Category: Universities (Page 1 of 2)

Sustainability Frontiers: Final Session

22 February 2022 /

This is the final in a short blog series written by Laila Mendy about the Sustainability Frontiers conference.

Matthew Fielding moderated the final session between William Clark, Åsa Persson, Emily Boyd and Somya Joshi. The aim of the conversation was to discuss the five themes of the conference in relation to a recent publication by Clark and co-author Harley, which reviewed the first generation of sustainability science research. You can read this paper here.

Clark began with a short presentation of his work, which suggested that a core red-thread in sustainability science was nature-society interactions, which he described as existing within intertwined co-evolving systems. It is a solutions driven science, he said, where the goals of the research is not only to understand the interactions but to explore how this science and those understandings may be used to advance the diverse, contested and socially-determined goals of sustainability.

Another common thread, he found, was the issue of resources, emerging as the ultimate determinants of sustainable development. Sustainable development is measured by whether the base of resources are increasing or dwindling. Connecting resources and goals of sustainability science indicates processes of consumption and production, primarily towards the good life. However these processes are not operating without the agendas of the agents, actors, individuals, communities, firms, states and so on, also pushing certain directionalities. Though a belated entry into the sustainability sciences, these issues can be turned towards questions of power and how distributions of costs and benefits of nature-society interactions occur unequally.

These interests point back towards the institutions studying them and how the work they do might help or hinder these systems and often, Clark suggested, the outcomes of these institutional activities hold up the status quo and benefits incumbents. However, sustainability sciences are all working in complex adaptive systems that are shaped by persistent heterogeneity and novelty. Sadly this means that scientists can not predict them particularly well, which leads to the question about what useful advice sustainability science has to offer.

Well, it does have much to offer in terms of operational capacities, according to Clark. These are categorised below as the capacities to:

  • Govern effectively
  • Measure progress
  • Promote Equity
  • Adapt to shocks
  • Transform development pathways
  • Link knowledge with action

Each of these capacities are interlinked and intersect with the conference themes, Clark claimed, though hesitating on the Degrowth theme, which seemed to him more prescriptive than opening up discovery on the issue of economy and environmental impact.

Persson had several comments on the paper, based on what had been heard from the past two days. She first queried the idea of capacities in terms of by and for whom. The question comes from much of the discussion had in the first session on Decolonisation: who needs capacities? who already has them? and whose capacities are not counted or visible? This, she said, comes from the tendency in sustainability science to look at “we” in recommendations without specificity. It was time to be honest over responsibilities and the roles that we have.

Related to that, she was missing the concept of leadership in this synthesis. Looking back to Stockholm 50 years ago, individuals did play a role: leadership was considered as very important. Is this an issue sustainability fields are forgetting? That said, she pointed to ongoing projects into the role of influences in mobilising change – a new form of modern leadership, perhaps?

In response to Clark’s hesitation to fit the Degrowth theme into his synthesis, Persson asked whether economics was a part of sustainability or a different field. She acknowledged the work of donut economics, regenerative and care economics and how to bring them in to sustainability science.

Finally, she commented on the word “transformation”, which is on everyone’s lips these days. What is the risk of transformation becoming a new floating empty signifier not unlike sustainable development? And to what extent does the scale or transformation lead to delay? The challenge might appear to be so big so that responsibility can be diffused.

Boyd reminded the panel that much of the discussion over the past two days did not necessarily probe new areas, but rather were the result of decades of challenging issues and constraints within the practises of sustainability science. This was further challenged by how sustainability was being mainstreamed across the university and instrumentalised in businesses and governments. She echoed a point from the decolonial discussion: these issues can not become check boxes with a measurable set of indicators, but are more reflexive processes of inquiry.

Such a challenge might, she suggested, require a coming out of the academic ivory towers in response to the changing world. AI, geopolitics, polarisation and other forms of resistances are part of transformations and represent varied forms of values and knowledges and the new contexts within which science-making occurs. To what extent, then, are the processes in sustainability reinforcing inequalities by not accounting for these?

