The Inside Ideas podcast with Marc Buckley is your goto channel for how to make today’s World Environment Day a year round effort. Nobel prize winners, UN leaders, world famous philosophers and scientists are among the guests Marc has welcomed on to a show which gets straight to the point on how we move the world onto the right side of history. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to watch all the episodes; listen wherever you get your podcasts, follow us on Instagram, and sign up to the Innovators Magazine newsletter to get all the shows sent straight to your inbox. The ..read more

The $1 million Climate Resiliency Challenge led by IDEO has issued an open call to innovators worldwide for solutions that can empower frontline communities facing the worst effects of climate change. “The Climate Resiliency Challenge is an invitation for organizations and teams across the globe to develop solutions that will empower frontline communities to be ready and resilient against disasters caused by climate change – in particular, wildfires, floods, and extreme weather,” the challenge website states. “This Challenge is open to individuals, teams of individuals, an ..read more

The world needs help from everyone young and old. We can solve our problems if we listen to each other and work together. This post is to tell you about a book called A Handbook of Children and Young People’s Participation – Conversations for Transformational Change. In the information I was sent about it it explained that it is all about the ‘role that children and young people can play in society in an era of radical change and upheaval‘. Professor Barry Percy-Smith who co-edited it said: “The argument that young people are simply too young to engage in the democratic process is increasingl ..read more

Most of us know bees are important but what else do we know about them? To find out more I spoke with Stephen Buchmann, a pollination ecologist specialising in bees. Stephen, the author of What a Bee Knows: Exploring the Thoughts, Memories, and Personalities of Bees, is also an adjunct professor with the departments of Entomology and of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona. And he says, when it comes to bees, “humanity definitely needs to pay attention”. “There’s a quote that was attributed to Einstein about, if all the bees are gone, all the humans die off,” he said ..read more

Organisations led by people with ‘lived experience of forced displacement’ are being urged to apply for $45,000 of funding support to advance innovative ideas that have the potential to deliver a ‘lasting positive impact on their communities’. Run by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, the call is open to ‘refugees, asylum-seekers, the internally displaced, returnees, and stateless people’. “The Refugee-led Innovation Fund champions the creativity of all displaced and stateless people. It aims to reshape their participation in the delivery of humanitarian work by ensuring they take centre stage in ..read more

A renewable fuel for cars produced with solar power that doesn’t compete with food crops for agricultural land is in the works at the University of Cambridge. Researchers at the institution are making liquid fuels from carbon dioxide and water in a solar-powered process ‘inspired by photosynthesis’.  Available directly as a drop-in fuel the innovation produces net zero ethanol and propanol in a single step. “Even though there’s still work to be done, we’ve shown what these artificial leaves are capable of doing.” Professor Erwin Reisner The technology is currently at lab scale but ..read more

The three winners of this year’s European Social Innovation Competition will walk away with €50k each to ‘develop their ideas into working solutions’. This year’s theme is fighting energy poverty and innovators with solutions to mitigate the impact of spiralling costs on the public have until 30 May at 5pm CET to submit proposals. “The competition supports innovators to develop their ideas into working solutions, and facilitates a network of radical innovators shaping our society. This prize acknowledges the social innovation as a potent approach for responding to societal challenges,” t ..read more

Startup ecosystems spread across 14 European countries have come together to form the ‘Rise Europe’ initiative whose goal is to give the continent’s early stage companies the tools to compete on a global stage. The new collective wants to improve the pipelines of talent and capital available to startups and give global exposure to the best new ‘made in Europe’ innovations. The individual local ecosystems will combine, Rise Europe says, to ‘contribute to faster and better solutions to major societal challenges’. UnternehmerTUM – the center for innovation and business creation at Technical Univ ..read more

Interspersing endless coverage of distressing news with positive stories and features on human kindness bolsters peoples belief in the goodness of humanity, according to a new study published today. Watching the best of humanity after sitting through reporting on ‘immoral acts’ also leads to ‘fewer negative emotions’ said the authors of the study, Kathryn Buchanan from the University of Essex, and colleague Gillian Sandstrom from the University of Sussex. The authors add: “News stories featuring the best of humanity take the sting out of items exploring the worst of humanity. This allows peop ..read more

A new Canadian study has calculated that investing in urban parks generates multi-million dollar benefits linked to factors including better air quality and improved mental health. Researchers at the University of Waterloo published a framework today outlining ‘significant economic health savings and benefits from urban park investments’. In a case study of Quaker Foods City Square park in Peterborough, created through $6.4 million of investment, the economic value was put at $4 million annually when the costs of physical inactivity and the boost of ‘higher life satisfaction’ were factored in ..read more