Who Decides the Future? Climate, Power and Action

Dr Karen Lloyd is an author, editor and teacher whose work addresses human interactions with landscape and nature. She is a Wainwright Prize longlisted author for her previous book, Abundance: Nature in Recovery (Bloomsbury, 2021) and her first book The Gathering Tide was an author’s pick of the year in the Observer, 2015. Her work has been commissioned internationally and is widely published including in the Guardian, BBC Wildlife, LitHu and Dark Mountain. She is an honorary researcher with the Institute of Science and Environment at the University of Cumbria and was previously senior researcher and writer in residence with Lancaster University’s Future Places Centre. She is a contributing editor to The Wolf: Culture, Nature and Heritage (Boydell and Brewer, 2023) and editor of North Country: An Anthology of Landscape and Nature (Saraband, 2023) and Curlew Calling Anthology (Numenius Press, 2017).

Sarah Levy is a legal scholar and educator whose work centres on marine conservation law, grounded in an interdisciplinary focus on environmental, animal, and Indigenous rights. Her work bridges scholarship and advocacy to examine how law operates as both an instrument of oppression and a tool of resistance in struggles for ecological and interspecies justice.
A PhD candidate at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford, Sarah’s current research explores the legal, regulatory, and sociocultural impacts of conflating distinct sealing practices in Canada, tracing how this conflation reinforces colonial and speciesist frameworks.
Called to the Bar of Ontario, Canada in 2020, Sarah currently teaches environmental and animal law at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, and lectures in public and private law at George Brown College, Toronto.

Professor Anand specialises in environmental economics and public policy, focusing on the urban economy, environment, and sustainability. He has held senior leadership roles at the University of Bradford, including Head of Peace Studies and International Development, Programme Leader for the PG Certificate for Young Professionals of the African Development Bank, and Head of Centre for International Development.

His research includes a British Academy-funded project on infrastructure governance for inclusive, smart, and sustainable cities, UNDP reports for Mongolia and Eritrea, and work on the Capability Approach, which has led to Cambridge University Press publications. He edited the Handbook of BRICS and Emerging Economies for Oxford University Press and guest edited a special issue of Telecommunications Policy on smart cities.

He is a Fellow of the Human Development and Capability Association, Chair of its 2025 Bradford conference, Vice Chair of Calderdale Inter-faith, and a trustee of the Peace Museum.

Dr Nafeez Ahmed is an award-winning investigative journalist, systems theorist and strategic communications executive. He is the author of Alt Reich: The Network War to Destroy the West from Within (2025), Failing States, Collapsing Systems (2017) A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save it (2010), The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry (2006) and several other books. He is Executive Director of the Foundation for Civilisation Renewal, and creator of the AgeofTransformation.org newsletter which tracks the world’s biggest crises. A former journalist for Guardian and VICE, he does special investigations for Byline Times. His work has been used and cited in official inquiries in the US and UK, in the House of Commons, House of Lords, US Congress.