Lancaster Environment Lecture

Caroline Lucas ITFEST 2024 view of the lecture theatre

The Lancaster Environment Lecture invites internationally renowned speakers to deliver a lecture on an environmental topic of social significance. Delivered annually, it provides an intellectually rigorous platform for engagement with the public on the most pressing issues around climate change and the environment.

Forthcoming Lecture

The Lancaster Environment Lecture 2025

Bella Lack: Children of the Anthropocene

Thursday 15 May, 7pm

Margaret Fell Lecture Theatre, Lancaster University

In partnership with Lancaster University, Litfest is delighted to welcome leading environmental campaigner and author Bella Lack to give the 2025 Lancaster Environment Lecture.

‘What’s the point in profit on a dead planet?’ Bella Lack, Guardian interview, August 2022

Drawing on her book Children of the Anthropocene, Bella Lack recounts urgent stories of the lives of diverse young people on the frontlines of the environmental crisis around the world, and shows how, across the planet, the futures of young people hang in the balance as they face the harsh realities of the environmental crisis.

Advocating for the protection of both people and the planet, Bella restores the beating heart to global environmental issues, from air pollution, to deforestation and over-consumption by telling the stories of those most directly affected – the children of the Anthropocene.

Bella Lack (b. 2003) is a conservationist and environmental activist. She is an ambassador for the Born Free Foundation, STAE, RSPCA and the Jane Goodall Institute. She contributed to Animal, a feature-length documentary with primatologist Jane Goodall and has made a short documentary for BBC Three. She has shared the stage with Steve Backshall and Chris Packham and helped create A People’s Manifesto for Wildlife.

Bella Lack Children of the Anthropocene book cover

Past Lectures

Another England is Possible

On April 25, the ever-inspiring Green MP Caroline Lucas delivered the third annual Lancaster Environment Lecture, in conversation with Edward Simpson of Lancaster University.

Only if we can change our mindset and see how inextricably our own well-being is linked to and dependent on our natural environment....will we be able to rise to the existential threats of our time – the climate and nature emergencies.

A quote from Caroline Lucas, Lancaster Environment Lecture 2024

Feeding the World without Devouring the Planet

In May 2023, author, Guardian columnist and environmental campaigner George Monbiot delivered a brilliant, compelling lecture on our food systems and their environmental impact.

Food production is the primary cause of habitat destruction, the primary cause of deforestation, the primary cause of wildlife loss...and yet, it’s surrounded by a kind of moral force field.

A quote from George Monbiot
Dr Vandana Shiva

Earth Democracy

Vandana Shiva gave the inaugural Lancaster International Fiction Lecture as part of Litfest 2022. You can catch up via the online streaming platform Crowdcast.

Vandana Shiva: Earth Democracy

We're told more science, less poverty. But everywhere I see more poverty... I'm told economic growth removes poverty, but wherever a system destroys people's lives we have more poverty.

A quote from Vandana Shiva