Universities press the climate change action message on the world stage

Global arbitration of climate policy and climate solutions took a hit this year, and lost some important momentum, when the annual Conference of Parties (CoP) to be held in Glasgow was cancelled due to COVID-19.

The CoP monitors and reviews the implementation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and was scheduled to take place this month, in a year when the targets of the Paris Agreement have come into force.

To spell out the problem, the world’s nations need to keep the global temperature increase under 1.5°C by the end of this century to avoid dangerous climate change, and 2°C to avoid triggering positive feedbacks, where humans will have far less policy control over future climate, and create a world unrecognisable to what we know today.

Governments have listened closely to medical experts in order to act on COVID-19, but they have not heeded the expert advice on climate change to the degree needed to address it adequately.

At current global emissions, we have nine years before we commit the atmosphere to 1.5°C, and 25 years to get to 2°C. The problem is that while the Paris Agreement makes it imperative to keep under 2°C, the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) of carbon abatement pledges from the 194 nations who signed up to the Paris Agreement will give us a world of more than 3°C.

Without a 2020 CoP to monitor progress on the NDCs, and increase the "ambition" needed to pressure nations to try much harder on carbon reduction, work by other transnational actors is needed.

For this reason, an important development in 2020 has been the establishment of the International Universities Climate Alliance (IUCA), which has called on leaders of the G20 nations not to miss the critical opportunity it has for intergovernmental action to move the world towards carbon neutrality when it meets this weekend at a summit in Saudi Arabia.

The IUCA is a consortium of 47 of the world’s highest-performing climate research institutions, including Monash University, and facilitated by UNSW, Sydney, in its first year.

In a climate declaration announcement published on Wednesday, 18 November, the alliance “implores world leaders to use the post-COVID recovery to implement measures to counteract climate change”, warning that failure to do so will lock in catastrophic consequences for generations to come.

The G20 group is important, as its member nations account for almost 80% of global emissions, consume 95% of the world’s coal, and more than 70% of its oil and gas. But more importantly, as it represents 85% of the world gross domestic product, the G20 is able to make economic decisions that can seize the opportunity that COVID-19 recovery policies provide for aggressive transitions to a decarbonised world.

In every developed nation, governments have provided billions in economic stimulus to keep their economies on life support during the coronavirus pandemic. In a post-COVID recovery, billions more will be needed to recover jobs and rebuild healthy communities.

The most important form of stimulus that can address the consequences of COVID-19 and climate change is to invest in the renewables sector, and transition away from fossil fuels. Other investments include making human infrastructure more efficient, natural capital investment, and in low-carbon technology development.

Read more: Investing for growth, climate and sustainable development in a post-COVID world

For only a fraction of the cost of what has already been spent on COVID-19, transitioning to net zero by much earlier than 2050 is possible, but this means listening to expert advice about the physics of climate change, as well as the health and environmental impacts.

Governments have listened closely to medical experts in order to act on COVID-19, but they have not heeded the expert advice on climate change to the degree needed to address it adequately.

Just as university researchers have led research and response strategies to COVID-19, they have been doing this work for many years on climate change.

Unless radical steps are taken in the next five to 10 years then, within 20 years, every university on Earth will have to remake itself as an institution where every faculty will need to address the human and environmental impacts of climate change.

The physical science research on climate is the leading discipline that informs the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the state of the climate. But for many years, sociologists, psychologists, communication and political scientists, international relations scholars, economists, historians, medical researchers, biologists, and so many other disciplines, have been turning their attention on climate change.

Read more: Zali Steggall's new climate change bill comes just as economic sectors step up

Moreover, increasingly, these disciplines are finding they need to talk to each other if they're to fully communicate the implications of climate change to policymakers.

Take, for instance, the problem of communicating climate change. It actually requires three kinds of experts: climate scientists who can review the accuracy of the science; decision scientists who evaluate the relevance of the information to audiences; and communication scientists, who can determine the clarity of the message for those audiences.

As a hub for knowledge-sharing, the IUCA will be an important clearing house for the kind of transdisciplinary research that's already required to communicate the urgency of responding to climate change, as well as the solutions and the forms of adaptation that will be needed across every sector of society.