{"id":7767,"date":"2020-09-09T06:39:37","date_gmt":"2020-09-09T06:39:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7767"},"modified":"2020-09-10T08:55:29","modified_gmt":"2020-09-10T08:55:29","slug":"baths-climate-action-framework","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2020\/09\/09\/baths-climate-action-framework\/","title":{"rendered":"Bath's climate action framework"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I wrote last month that the University of Bath has agreed\u00a0eleven <a href=\"http:\/\/bath.ac.uk\/announcements\/university-of-bath-adopts-climate-action-framework-principles-and-declares-a-climate-emergency\">Climate Action Framework<\/a> principles through discussions with\u00a0staff, campus trade unions and the students\u2019 union [SU], and that these principles will guide how the University conducts business and inform the development of its next steps to meet the objectives the University has set. \u00a0In declaring a climate emergency at the same time, the University says that it\u00a0and the SU are jointly demonstrating their commitment to responding to climate change. \u00a0The\u00a0Vice-Chancellor said:<\/p>\n<h5>\u201c<em>We recognise the clear scientific evidence and the need for urgent action across society to tackle dangerous, anthropogenic climate change and its impact on both humanity and biodiversity.\u00a0By adopting eleven Climate Action Framework Principles we are backing up the declaration with commitments to action<\/em>.\u201d<\/h5>\n<p>I'm going to be looking at all this in some detail in the coming weeks, but here are a few thoughts to be going on with:<\/p>\n<p>\u2013 it's all very carbon specific; this follows from its having a climate focus of course<\/p>\n<p>\u2013 as a result (and notwithstanding the VC's comments) there is no focus on net biodiversity gain \u2013 given that even new housing developments have to do this, why not a university? \u00a0Why not biodiversity gain targets for the campus?<\/p>\n<p>\u2013 further, environmental issues more generally are not given weight and some argue that the ecological challenge is more of an immediate problem than climate<\/p>\n<p>\u2013 and where are the SDGs? \u00a0The most significant sustainability development of the last 5 years doesn't even warrant a mention; again, because of the narrow climate focus<\/p>\n<p>\u2013 where\u2019s the sustainable procurement strategy for materials \/ food \/ etc?<\/p>\n<p>\u2013 what about climate justice? \u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/president.ubc.ca\/homepage-feature\/2019\/12\/05\/climate-emergency-declaration\/\">UBC<\/a>, for example, puts this centre stage in its wide-ranging declaration<\/p>\n<p>\u2013 the notion of divestment is also lacking<\/p>\n<p>\u2013 partnership with the City of Bath seems limited. \u00a0I'm told by those who know much more than me about these matters that it's the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.leedsclimate.org.uk\/leeds-climate-change-citizens-jury\">Leeds<\/a> (city, institutions and universities) that has the most comprehensive and imaginative approach in the UK.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, Bath might might say that these are only principles \u2013 a precursor to actions TBD \u2013 that's why there are no objectives or performance indicators.<\/p>\n<p>More later on all this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I wrote last month that the University of Bath has agreed\u00a0eleven Climate Action Framework principles through discussions with\u00a0staff, campus trade unions and the students\u2019 union [SU], and that these principles will guide how the University conducts business and inform the...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7767\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}