Tackling the climate crisis

World leaders are gathering in Egypt this weekend for 'COP27' – the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Their aim is to deliver action on an array of issues critical to tackling the climate emergency, in what is the is the 30th anniversary year of the adoption of the Framework Convention. 

In his welcoming remarks, Egypt’s President, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, says the talks will be underpinned by a better understanding of climate science, including the latest reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which are published by Cambridge University Press. He says the world must “... act rapidly if we are to really meet the 1.5 degree goal, build our resilience, and enhance our capacity to adapt.”

Key to achieving this ambition is bringing climate education into curricula. While research indicates Governments globally are committing to this (Education International, UNESCO and MECCE Project), a recent UNESCO report found that while teachers are confident in teaching facts about climate change, only 20 per cent can explain how to take action.

During COP27, its Office for Climate Education is bringing together the best ideas from educators at ‘Teachers COP’, following the principles set out at the UN Secretary General’s transforming education summit in New York. Its ambitions are to prepare every learner to acquire the knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes to tackle climate change and to promote sustainable development.

Our contribution

We believe we can make the greatest contribution to a sustainable future by helping global communities acquire the knowledge and skills needed for sustainable development and lifestyles. Our qualifications, assessments, academic publications and original research are relevant across each of the themed days of COP27.

The rigour of our academic publishing is why we were commissioned by the IPCC, the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change, to be its publisher for its latest reports on climate change. These will be widely referenced during COP27, including in President of Egypt’s vision for the event, as the latest global picture on the impact of climate change.

Alongside publishing this and other world-leading research that supports finding solutions to global challenges such as climate change, we are developing new qualifications, embedding sustainability into existing qualifications and supporting educators to bring sustainability into the classroom. 

Climate education 

Many Cambridge qualifications already support the UN principles for sustainability education by incorporating a skills based approach. Cambridge Learner Attributes, designed to recognise students’ need to develop attitudes and life skills throughout their education, and our Global Perspectives series across early years, lower secondary, IGCSE and AS and A Level are two examples. Our content is being systematically updated or built into syllabuses, curricula and support materials to help teachers to bring environmental sustainability topics into the classroom. 

Christine Özden, our first ever global director for climate education, is working with our colleagues and stakeholders outside our organisation to develop this work and increase the impact we can have through climate education. She has taken up the role after almost four years as Chief Executive of Cambridge Assessment International Education – the largest global provider of international education programmes for 5-19 year olds. 

Our benchmark qualifications for teaching English overseas, CELTA and DELTA, are being taken by an increasingly diverse range of educators to help more people access the language of climate change and sustainability. Our English team has also consulted with teachers to create activity cards to help bring sustainability topics into language learning and are aligning sustainability to our Skills for Life framework, a theme of our Cambridge Live 2022 event. 

Earlier this year, our UK exam board OCR and our assessment research team saw to fruition a campaign alongside environmentalists and politicians for a new GCSE in Natural History. This has resulted in the UK government agreeing to the first new qualification of its type in a decade. We’re also developing a new Cambridge National in Sustainable Business and Communities, which will help transform options for vocational and technical students in England. 

Climate publishing

World-leading climate change policy and science is published through our award-winning books, journals, and Elements - a book-journal hybrid. Our specialist, themed climate collection includes articles and chapters that are free to read through Cambridge Core, the online home of our academic publishing. 

Our publishing includes the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) latest special reports – “Global Warming of 1.5°C” and “The Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate” – and market-leading university-level textbooks such as Introduction to Modern Climate Change by Andrew E. Dessler, alongside popular science titles such as There is No Planet B by Mike Berners-Lee. Another great example is Writing Gaia: The Scientific Correspondence of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis which underlines why climate change must be tackled holistically, working across science, social science and humanities.  

Our commitments and ambitions

Critical to our success in our education, research, publishing and assessment work is ensuring we deliver our mission in a way that enhances, not detracts from sustainable development. Our commitments as a signatory of the UN Global Compact means sustainability underpins everything we do. 

We’re making progress on decarbonisation and sustainable sourcing. We lowered our total UK carbon emissions we make directly (scope 1) by seven per cent and indirectly (scope 2) also by seven per cent in 2021-22 compared with the previous financial year. We’ve also achieved 60 per cent FSC paper certification by July 2022 and switched to post-consumer recyclate plastic packaging and reduced the amount of plastic used on question paper packs by 21 per cent. 

We're being thoughtfully ambitious on sustainability,” says Catie Sheret, our Executive Board member responsible for sustainability. “By leveraging our place in the university, we can do some great things and the rigour that flows through our approach reflects that and is paramount. We aren't prepared to do things or say we will do things unless we know it aligns with our mission and we have a good sense of how we're going to do it. 

Colleague support 

A recently published global survey of 450 senior executives by ING Research found that employees across all functions want to become better educated about climate change (46 percent) and have a greater focus on climate issues in their current job remit (42 percent). 

Our plans to further reduce our own environmental impact emphasise it is a shared responsibility, empowering our colleagues to understand and act as well as using our expertise, platform, and voice to raise awareness and drive positive environmental action wherever we can. Colleagues are mindful of our environmental impact and are proactive in finding ways to meet our commitments, in keeping with our Code of Ethics. Our suppliers, contractors and other providers are also expected to support us in implementing this policy. 

Across the years the enthusiastic members of our environment and sustainability staff network – our biggest with around 800 members – have spearheaded positive changes. These have included removing single-use plastics from our catering in the UK a few years ago and reviving an allotment at our global headquarters. Our colleagues who are worried about climate change also have ‘climate cafes’ to lean on, which are a safe space to listen and share feelings and fears with others. Run by volunteers, it was set up ahead of COP26 to support our colleagues, some of whom are experiencing climate anxiety. 

Catie continues: “Sustainability is key to our success. It’s at the heart of everything we do as a global not for profit organisation and core to the mission we share with the University: to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence.Reducing our environmental impact and progressing relevant sustainable development goals are the right things to do and help us to amplify the impact we have on the world. We don’t have all the answers, but we are working hard on making a difference.”