19 November 2025, Homerton College, Cambridge
A fantastic recent Better Futures Programme session at Homerton College explored how meaningful progress on sustainability depends not only on technology and policy, but on citizen agency, cultural norms, and the ways communities experience their environment. The discussion brought together Prof. Tolullah “Tolu” Oni (MRC Epidemiology Unit, Cambridge & UrbanBetter) and Tony Juniper (Natural England; author of Just Earth), and was expertly chaired by Lindsay Hooper (CISL).
Lindsay opened the evening by highlighting how environmental challenges intersect with human health and wellbeing. Climate change sits alongside biodiversity loss, fragile food systems, water stress, and chronic urban air pollution — and she emphasised that public engagement is essential if these interconnected issues are to be addressed effectively.
“We won’t see progress to tackle climate and environmental challenges if we don’t get much greater community, citizen, social, political buy-in and momentum for support.” – Lindsay Hooper
Dr Tolu Oni began by underscoring that cities are now the decisive arena for future climate and health outcomes. Urban areas concentrate population, infrastructure, emissions, and risk, and with rapid urbanisation across Africa and Asia, much of the infrastructure that will shape the next century has not yet been built. She identified three factors with outsized influence on both climate resilience and public health: air quality, mobility and physical activity, and food environments.
But the most important lever, she argued, is not technical. Real transformation comes from communities who feel empowered to influence change. Through UrbanBetter, she described the development of “hope infrastructure”: youth-led, data-driven Cityzens Hubs across Accra, Lagos, Nairobi, Johannesburg and Bogotá. These hubs equip young people with tools to convert lived experience into evidence, and evidence into targeted advocacy and policy engagement.
“Technical solutions alone do not transform systems — people do.” – Dr Tolullah Oni
Her Lagos case study made this vivid. Youth participants used wearable sensors to track air quality along the marathon route. The data revealed that once the roads were closed for the race, air pollution levels fell by around 60%. After the findings were shared, the hub used the evidence to engage the transport authority directly. This led to a memorandum of understanding to help implement the city’s non-motorised transport policy and to map priority walking and cycling routes. In the months that followed, the Lagos hub brought partners together for a multi-sector workshop, co-designed new research on heat and air-pollution risks at transport hubs, and supported neighbourhood initiatives addressing flooding and waste around a local school.
Tony Juniper then shifted focus to the deeper cultural and structural layers that shape environmental outcomes. He observed that despite decades of international agreements, emissions and nature loss continue to rise. The reason, he argued, is that society often treats the surface symptoms without addressing the underlying drivers: an economic model centred on growth, political incentives tied to short-term comfort, consumerist cultural norms, and, beneath all of these, our fundamental worldview and relationship with nature.
One of the strongest predictors of pro-environmental behaviour, he noted, is early-life experience of nature — a practical lever for long-term cultural change. Ensuring that every child has routine access to natural environments through education and community design could have a transformative effect over time.
“The thing that really changes behavior is having access and experience of nature as a child.” – Tony Juniper
The evening ended on a clear message: the tools to address environmental challenges already exist, but progress relies on whether people feel able — and invited — to use them. Strengthening youth agency, designing cities around health, and reconnecting communities with nature are practical ways forward, not abstract aspirations.
A huge thank you to Homerton College and Lord Simon Woolley, Master of Homerton, for hosting such an illuminating and energising event, to Lindsay Hooper for chairing the discussion, and to our speakers Dr Tolullah Oni and Tony Juniper for their thoughtful and engaging contributions.
