Sylvia Masters smiling at the camera, in a navy shirt and gold rimmed glasses.

Sylvia Masters: Sustainability – Reflections on Climate Action

by EDI Blog | 1 Jul 2025 | Sustainability | 0 comments

As we continue to face bouts of extreme heat and sunshine followed by the inevitable rain and wind in Manchester and across the UK, it is difficult not to think of the climate crisis. I keep thinking to myself, surely this must be the wake-up call the government, the higher education sector, and society more widely, cannot ignore, to implement more radical changes – and yet the continued politicisation of climate issues; increasing popularity for nationalist parties opposing climate action; and escalating inequality, instead too often are seeing the retrenchment of environmental commitments.

Graph showing the global land-ocean temperature over time. The 10 most recent years are the warmest years on record. Figure: GLOBAL LAND-OCEAN TEMPERATURE INDEX (Data source: NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies) – The 10 most recent years are the warmest years on record.

Threats facing the climate and climate action

Globally, right-wing parties opposing climate action have gained significant momentum, driven by scepticism about the costs (aggravated in the UK by the cost-of-living crisis), anti-globalist sentiments and economic interests¹. Climate change is increasingly becoming a “cultural issue” – framed as a matter of political contention rather than scientific consensus. In the UK, this even saw the BBC ban a podcast on heat pumps (whose widespread installation is considered essential to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050), as it was worried about accusations of political bias². Successive governments’ “failure to deal with the causes of the climate crisis has [also] opened the way for ultranationalists to score points by focusing on the consequences, particularly migration”³.

This is evident in the USA, where Trump began his presidency by removing the country from the Paris Agreement (an international climate change treaty adopted at the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference), reversing environmental regulations and clean energy subsidies, and expanding fossil fuel production. This will worsen if the Environmental Protection Agency overturn the scientific study that determined current and projected levels of greenhouse gases harmful, as they’re considering⁴.

The rise of AI globally also has huge sustainability implications, and as we increasingly adopt it in the higher education sector, we need to consider how we can manage and mitigate such risk. We also need to ensure that the financial cuts we are witnessing across the sector in the UK don’t jeopardise this investment, nor additional essential sustainability work. Humanities subjects have already faced disproportionate cuts, and yet they are indispensable to imagining alternative, greener futures⁵.

Recent key developments and research

Importantly, there have also been some great gains and research. Companies’ turn away from sustainability has been found to be often more rhetorical than real⁶; in January, Thailand banned the import of plastic waste (though a global treaty is still needed), all of Chicago’s city-owned buildings and operations achieved 100% sourcing by renewable energy, and India launched Mission Mausam to make them weather ready and climate smart⁷; and by the end of December this year the EU will enforce its Deforestation Regulation (requiring big and medium companies (for now) to evidence that commodities such as beef, coffee and palm oil do not originate from recently deforested land nor have contributed to forest degradation)⁸.

At the university, under a corporate power purchase agreement, a brand-new solar plant is being constructed to deliver 65% of our energy demand, ideally functioning later this year to reduce carbon emissions by ~25%. Work to reform our big heat networks should additionally reduce the university’s carbon footprint by 50%. Both are necessary to fulfil the institution’s pledge to reduce scope 1 and 2 emissions to zero by 2038 and within our carbon budget (the fair share of carbon emissions we can emit if we are going to keep global warming within 1.5 degrees)⁹. Incredible research is also being produced to ensure that sustainable development is equitable and practical, crucially considering regional distribution of essential services and economic needs¹⁰.

So, where do we go from here?

Without this work, and its acceleration, the university is currently on track to exceed its carbon budget by 30%⁹. Climate issues need to be centred in decision-making and, crucially, they need to be centred as linked to colonialism and intersectionality; sustainability is inseparable from equity and justice. “[A]ny sustainability initiatives and actions should be looking at enabling the active and fair participation of communities experience multiple intersecting inequalities to co-create the principles for any change to physical and cultural environments”¹¹.

I would argue that as well as supply-side reductions and sustainable consumption, the “growth imaginary” must also be retreated. Aims of increased growth without any increased environmental impact gravely overlook the fact that “even at zero growth, the continued consumption of scarce resources will inevitably result in exhausting them completely”¹². Degrowth and redistribution are therefore needed, to ensure environmental survival and alternative routes to poverty alleviation.

I wish to see the university form transformative partnerships with our wider community and society, to pioneer degrowth, and to push the government to do more environmentally.

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