Global Climate Action Coalition

Students at COP15, which marked the inaugural meeting of the Global Climate Action Coalition 

In November 2009, Presidents Richard Levin and Rector Hemmingsen, on behalf of Yale University and the University of Copenhagen, invited their counterparts at several other universities to send student teams to participate in a groundbreaking collaborative project on climate change during the United Nations Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP 15) in Copenhagen. Fifteen teams from universities all over the world convened at the University of Copenhagen on Sunday, December 13, and Monday, December 14, to propose how their universities might minimize negative environmental impact and promote sustainable solutions. From this workshop, the Global Climate Action Coalition was formed.   

Today, the Global Climate Action Coalition, spearheaded by the Yale Office of Sustainability and the Yale Office of International Affairs, engages students from three continents, eight countries, and eleven universities. Since its foundation, the Coalition has worked hard to share and build on the initiatives of its members—experimenting with two websites, and developing surveys to assess the Coalition’s effectiveness and evaluate student projects. As a Coalition, we have worked on everything from waste management to energy reduction use. We’ve hosted zero-waste events, departmental competitions on energy use, installed solar panels, and more! We’ve also conducted cross-institutional research and reported on 138 energy and sustainability programs at Yale and MIT with the goal of guiding universities to support the most effective initiatives.  

The success of the Coalition demonstrates the importance of empowering creative students to implement sustainability initiatives on university campuses. The students making up the Coalition are from different countries and universities and specialize in a range of disciplines. Diversity enriches the Coalition, reflects the global scale of environmental issues and emphasizes the need for a multi-disciplinary and culturally relevant approach to intervention. We are committed to expanding our membership—in developing and developed countries—to bolster the global sustainability effort and benefit from varied perspectives, challenges and opportunities that students bring with them.  

The Coalition will convene student teams in Rio for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) in June 2012. This workshop will allow students to further   develop their sustainability initiative proposals through peer-review and critique from experts. We hope this event will forge even stronger relationships between Coalition members and serve as a valuable networking opportunity for students.

Please visit us at our new web-based forum for idea-sharing and synopsis of best practices, launched in February of 2011. We hope that anyone who is interested in using universities as the ground for innovative experiments in institutional sustainability will subscribe to our website, contribute input, and stay tuned for how you or your university team can get involved.
 
 

As a virtual network, the Coalition links teams
from such distant locations as New Haven, CT
and Shanghai, China by Skype and other tools

Visit the Global Climate Action Coalition blog to participate in the exchange of sustainable solutions and best practices with other university teams:

 To learn more about past sustainability initiatives, their effectiveness and best practices, read the 2009-2010 Coalition Report.