This conference, according to Boyd, has been an exploration from the Swedish perspective. In her presentation she highlighted some important questions that emerged within the themes of the frontiers of sustainability science. Listed below:

  • Decolonisation: unlearning the what and how, bringing in care ethics and the material aspects of what we study;
  • Resistance: the idea of presence and making familiar the unfamiliar;
  • Degrowth: how to approach the issue of decoupling;
  • Digitalisations: The new stories, fragmentations and speeds of change;
  • Imaginaries: Mindsets, structures, and moving beyond existing models of creativity to open up beyond the scientific silo.

Somya Joshi finished the panel with a short presentation explaining that “the joys of going last is that most of what you want to say has been said already.” For her, however, the most provocative theme appeared to be inequity. Whether in the Decolonial themed conversations, or in Degrowth, or the Imaginaries session, many questioned resource extraction through an anthropocentric mindset. Therefore, sustainability science must question the idea of resource.

A comment came to Clark from Joshi: According to the paper, at the heart of human capacity is innovation. Joshi, however challenges this in the context of digitalisation. Lowering the threshold to participation through social media, for example, is fantastic in one level. But the risks of misinformation, or powerful elites instrumentalising these technologies are too large to ignore. Who is wielding these tools? Who is weaponising them?

For Joshi, then, this concerned knowledge – and structures of knowing – and required a shift to nurturing empathy and action. She echoed a question posed in an earlier workshop: How can imagined collective futures turn into something people could collaboratively work towards.

Read more on page two by clicking below.

The Ekoln Letter: A conversation about universities in the era of climate change

23 March 2021 /

In May 2020 the plan had been to bring together at Lake Ekoln in Sweden, a group of people who are all, in their own way, interested in the question of how we might rethink universities in the era of climate change. Some were professors working in universities, some were leading activists, some were doctoral students exploring the frontiers of new thinking, some were artists and facilitators of public conversations; some see themselves as educators others as climate researchers and others resist definition. We had hoped to go deep into the questions of what a university is, could be, can’t be and should be in a world of profound ecological harm and inequality. 

And then we know what happened next. The pandemic hit, borders were closed, and we were left, like the rest of the world, to work out what to do instead. In place of a three day conversation that had been intended to be as slow, as embodied and as reflective as possible to allow us to really learn from each other, we met online to speak in the strange flat world of the video conference. For none of us was this enough, and so the project you have in your hands (or on the screen) was born: a letter exchange, where each of us would write to one other in response to an initial prompt, attempting to speak honestly about our sense of where ‘the university’ might go in this era of profound change. The letter exchange lasted four months, a week at a time or more for each person, through the long summer of 2020 when all were navigating a new reality. The pieces were not written for publication, they are not polished, none have been edited, they were intended only for the recipient. On completion, however, we wondered if there was enough here potentially to be of interest to others exploring the same questions. 

So we share these letters with you, as an echo of a conversation that could have happened and as perhaps the beginning of different conversations, negotiations, collective experimentation with how universities might be otherwise. 

Feel free to write back and to join in, or to carry on and take this further.

The-Ekoln-Letter-A-conversation-about-universities-in-the-era-of-climate-change-2Download

The Campus Garden

16 December 2020 /

As the climate impact and health threats associated with industrial food systems grow ever stronger, demand for local and sustainable food systems also grows. The Campus Food Garden is a student designed and led project, building an on-campus urban garden in unused and vacant spaces of Uppsala University campus. Funded by the Uppsala University Climate Pot and CCL, the initiative aims to explore the potential for local and sustainable food production system in reducing Uppsala University’s climate impact.

Visit The Campus Garden’s Facebook page for regular updates and to find out how you can get involved, or connect with project leaders and Uppsala University students Otilia and Sagnik. They are encouraging all growers – old or new, staff, student of Uppsalabo – to come and join in with them.

You can also read more about them on Uppsala University’s student magazine, ERGO.

