The world is on track to significantly exceed the 1.5-degree limit of warming, a critical threshold where multiple climate tipping points become more likely than not.
In the UK, we are now living in one of the most nature depleted countries in the world. We also have emerging health crises related to the prevalence of microplastics and PFAS within our bodies, and emerging water quality and availability crises too.
The resulting environmental polycrisis is getting ever more urgent. We should not be surprised if students, staff, alumni or communities close to our campuses are questioning whether we can genuinely deliver on our commitments to tackle them.
Sustainability, as traditionally delivered within UK higher education institutions, has tended to focus on limiting harm without seeking to repair harm done, and on carbon emissions to the detriment of equally important environmental crises. It has also focused on estates rather than the most material areas for impact and has used an iterative approach instead of targets sufficient to address the issue.
There are good reasons for all of this, not least what is politically feasible in any given organisation at any given time. Nonetheless, it’s worth challenging ourselves on whether we are taking sufficient action to meet the crises we face.
Moderate ambitions
On limiting harm, for example, achieving net zero means reducing greenhouse gas emissions to a level where the worst impacts of climate change are avoided, but does not seek to repair damage done ie actively returning carbon dioxide levels to levels associated with the stable climate that has sustained us for 11,000 years. While net zero avoids further harm we have now destabilised our climate so much that only achieving net negative carbon targets will return us to a more stable state. We need to undo the damage we have done.
On biodiversity we work to net gain targets which means seeking to restore an area of land 10 per cent larger than that degraded through development. Whilst this does seek to repair damage done, I’d argue that in a biodiversity crisis, institutions should go further than 10 per cent, especially given nature depletion in the UK.
On the primary focus of carbon, the Planetary Boundaries framework, introduced by Johan Rockström and colleagues in 2009, shows us that we are facing an environmental polycrisis, made up of climate change, biodiversity loss, chemical pollution, and impacts on water among many other pressures arguably as urgent and impactful as climate change itself. What’s more, the science clearly shows that we cannot solve the climate crisis without also ensuring a resilient biodiversity to help balance the projected peaks in emissions.
Most traditional UK HE sustainability strategies are focused on estate-based carbon. Yet in terms of our operational emissions, where estates might make up 15-25 per cent of emissions, supply chains will often make up 50-75 per cent of emissions, and travel often at 15-25 per cent.
Arguably, the greatest impact universities can have on sustainability is through the education of our thousands of students – tomorrow’s leaders – and the solutions discovered and brought to scale through its researchers and innovative activities. Already, research interventions are reducing global emissions at a far greater rate than can be achieved through estate-based emissions reductions.
By empowering our students with the confidence and ability to tackle the environmental and climate crises in the careers they pursue, we can equip the next generation of change makers to go on and drive positive change of a magnitude far greater than our operational footprint.
Long term horizon
Traditionally, leaders have done a little bit more year by year, demonstrating and celebrating progress, and using that success to push a little further. But we are well past the point where that approach is commensurate to the challenges we face. If we’re serious about our civic missions, and our responsibility to students, and indeed the future prosperity of our universities, we must move from an iterative approach to actively setting tough targets and designing and delivering the programmes that can deliver them.
In climate terms, that means working to five-year carbon budgets set against Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change recommendations, achieving net zero, and moving beyond to net negative carbon. On biodiversity it means going far beyond biodiversity net gain. If every institution acted in the same way that would be enough to meet the challenges we face.
If we’re truly serious about our civic missions, and if we take our roles as caretakers of the long term prosperity of our institutions seriously, we must move from an approach primarily focused on damage limitation, estates-based carbon, and an iterative approach to one that is regenerative in nature, set in the context of the broader environmental polycrisis, focused on the material areas of impact, and targeted to be sufficient in the impacts it aims for.
I acknowledge that action based on this framing is ambitious particularly in today’s financial climate, and in a culture where business cases are judged over a short number of years or decades. At a time when decisions on how to allocate funding across a wide range of strategic priorities is under more strain, prioritising spend on sustainability because it feels like the right thing to do is unlikely to cut it in most institutions.
Instead, I encourage colleagues and decision makers to ensure that risks to the medium and long term prosperity of their organisation resulting from climate change and biodiversity loss are clearly articulated within strategic risk registers, with a focus on the potential extreme financial impacts on our institutions over the long-term. Recent reports from the Institute of Actuaries, and from UK government, provide a solid grounding for these risks, and a strong platform to discuss the balance between the necessary short term financial adjustments, and the investment required to avoid far greater medium to long term financial risks.
With the environmental polycrisis already set to reshape our world on a scale never seen before, if we don’t adequately address this imbalance, we risk securing the short term future of our institutions whilst condemning them in the long term.
A common riposte to requests for investment to avoid the worst-case impacts of climate change is “We can’t bankrupt the university just to achieve net zero.” I would argue, equally, that we will not be remembered fondly if we ensure the short-term financial viability of our long-standing institutions, only to ensure their demise via the extreme economic impacts of climate change and the wider polycrisis in the medium to long term.
The University of Edinburgh launched its Regenerative Sustainability strategy recently – find out more here.
