Campus networks speed up and scale up climate solutions

The higher education sector’s diverse strengths – including student activism, co-produced research, and sector-wide network mobilisation – are enhancing the speed and scale of climate solutions, according to a panel of experts at the recent session of the Conference of the Parties (COP29) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

A roundtable session themed “Enhancing and enabling climate solutions with higher education” convened by the U7+ Alliance of World Universities, the University Climate Change Coalition and Second Nature, brought together faculty and centre leaders, including senior administrators and students from the Global North and South, to share examples and insights about how their learning institutions are leading climate change and sustainable development.

This followed the Network of Networks session, which gathered global higher education leaders to set priorities for the coming year and to explore ways to amplify their impact as non-state actors through the UNFCCC Marrakech Partnership and Global Climate Action Agenda.

University networks

In his opening remarks, Dr Timothy Carter, Second Nature’s president, underscored higher education’s critical role in climate leadership and the need to advance climate action globally through university networks and connecting with institutional leaders on subnational climate solutions.

“Higher education institutions are not monoliths made up of the same type of roles; they have different roles that have different incentives. They do different things in order to mobilise the whole of the sector. We need to think of how those different roles can continue to engage in climate action,” he said.

“Networks of higher education institutions really have the potential to scale activity across the sector in ways that individual institutions are unable to.”

Paula Visconti, the director of sustainable development and engagement at Tecnológico de Monterrey (Tec de Monterrey) in Mexico, highlighted the institution’s work in collaboration with other higher education networks to drive sustainable solutions and the crucial role of university staff in achieving these actions.

“At Tec de Monterrey, I co-lead the sustainability and climate change plan, which involves over 100,000 students from private and non-profit universities.

“One of its key action areas is to use the six schools, such as engineering, business, social sciences, etcetera, and help them to embed education for climate change and sustainable development in the curriculum, and this is crucial because, as learning institutions, educating is a big part of our role,” she said.

“We have the convening power, as universities, of being able to bring to the same table different sectors of society. One of the things that we have learnt through participating in networks like the Sustainable Development Solutions network (UC3) is how we can work together as universities to advance and catalyse climate action.

“In the past year we got a grant that allowed us to convene 14 Mexican public and private universities with the objective of showing the important place that universities have in society, particularly when we are living in a climate emergency, and using the strength we have to bring forth those climate solutions,” she noted.

Climate literacy

Lucy Young, director of operations at the Edinburgh Earth Initiative (EEI) at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, emphasised the importance of climate education and transdisciplinary research.

“One thing that every student at the University of Edinburgh has, is access to online training in both carbon literacy and biodiversity literacy … It deliberately draws on expertise from right across our social science, arts, humanities, engineering, medical and veterinary medical schools, so we pull on all of that expertise to run these courses,” she said.

The Edinburgh Earth Initiative was set up at COP26 in Glasgow with the objective of helping the university to accelerate its response to climate emergencies and to do so by supporting significant transdisciplinary research and innovation but also teaching and learning.

“Our focus and strength at the EEI have been innovation, research and teaching. With teaching and learning, we have several ways of encouraging students, and this includes the Earth Fellow programme, which is an opportunity for our students to receive paid, hands-on experience while supporting transdisciplinary research programmes in climate and the environment.

“The fellowship also brings in senior academic teams and researchers,” she said.

Working across communities and cities

According to Professor Jean-Christophe Martin, Professor of International and European Law and the director of the Institute of Peace and Development at Université Côte d’Azur in Nice, the role of universities in sustainable development begins with the needs and expectations of the cities and communities.

“When we think of the link between society and community, the role of students, even faculty, is climate literacy. As part of community outreach, we develop communication tools to share basic knowledge with young people. This is key to face the erosion of trust in science and scientific results,” he said.

The academic institution has also been working closely with local authorities in Nice to establish joint institutes on smart cities as part of its sustainable development initiatives.

“At Université Côte d’Azur we are working on applied research solutions that are being used to create a new eco-district in the city.

“The students and faculty are involved in the labs, working with the local authorities in designing a new marine protected area in the bay of Nice. The process is ongoing, and we collect shared data for analysis to provide decision-making processes with scientific results,” he added.

At École Polytechnique in Paris, a five-year partnership with the city enables the institution’s masters students to evaluate the Paris climate action plan and help to provide real-life data that is applied within the city’s policies and sustainable solutions.

“We encourage our students, when they evaluate a climate action plan, whether it is [about] plastic reduction, or biodiversity, or mobility, to help in developing policy recommendations.

“For instance, in the past, we had the students working on pollution from motorcycles, which could be five times higher than pollution from cars and this helped the city of Paris to take those recommendations and draw out some courses of action,” said Patricia Crifo, a professor in the Economics Department at École Polytechnique in Paris and deputy director of an interdisciplinary centre called Energy for Climate.

Campus as a living lab

Crifo also highlighted some of the cutting-edge research being conducted, which includes the development of green start-up technologies through the institution’s dedicated research centres.

“What is important is that we also make the campus a living lab. For example, we have a lake where we have carbon storage and an agri-photovoltaic farm. As such, our research, innovation and educational programmes, fall in the same pillar within the interdisciplinary centre to drive the energy transition.

These initiatives can be replicated at industrial scale, and we are putting our students at the forefront of these innovations, educational programmes and campus activities,” she said.

Juan Diego Avila Hurtado, a masters student in economics for the smart cities policy at École Polytechnique, added that most students choose programmes at the institution due to the comprehensive way in which they integrate sustainable development into academic curricula.

“At École Polytechnique, we see the intersection between research and real-life cases, and we work with the community and more extensively with the city of Paris.

“This year, for example, we worked on mobility cases in Paris and how to make the city more workable for pedestrians and analysing real policies that the city proposed. Research must be aligned with community engagement in order to find technological advancements that suit local and community needs,” he said.