New report calls for the radical restructuring of universities in era of climate change

14 December 2020 /

What is required of universities in face of climate change? Read the new HEPI report by Keri Facer to find out!

Zennström Professor Keri Facer has called for the radical restructuring of Higher education and universities in response to climate change. You can read more on the website of the Higher Education Policy Institute. Or download the report here:

HEPI Report: Higher Education and Climate ChangeDownload

For more explorations and discussions regarding the role of the university in a changing climate, explore our work here.

Education, Universities and Climate Change

10 December 2020 /

This is a set of quick links to some of our work on Universities, Schools, Education in general and Climate Change

Universities and Climate Change

Zennström Professor Keri Facer’s Inaugural Lecture on ‘Learning to live with a lively planet: renewing the mission of the research university’

A report from the Initiative on Internationalisation and Sustainability – is it possible to square these two agendas?

A keynote from Keri Facer on Universities and the SDGs to the Transforming Higher Education for the Future (IAU) Conference in Puebla, Mexico, November 2019

A public debate on cities and climate change, with Richard Florida, at KTH Stockholm. Keri joined the panel to reflect on the climate implications of Florida’s proposals.

A public debate on universities and climate change – at Almedalen, with Professor Keri Facer, the Minister for Higher Education Matilda Ernkrans, Uppsala University Vice Chancellor Professor Eva Åkesson and the lead for Sweden’s Environment agenda, Dr Emma Nohrén.

A public debate on the role of science, industry and government in addressing climate change.

In Swedish – Universitetens roll för en hållbar värld – a public debate at Almedalen with Uppsala universitet, SLU, Karolinska institutet, Stockholms universitet, Handelshögskolan i Stockholm, KTH

What are the links beteween climate change and civic university agendas? A short post for the UK’s Higher Education Policy Institute

University Innovation Agendas – AIM Days and climate change – a report from Laila Mendy.

What sort of knowledge do we need to think about long term futures? Science and Futures in Government. A talk by Dr Claire Craig.

Are universities making the world worse? Education and research in an age of climate change . A panel discussion from Almedalen 2017 with Kevin Anderson, Josefin Wangel Weithz, and Johanna van Schaik Dernfalk.

General Education and Climate Change

A report from the Transforming Education for Sustainable Futures programme, led by Professor Keri Facer, which makes recommendations on Education and Climate Change

Four-part interview with Keri Facer, on the role of the future, the richness of the meanwhile, and desirable futures at the Constructing Social Futures Conference 2019 for Futuuri magazine. June 2019.

Education, Sustainable Development and the Challenges of Climate Change . CEMUS Spring Semester Introduction lecture 2016 with Professor Doreen Stabinsky.

Popular and Public Education

A report on the important role of transformative public education – public, dialogic, collaborative, transgressive – in addressing Covid-19, with implications also for climate change.

A report on a Legacy 17 workshop – a popular education strategy for addressing questions of sustainability.

Leading activity within Uppsala University

We have been working over the last year with the 2050 plan for the University Campus, supporting long term thinking about the link between climate change and university campuses. This includes events and consultation workshops.

Sustainability Talk on Campus Gotland, Uppsala University by Keri Facer. Building a University for the Common Good. March 2019.

2018 – 2020: What have we been up to?

10 December 2020 /

In this report we summarise the activities of professor Keri Facer, the third Zennström professor of Climate Change Leadership at Uppsala University. This report is written in English.

I denna rapport sammanfattar vi aktiviteterna under perioden 2018 – 2020 med professor Keri Facer, den tredje Zennström professorn i klimatledarskap vid Uppsala universitet. Denna rapport är skriven på engelska.

You can download the report hereDownload

Transforming Public Education in a time of COVID-19

5 May 2020 /

Follow this new network ‘Transforming Education for Sustainable Futures’ with which Zennström Professor Keri Facer is involved! Keep an eye out for postings soon about transformative public education in context of CV-19. 

