Universities and the race to net zero

Abstract

More than 600 universities across the world have signed the Race to Zero for Universities and Colleges to date supporting a three-point plan, in line with the Race to Zero criteria. The ambition is to achieve more than 1000 universities across the world to commit to becoming net-zero ahead of COP26. This panel session will feature signatories from across the global to highlight the climate actions being taken on the ground. We will show a video from Gonzalo Munoz, Chilean High Level Climate Champion for COP25 on why universities need to take action now ahead of discussion from the panel. The Race to Zero campaign will feature heavily at COP26 and this is an opportunity to raise the profile of universities across the world in their role within society to tackle the climate crisis. This session will galvanise universities to take action and to commit to net-zero ahead of COP26.

Environmental Sustainability and Internationalization in Higher Education: A New Frontier in Research, Policy and Practice

“…In close alignment with the topic of carbon footprint analysis is the work that has been done to understand how academic and professional actors in higher education who undertake air travel reason with themselves about the place of air travel in their professional lives (see for example Eriksson et al, 2020), as well as the “critical role” that funders of research do and could play in shaping researchers’ travel practices (Bousema et al, 2002). With an array of rankings now focused on how higher education institutions, students, and other stakeholders around the world relate to considerations of environmental sustainability and operationalize responses – among these the THE Impact Rankings and the UI GreenMetric World University Rankings – analyses on the basis of rankings data are also available (see for example Bothwell, 2021).…”