Climate active leadership in tertiary education: efforts in the lead-up to COP26

Dr Annabelle Workman, University of Tasmania

This week, a climate change report was released: the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) from Working Group I of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). What does this report mean for the annual climate change negotiations in November?  And how can those in our academic communities demonstrate climate active leadership in the lead-up to the Conference of the Parties (COP) meeting in Glasgow?

Photo by Matthew TenBruggencate on Unsplash

Explainer: Key terms and definitions for the international climate change meetings

IPCC: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is the key scientific body charged with providing the scientific basis of climate change for governments. The IPCC comprises over 200 scientists who review and assess the scientific evidence on climate change. They prepare reports, which are then peer-reviewed. Three assessment reports (ARs) are prepared every four years and are endorsed by governments prior to release. The three reports are prepared by three separate working groups: Working Group I (WGI) reviews the physical science; Working Group II reviews the health and adaptation literature; and WGIII reviews the literature on mitigation options. You can learn more about the IPCC in this explainer article by Prof David Karoly in The Conversation.

UNFCCC: The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is the primary vehicle for addressing climate change at the international level. Adopted in 1992, the UNFCCC provides the secretariat and governance support required for meetings of the 197 Member States (mostly governments) that come together annually around November to discuss progress to date on climate change, and future action. View a timeline of major UNFCCC events since 1992 here.

COP: The Conference of the Parties is the term given to the annual meeting of the Member States of the UNFCCC. The COP meet for two weeks every year, and generally prepare some form of document – a protocol, an agreement, an accord, etc. – that is used to further the common agenda of international climate action. In order for the document to be adopted, all 197 Member States must agree to the wording of every line of the document. The 2021 meeting to be held in Glasgow in November will be the 26th meeting and is commonly referred to as COP26.  Read more about COP26 at the UK Government’s dedicated website.

The IPCC’s WGI AR6 report released this past week further reinforces the need for urgent and ambitious action to address climate change and its implications for global stability and prosperity. The backdrop to the release of this report is bleak – unprecedented heatwaves and wildfires in parts of Europe and North America, catastrophic floods in Germany, Turkey and Japan, increasing conflict and instability in the Middle East, and let’s not forget the global pandemic.

The report will inform the upcoming COP26 meeting in Glasgow, highlighted by many observers as the most critically important international climate change meeting since COP21 in Paris in 2015. This year, governments are expected to come to the meeting in November with increasingly ambitious mitigation (emissions reduction) targets for 2030 and beyond. To date, evaluations of government pledges suggest only two countries have submitted mitigation targets that are considered consistent with a 1.5 degree Celsius-compatible world. This reality makes the IPCC WGI AR6 report all the more prescient.

The report reaffirms with increasing confidence and certainty that human-made changes to the climate have us on a trajectory toward terrifying changes that will irreversibly alter our way of life and ability to thrive. This ominous warning understandably evokes strong (mostly negative) emotions in many, particularly those within our academic communities that have been repeatedly raising the alarm on the need for ambitious action for decades. Climate anxiety is an accepted and increasingly researched phenomenon as communities around the world experience the direct impacts of climate change that we are already facing.

So, where to from here in supporting our communities and governments to demonstrate the leadership needed to avoid imminent calamity? The international development organisation, Practical Action, has compiled a list of ten actions we can all take to demonstrate active leadership on climate change in the lead-up to COP26. Within the tertiary education sector, collective, interdisciplinary efforts are more important now than ever before if we are to identify ways forward and exhibit a united front. We are in a unique position to work collaboratively with internal and external stakeholders to question, innovate and advocate.

Research undertaken in 2018 identified barriers to interdisciplinary climate change research, particularly for early career researchers. We need to be wary of such roadblocks to climate active leadership in the tertiary education sector, and work with professional colleagues to address any obstructing factors. Doing so will allow us to reach our full potential in leveraging the translational impact of climate change research within our institutions to effect the policy commitments so desperately needed to address the wicked problem at hand.

At the University of Tasmania, staff have initiated a Climate Emergency Network (CEN UTAS) as a means of facilitating interdisciplinary approaches and perspectives on climate action. This network unites academic and professional staff from cross the University in taking climate action, be this through research, teaching or operations. Importantly CEN UTAS is a bottom-up initiative – by staff and for staff. It was established out of a petition asking our Vice Chancellor to declare a Climate Emergency – which the University did in late April – and is now driving actions and ideas on superannuation divestment, participation in School Strike for Climate, Climatizing the Curriculum, and participation in Global Climate Change Week. New relationships are being forged with the aim of having real world impacts.