Universities for Climate Action

Climate change is a problem that involves complexity, uncertainty, interdependencies with other sectors and systems, and value-drive analyses and prescriptions. As a problem, climate change cannot be “solved,” but rather must be continually mitigated or adapted from multiple angles. Increasing carbon emissions are the biggest challenges for the modern world. Thus, organizations are now facing increasing pressure from governments and stakeholders to reduce carbon emissions. Action must come from everyone in societies and communities to play a role in the effective implementation of the UNFCCC.

The tertiary education sector has a huge environmental, social and economic impact and they can affect climate change through their day-to-day operations and therefore need to minimize their environmental impacts and improve public awareness and education in communities. In the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 4 and 12, there is a growing expectation that educational systems should contribute to developing a sustainable society.

As Universities we are committed in mitigating and adapting climate change. At the Conference of Parties (COP-21) governments were united in stating that there was a need for urgent action to achieve the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement goals. Universities are now playing an increasingly important role in closing this skills gap, with increasing resource invested in enhancing graduate employability and adopting real-world settings within learning and teaching.

The tertiary education sector is likely to face an array of threats to their research and educational missions, buildings, operations, campus landscape, transportation system, and procurement as a result of climate change. Therefore, there is a need to plan for and manage the effects of climate change and invent solutions to a number of strategic, technical, financial, and organizational problems related to climate change. To effectively respond to and mitigate the effects of climate change, Universities need to transform into climate change learning organizations. An effective approach to climate change for a Universities involves questioning its current operational model. As do other organizations, Universities need to learn to transition away from fossil fuel and manage the impacts of climate change. Planning and managing for climate change resilience also created significant opportunities for the Universities beyond resilience-related outcomes. In many ways, the planning process aligned with the Universities’ general missions and helped them reach several distinct objectives.

Vision

Our vision is capacity building, increasing public awareness, the development of technology-transfer and importance of educating students and society as a whole in real-world settings on Climate Action. The University Climate Action acknowledges that there is an urgent need to increase the global response to climate change. This learning, teaching and assessment approach is intended to trigger students’ thinking, what are the core objectives and solutions to mitigate and adapt climate change.

The vision is to open the door for students to be involved more in the decision-making processes, the involvement of students, community at large in conducting research and participating in the governance of Climate Change Action. This also extends to a culture shift in the next generation to adopt ways and solutions to mitigate and adapt climate change. It is also focused on ways to provide Universities and students with long-term, real-world research opportunities, priorities of research, teaching, and outreach productively aligned with the resilience planning process in a way that enhance each of their Climate Action missions.

In addition, the platform is focused on attracting stakeholders and companies that are enthusiastically looking at the Universities for guidance and also encouraging the Universities to have more ambitious carbon neutrality targets. The vision is to create long-term research opportunities as well as an alignment between research, teaching, and outreach.

Mission

Our mission is to encourage the mitigation and adaption of climate change at University communities. We also want to raise a generation that is aware of climate change, its impacts and how it can be mitigated or adapted. It is also within our goals to build capacity in these young individuals. The University platform also recognizes the increasing role of student unions as they play their part in engaging student bodies in an effective way, in creating an active participation.