Last Tuesday evening I attended the launch of the new Sydney Environment Institute (SEI) at the University of Sydney. SEI is a cross-Faculty research institute which aims to address two of the key questions of our time:

• how do we understand and redesign the fundamental relationship between human communities and the natural world that supports them; and
• how can people and societies adapt positively to environmental change?

SEI brings together a wide range of the University’s researchers and projects on environmental themes. This includes academics focusing on the social impacts of climate change, human/non-human relations, environment and culture, sustainable cities, food security, and organisational adaptation in both the public and private realms.

The Institute currently includes seven nodes:

• HfE Mellon Australia Observatory
• Sydney Network on Climate Change and Society
• Food, People and the Planet
• Maricultures Environmental Research
• Cities Network
• Balanced Enterprise Research Network (BERN)
• Human Animal Research Network

The Institute provides an important platform for informing public discourse, decision-making, and policy in relation to the environment. This will be increasingly important in an era of resource scarcity, biodiversity decline and climate crisis.