This plan signals the next phase for the UBC Sustainability Initiative: meeting the escalating urgency of a planet at risk through new leadership and new responsibilities.
In 2021 British Columbia experienced a deadly heat dome, devastating forest fires, and destructive floods. Numerous residents were seriously impacted and, for many, these events made climate change frighteningly real for the first time.
The most vulnerable were Indigenous peoples, elderly people, people with disabilities, immigrants, precariously housed and low-income people, a searing illustration of climate injustice. Nature suffered too. More than a billion sea creatures perished due to the heat. The need to prepare for unstoppable climate impacts and mobilize to limit global warming became clear.
As a public university, UBC is working to respond to these urgent and interlinked challenges. The 2019 Climate Emergency Declaration as well as the many sustainability plans adopted by UBC over the past several decades shows this resolve.
The UBC Sustainability Initiative was created in 2009 to help ensure sustainability is embedded across the University throughout teaching, learning, research, partnerships, operations and infrastructure, and the UBC community.
Today we are no longer an initiative, we are an integral member of the university community as reflected by our new name – Sustainability Hub.
What is a Sustainability Hub?
The Sustainability Hub is a hub of action. We build collaborative communities, attract diverse individuals with heterogeneous knowledge, and facilitate creativity and collaboration in physical and digital spaces.
By inspiring students, faculty, staff and community members to be agents of change, and by experimenting with collaborative solutions, we will continue the best practices that made UBC a sustainability leader.
Our new plan
The scale of the challenge ahead is immense. The Sustainability Hub is ready to tackle environmental problems as well as their intersection with inequality and injustice. UBC’s response to the climate emergency, its 20 Year Sustainability Strategy and many related plans will steer our work. The UN Sustainable Development Goals provide a road map for us and for the world. We will keep the principle of intergenerational equity front and centre as we work with students, the next generation of leaders.
Our Vision: A just and sustainable world.
Our new five-year strategic plan outlines how we will activate our mission, "Inspiring people to act upon the planet’s most urgent challenges through UBC’s academic and operational sustainability leadership".
"I welcome the new strategic plan for the Sustainability Hub which will help UBC continue to build on its already strong track record on climate action leadership, sustainability, and social justice." Santa J. Ono, President and Vice-Chancellor.
"With this bold plan, we pledge to work together to make peace with nature; what UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called the defining task of the 21st century. Under UBC’s leadership, and together with many, the Sustainability Hub will work hard to increase the tangible societal benefits from the sustainability achievements of faculty, students and staff." Linda Nowlan, Senior Director, Sustainability Hub.
The plan will focus our efforts on four key themes – climate, biodiversity, resilient communities, and the circular economy – and pursue the following new directions:
- Significantly increase student, faculty, staff, and community participation in our programs.
- Make sustainability education resources more easily available.
- Elevate the Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS) as a magnet and hub for sustainability events and community-building.
- Convene and coordinate work to advance the recommendations of the Climate Emergency Task Force and embed climate justice throughout the university.
- Manage the Campus as a Living Lab program.
- Organize new public education and engagement events like our Climate Justice series.
- Amplify UBC’s sustainability achievements with on-line dashboards and more story-telling.
- Increase transparency with additional reporting that holds the university accountable for its sustainability and climate action commitments.
- Contribute to the implementation of UBC’s Indigenous Strategic Plan, through our work on sustainability and climate change, and in collaboration with other units.
- Support work on the Climate Action Plan 2030 (CAP2030) emission reduction targets.
- Engage with a broader and more diverse set of on- and off-campus partners, including governments, NGOs, Indigenous groups, and university networks.
We will continue to work closely with Campus + Community Planning and Infrastructure Development to transform our campuses into greener, healthier places, and connect faculty to operational staff through the Campus as a Living Lab program. With peer units such as UBC Wellbeing, the Equity and Inclusion Office, the Indigenous Research Support Initiative, the Centre for Community Engaged Learning, the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology and many others, we will collaborate on the connected priorities laid out in UBC’s overall strategic plan.
Working together, we will achieve much more than any single unit.
Our academic support role
Education is paramount. We support and enable the integration of sustainability into courses and credentials to ensure that all students at UBC have access to sustainability education.
Experiential sustainability education is at the forefront of our programs such as Sustainability Ambassadors and the Student Sustainability Council for undergraduates, the Sustainability Scholars Program for graduate students, and the dozens of work-learn opportunities we provide throughout the year. Our co-curricular programming builds sustainability peer networks on campus, provides transformative learning experiences and centres students as agents of change in their communities.
“Our support for faculty has resulted in new courses, new programs and new interdisciplinary partnerships across the campus. The Sustainability Hub connects teachers and learners creating a growing network of people on campus actively engaged in sustainability education.” Tara Ivanochko, Academic Director, Sustainability Hub.
Our programs are built on an evidence base. Effective climate change education builds students’ skills and agency to take action, is locally relevant, tied to justice, builds empathy with the environment and involves multiple domains of knowledge, including Indigenous, place-based, and intergenerational knowledge. Experts recommend student centred education to develop graduates as change agents for the ecological crisis, and pedagogical approaches such as experiential learning so students can respond to climate change as a “real-world” problem.
As the academic support partner for campus operational sustainability, we strive to advance UBC’s academic mission, serve as a bridge between the academy and campus operations, and amplify and disseminate the sustainability achievements of faculty, students and staff to increase their impact.
Get in touch
As a hub for action, facilitating collaboration is essential. The team – including Senior Director, Linda Nowlan, and Academic Director Tara Ivanochko, would love to hear your feedback and talk about new opportunities to work together.
Please get in touch.
Our Vision: A just and sustainable world.
"I welcome the new strategic plan for the Sustainability Hub which will help UBC continue to build on its already strong track record on climate action leadership, sustainability, and social justice."
- Santa J. Ono, President and Vice-Chancellor.
GET IN TOUCH
As a hub for action, facilitating collaboration is essential. The team – including Senior Director, Linda Nowlan, and Academic Director Tara Ivanochko, would love to hear your feedback and talk about new opportunities to work together.
Please get in touch.