Here is the first briefing paper on The Case for Transformative Public Education with leading contribution from Professor Facer. This paper focuses on responding to COVID-19 now while addressing long-term underlying inequalities.

The Case for Transformative Public Education

Keri Facer: Reconnecting the civic university with the climate agenda

4 March 2020 /

Blog post by Zennström Professor Keri Facer on the Higher Education Policy Institute addressing the UPP Foundation Civic University Commission’s recent report on how universities can successfully serve in the 21st century. Climate change was a glaring omission in this report, as Keri writes.

Read post here: https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2020/03/04/reconnecting-the-civic-university-with-the-climate-agenda-thinking-globally-acting-locally/

Legacy 17: Learning For Change

21 February 2020 /

A month ago, I had the opportunity to join in a two day workshop in Kollaboratoriet, Uppsala on Learning For Change. A small group of passionate individuals joined me in an emotional and challenging exploration to understand how we work as individuals and in the collective, towards our goals of sustainability. You can read more about Legacy 17 here.

I went with the conservative expectation of a workshop on how to integrate the Sustainable Development Goals in to one’s work. It was a pleasant surprise to be met with emotional and personalised approaches to understanding how we engage with sustainability, particularly in terms of structuring meetings, of deep listening, of celebrating achievements and humility, of mentoring speakers, and of reflecting as groups. In short, an emotionally reflective workshop on processes for working with sustainability. The culmination of which was a group largely made up of strangers, volunteering highly personal information and feeling confident enough in each other to share vulnerabilities.

The conclusions of this workshop are still ongoing, with the participants divided in to small groups to catch up over fika or through skype/ zoom periodically; we continue to work on using the Learning For Change process to strengthen our capacities in work with sustainability.

You can read more about these processes in the Learning For Change Handbook.

Do you want to influence the sustainable development of UU’s physical milieu?

21 January 2020 /

Welcome to an open workshop organised by CEFO!

On the 18th of Feb at 10.00 sharp, staff and students of UU are very welcome to a workshop about the UU development plan 2050. In this workshop we will work together in order to give input to the sustainability aspects of Uppsala University’s development plan. The output from the workshop will be treated as a submission for comment (sv: remiss-svar) by the development plan’s project team. For more information see attached flyer and the sustainability part of the ‘remiss-version’ of the plan (or you can find the entire plan here).

When:              18th February 2020

Where:             CEMUS Library, (Villavägen 16, Earth Sciences Dept.)

Time:               10.00 (sharp) – 12.00

Registration:    https://forms.gle/5Y2xd6sooXreS3qD9

Arranged by:    Cemus research forum

Workshop-to-influence-the-UU-development-plan-2050Download
UU-Development-plan-2050_Sustainability-aspects_remiss-2019-10-25Download

Report: Internationalisation and Sustainability at Universities

19 December 2019 /

The report below provides a brief overview of some of our work in the Zennström Climate Change Leadership Initiative exploring the relationship between internationalisation and sustainability agendas in the contemporary university. It reports on a short programme of desk research by the team and a workshop bringing together university leadership, students, faculty and administrative staff. It identifies key tensions, possibilities, and routes towards achieving more sustainable internationalisation strategies in universities. The report has been compiled rapidly to respond to current debates and is intended as the basis for wider discussion. We are keen to hear from colleagues elsewhere to help develop these ideas further.  

Internationalisation-and-Sustainability-Final-December-2019Download

AIM Day and Climate Change

13 November 2019 /

In the middle of October, I joined in the AIM Day at Uppsala University, organised by the university Innovation Team. This day is an opening up of the university to businesses and institutions who want to pick at difficult questions with researchers. This year’s theme was Hållbara Städer (Sustainable Cities). This year it was in Swedish, and with my limited language abilities (disclaimer: I therefore might have missed some important points to many of the discussions), I joined in on some of their workshops.

