Addressing climate change through higher education
UCL Institute of Education leads international network of universities to strengthen climate action and create new collaborative ventures.
Grand Challenge: Climate Crisis
UCL has identified tackling climate change as one of its five research grand challenges. As well as investing in research, it is also leading an international network of universities committed to better understanding how the higher education sector can play its part in addressing the climate crisis. The Climate-U network brings together universities from around the world. It aims to strengthen climate action within each institution and create new collaborative ventures through international dialogue and exchange.
Challenging higher education to address the causes and impacts of climate change
The Climate-U network grew out of a UKRI Global Challenges research project that ran from 2020 to 2024, led by UCL Institute of Education Professor Tristan McCowan (Department of Education, Practice and Society). Bringing together 16 universities in seven countries (Brazil, Fiji, Kenya, India, Indonesia, Tanzania and the UK), it aimed to promote climate action through the HE sector. It started from two questions: how can universities support their societies in addressing the climate crisis? And how can higher education sectors in diverse countries and regions collaborate and pool their distinctive social and environmental expertise?
Using a participatory action research design, the partner universities generated locally relevant initiatives in curriculum, governance and community engagement, and extended the evidence base on the conditions underpinning impactful practice. Collaborations took place across multiple disciplines, including education, engineering, meteorology, social work and geography. The project also conducted a large-scale survey of attitudes and experiences of undergraduate students, conducted a global systematic review of literature, various national literature reviews and theoretical papers, published through the project’s own working paper series, policy briefs and a forthcoming edited collection.
Empowering local climate initiatives
The three universities in Kenya and the one in Indonesia developed new modules introducing climate change, impacting hundreds of undergraduate students in each institution. The Tanzanian partner worked with a coastal village in regenerating the marine environment, impacting hundreds of residents, successfully transplanting thousands of corals and mangroves.
The University of São Paulo in Brazil created the ‘Climate Detective’ education toolkit for schools in São Paulo state, due to reach 40,000 children. The partner in India established the social enterprise ‘Hooga Seedkeepers collective’, in a farming village in Erode district of Tamil Nadu. It has promoted awareness of and use of traditional seed varieties that are more climate resilient amongst local farmers and raised awareness with children in the village school.
Building a global HE climate network
At the end of the research project a permanent network was created of the original 16 university members, along with the Association for Commonwealth Universities and the International Institute for Environment and Development. A further 10 organisations have now joined – from the UK, Hong Kong, Rwanda, Uganda, Ghana and India. It runs an annual conference, with further activities including an early career researcher network, capacity building workshops, advocacy and research mobility.
There is much left to do. As Marina Silva, the Brazilian Environment Minister said in a statement recorded for a Climate-U event in October 2023:
Science plays a strategic and fundamental role. And as I often say: most of the technical solutions already exist. What is lacking is the ethical commitment to put knowledge, technology and good sense in the service of the economic, social and environmental transformations that the world needs.