Inaugural Climate Action Summit gathers UL Colleagues to tackle the climate crisis through ground-up approach

Friday, 19 April 2024

In alignment with the Irish Government's Public Sector Mandate on Climate Action the Centre for Sustainable Futures and Innovation (CSFI) brought together over 70 staff members from across the UL community for the inaugural Climate Action Summit on Wednesday, April 3rd 2024.

The gathering, themed 'Local Action for Global Impact,' builds on the University's mission-driven sustainability framework. The goal is to support and amplify the efforts of UL students and staff, activists, businesses, NGOs and policymakers to tackle the challenges brought by climate change. This synergy between knowledge and action is critical, as it fosters the development of practical, scalable solutions that can be adapted in other contexts.

The summit engaged an independent facilitator of Open Space Technology to guide the group through the process of identifying topics and themes that resonated and tapped into participants' own experiences. The method invites attendees to propose topics of conversation and gathers those interested in the topic to discuss ideas, concerns, ask questions, and identify points of action.

Open Space Technology proved to be a powerful tool for bringing people together across disciplines and departments to share their work, their ideas and knowledge, and to build connections that will hopefully spark collaborations to address sustainability and climate issues at the University and beyond.

A wide range of topics were proposed for discussion- from active transportation and cycling, to degrowth and the new economy. Participants joined in lively conversations- sharing ideas about how to improve communication about sustainability to the campus community, ensure accountability to climate and sustainability targets, and how to identify the "easy wins" -or actions that make a difference more quickly. Many learned about existing sustainability initiatives and offered ways to build upon them.

As a result of the summit, CSFI will publish a report with findings from the event on its website. It is anticipated that further climate action training will be available to the campus community going forward. The CSFI team are available to support colleagues, students and community members to further sustainability research, practical actions and projects, and sustainability events, and to connect the campus community to resources like funding opportunities, potential partners, training and much more. Please do get in touch: [email protected]