Our Critical Decade for Climate Action Conference in September 2025 showcased cutting-edge and evidence-based ideas, as well as critically evaluating opportunities and challenges for climate action now.
It spanned across four cross-cutting, interdisciplinary questions over three days:
- What are the emergent and urgent transitions in our critical decade?
- How can climate action align with Paris commitments?
- What are the barriers and enablers to delivering climate action at scale?
- How to build and sustain coalitions for climate action?
During the three days, we also held a poster showcase and threw a Climate Jam party to celebrate 25 years of the Tyndall Centre.
Outputs from the conference
Conference report: ‘Decarbonising the UK Revisited’
An anniversary assessment report, which updated the Tyndall Centre’s seminal 2005 ‘Decarbonising the UK’, was launched at the conference by the team at the University of Manchester. It flagged that the UK uses less energy than almost anyone anticipated 20 years ago, but opportunities to act on this potential have largely been missed.
Conference paper: ‘Irreversibility in climate action’
Multiple safeguards are in place to prevent backsliding on environmental progress so far, and positive feedbacks reinforce progress, despite opposing factors: read our news story on the commentary in Nature Climate Change by Corinne Le Quéré and co-authors.
Briefing notes from every session
Read briefing notes from our conference, summarising key discussion and themes from every session: highly interdisciplinary briefings that cover critical topics from how to stimulate climate action to wildfires, climate governance to wellbeing.
We will continue to add briefing notes to this page as they are published.
Slides from every session
Access the conference slides from the plenaries, sessions, keynotes and masterclasses throughout the conference.
Poster showcase
Our poster showcase on Monday 8 September filled the Sainsbury Centre with nearly 100 climate change research posters from across a range of disciplines.
Download these posters as a booklet (PDF)
The three winning and five highly commended posters can be viewed in more detail below. Click to enlarge.
Podcast episode
Listen to a special episode from CivicUEA, in which Prof. Johanna Forster and Mike Rigby (Eastern Promise) attend the Critical Decade for Climate Action Conference and speak with members of the Tyndall Centre, past and present, to hear about their work and think about the future.
Still to come:
- A Collection of Publications for the Wiley journals Climate Resilience and Sustainability and Sustainable Development that will contain research articles, reviews, interdisciplinary perspectives, and a conference report.
Agenda and speakers
Download:
- Full agenda (PDF)
- Detailed list of sessions (PDF)
Speakers included:
- Nigel Topping CMG, Co-founder of Ambition Loop and COP26 High-Level Champion
- Prof. Corinne Le Quéré, University of East Anglia
- Prof. Kevin Anderson, University of Manchester and University of Uppsala
- Prof. Daniela Jacob, Director of Climate Service Center Germany (GERICS)
- Prof. Jason Lowe, UK Met Office Hadley Centre and University of Leeds
- Prof. Paul Ekins, University College London
- Prof. Goneri de Cozannet, French Geological Survey and French Climate Change Committee, Haut conseil pour le climat
- Prof. Alice Larkin, University of Manchester
Read our briefing note on the conference concept
For further information
- Contact the organiser
- Stay up to date with conference news on social media with #Tyndall25UEA
