As scientists rebellion action go on worldwide, asking for climate change to be tackled with the urgency it deserves to be treated, is time to take a look at what goes on inside universities and how can university themselves, as insitution and not simply as single 'scientists', make an impact in the right direction The impacts of universities on the climate is not as straight forward to understand and calculate.
Universities are complex environments were many different activities are delivered , from teaching, which includes classical lectures , practicals , thesis supervision , to research which can be lab heavy , or field based or desk centred, dissemination and communication activities, which include intenrational travelling to conferences and meetings. While univeristies would have 'green committees' or 'sustainability' actions, if it is unclear where the fous areas should be, there is little they can do.. The Univeristy of Oxford launched an ambitious 'sustainability' programme, and in this nature comment article the environmental impacts (measured as impacts on biodiversity rather than emission per se) of the various activities was calculated. (if you understand Finnish, they also started with a similar approach, read here ) Resource use and waste had a large 'indirect' effect on biodiversity. Taking an extract from the article 'Perhaps the most striking finding in our assessment of impacts specifically on biodiversity is that most of the harms are tied to university activities that are not under its direct control. In fact, the activities with the five biggest impacts on biodiversity are (from biggest to smallest): the supply chain for research activities (such as for chemicals, medical products, organic tissue and plastics); the supply chain for the day-to-day running of buildings (for paper, information technology and so on); food consumption; electricity consumption; and the supply chain for construction. All of these activities are associated with resource use and waste, food and the built environment.' so, the supply chain seems to be highly problematic. And it makes sense: as scientists we are very often asked to choose the 'cheapest option'. That may come at the expenditure of chosing something shipped in from far away rather than locally produced. Some different spending rules that weigh in sustainability over price for choosing the 'winner of three quotes', may already help. In the nature article, an 'heavy avoidance' and an 'heavy offset' scenario are produced, and since the scenarios are likely to be similar across universities, maybe this can be a framework that other institutes can tap into... Furthermore, univerisities as high level institutions should really declare climate emergency (some already did, and chances are there are petitions to get your Deans to sign a declaration too if your uni hasn't yet...)
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Disclaimer: some posts may contain affiliate links. At no extra costs to you, buying through the link will help me in this blogging journey!
Archives
January 2023
Categories
All
|