Overall this day was an enlightening experience, where the necessity for transdisciplinary approaches to tricky questions, and collaborations across universities, civil society and public institutions, was abundantly clear. However, as a representative of the Climate Change Leadership Initiative (CCL), it was disappointing to see that the discussions did not want to grapple with the elephant in the room: the added complexity of climate change (and biodiversity loss) to social sustainability and development questions.

The first question I attended was one that struck at the core of a project CCL is working on at the moment: “Hur bygger vi tillit och vågar vi ta tillvara kraften i initiativ som vilar på religiös eller kulturell grund och möjliggör för olika sorters drivkrafter för ett områdes utveckling?” (How do we build trust and courage to harness power of initiatives driven by cultural or religious grounds? And that enable different kinds of driving forces for an area’s development?) posed by representatives of the Kommun. Joining me in this meeting were researchers from Centrum för forskning om religion och samhälle (CRS) , as well as employees of Upplandsidrottsförbund. It was positive to hear that this was being considered, in particular concerning a suburb of Uppsala that we are interested in working with.

“Hur kan konst bidra till att stärka identitet och skapa gemensamma rum i stadsmiljön och hur sker konstnärlig medverkan på bästa sätt genom hela planerings- och byggnadsprocessen?” (How can art help to strengthen identity and create common spaces in the urban environment? And how does artistic participation take place in the best way throughout the planning and building process?) posed by Region Gotland, was the second workshop I attended. Having very recently organised an interactive and artistic process in collaboration with Uppsala Art Museum, which was designed to enable residents of the city to explore how we think about the space of the non-human in urban environments, I was particularly excited by this discussion. Sadly, there did not seem to be shared interest in the role that the arts can play with the idea of the urban as a space for wilderness and other species. Though the conversation was fascinating in that we covered the role of graffiti to shape identities of the space and its residents, a very important facet I had not previously considered, it was disappointing that the conversation could not include how we might use artistic process and design to stretch the possibilities of urban space in times of climate change. This discussion highlights CCL’s concerns that processes of urban development continue to neglect the role of the city in mitigating species extinction and adapting to climate change.

The final two workshops I attended were similar discussions on social innovation and meeting spaces. The first, chaired by Coompanion Uppsala Län, wanted to discuss “Stödsystem för social innovation, särskilt inom hållbar stadsutveckling” (Support systems for social innovation, particularly within sustainable city development). The latter, chaired by Uppsalahem, covered “Sociala investeringsprojekt för barn och unga (Mötesplats Gottsunda)” (Social investment projects for children and youth (Meeting Place Gottsunda). By this point, my Swedish was fairly exhausted and my contributions to the discussion were in english. Our discussions touched upon vulnerable groups across the cities and regions and who should be the targets for support systems (could they be non-Swedish speakers?), neglect and social segregation were repeated here, and we were fairly stuck on the meaning of social innovation at points. A shining star from this discussion came from Idrottsförbundet who work closely in Gottsunda, and recounted an experience of engaging with women residents of the area. She told us that she was trying to understand what types of sports opportunities women living in Gottsunda wanted. She reached out to several contacts who then sent out a mass whatsapp message. Expecting only a handful of people to turn up, she was overwhelmed by the interest when 60 people joined the discussion. Looking at their feedback (which was largely written in Arabic), she found that generally residents did not want to attend meetings to discuss types of sports, but rather were happy to be messaged through this channel and told when and where dance classes or swimming opportunities, or other events, would occur. Understanding the different methods of engagement with different localities of Uppsala city is crucial for CCL’s work with civil society.

Over all AIM day was great fun. It was wonderful to meet so many colleagues working in similar areas of democracy and development. What struck me, though, was that we are not thinking strategically about climate change in all of these challenges. Trends of privatisation, or art and urban development, and (disrupted) investments in social innovation projects are turbulent and challenging changes. With the added complexity of climate change, and our responsibilities to act upon it, we must include strategic ways of engaging with these problems. I look forward to attending AIM Days in the future and continuing to be a thorn in the side of these discussions.

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