy Foresight Programme

Since 1992 the Green College Centre for Environmental Policy and Understanding has fulfilled a vital role in helping to bridge the gap between scientific and environmental issues on the one hand, and public understanding of them and policy making on the other.

At the end of last year I was invited by Professor Steve Rayner of the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilization at the University of Oxford to consider broadening the remit and reach of the Centre by bringing it into his Institute and thereby making it a University rather than College body.

The James Martin Institute is in turn part of the new James Martin School for the 21st Century, which addresses a rich variety of university disciplines and research activities. Professor Rayner has generously offered some support in terms of facilities and research funding for an expanded programme in line with the Centre's original purposes. The result has been a decision to convert the Green College Centre into the Policy Foresight Programme of which I will be the Director.

As you know the prime objectives of the Green College Centre, and in future the Policy Foresight Programme, have been to hold seminars and conferences on problems of topical scientific and environmental concern, to promote interest among the general public, and through networking to influence policy. Such work will as before be independent and apolitical, and be coordinated with other interested parties in the same field.

It may be worth recalling some of the subjects covered by the Centre through recent seminars and lectures given by the Programme Director. They include energy problems including the role of nuclear power, the politics of climate change, the strengths and weaknesses of cost benefit analysis, the future of whaling, Earth Systems Science and Gaia theory, global change and its impact on human health, and standards for sustainability (with particular application in China).

For the future Programme, we intend to pursue or take up such issues as Islam and the environment, the collapse of complex societies, the effects of climate change on building and architecture, and some aspects of environmental economics. The transformation of the Green College Centre into the Policy Foresight Programme took place on 7 April 2006.

Everyone who has previously been involved with the Green College Centre will be kept fully informed of the future work of the Policy Foresight Programme. It will be operated by the Programme Director and his personal assistant Susan Guest, and Sam Evans will be a research assistant. Our address, telephone numbers, email and fax, will remain as before. Further details can be found on the James Martin Institute website within the next week or so.

This is the occasion for thanking all who have supported the Green College Centre in the past, and will, I hope, support the Policy Foresight Programme in the future. As the founder and Director of the Green College Centre over the last 14 years, I am most grateful to the many institutions and people who have contributed to its success. It would be invidious to name them all, but I give our warmest thanks to Green College for providing the home for the Centre from its beginning.