There are multiple dimensions to the higher education sector’s pursuit of net zero, and how this in turn informs universities’ engagement with various stakeholders – but we’re undoubtedly making progress. Since the UN Decade for Sustainability Education, institutions have taken steps to transform estates to be more sustainable, at least in terms of resource efficiency. The pandemic, for all its harms, demonstrated how technology could facilitate remote collaborations in research and other activities, reducing the sector’s carbon footprint.
Now the focus is moving to curriculum reform. This is more challenging than simply renovating estates and modernising practices. To properly embed sustainability into education, higher education will have to dismantle the so-called siloed approach to course design and delivery. Instead, the students must be shown, in a more holistic manner, the legal, ecological, technological, economic, political, social (and so on) dimensions of both global challenges and their potential solutions.
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SDG 4.7 calls for individuals to be given access to education for sustainable development, which often frames the work in this area. But an issue is emerging, one that will make our ability to deliver students with a more responsive education even more pressing: climate anxiety.
Climate anxiety in the higher education sector
Climate anxiety – or eco, climate change or ecological anxiety; the literature contains multiple overlapping terms – is defined as persistent negative feelings caused by or associated with the climate emergency. Climate anxiety is already prevalent in societies around the globe and will only increase as the impacts of climate change manifest themselves in ever more dramatic and pervasive fashion.
Importantly, suffering climate anxiety is not preconditioned on any first-hand experience of climate change’s impacts. Rather, a key factor is knowledge, about the growing threat presented by climate change, the effects it is having and the apparent failure of those in power to respond appropriately. This makes the problem particularly acute in higher education.
There are three broad ways in which universities can support students suffering from climate anxiety.
1. Access to mental health services
First, and most simply, ensuring adequate provision for mental health and other well-being services. Talking and cognitive behaviour therapies are as relevant to climate anxiety as they are to other mental health concerns, as are other measures that support general well-being. For example, having regular access to nature has noted mental health benefits – the World Wildlife Fund runs a campaign that prescribes 20 minutes a day. Even in urban institutions, steps can be taken to provide this – for example, creating natural soundscapes can easily be achieved through the playing of birdsong in communal spaces. More radically, virtual reality technology is increasingly sophisticated and, as well as offering opportunities for more immersive learning experiences, might be employed to allow some experience of nature when access to real green spaces is limited.
2. Interdisciplinarity
Returning to ideas of sustainability education, universities should aim to develop students’ skills to engage holistically with their course subjects, so that they can see not only that there are solutions to the climate emergency but that they can personally contribute and make a difference. Greater interdisciplinarity in programme design is essential, but carefully consider what form this interdisciplinarity might take.
What we might class as deep interdisciplinarity, such as individuals being adept in multiple professional skillsets, is arguably not possible within higher education’s siloes. The sector remains oriented towards degrees that prepare students for narrow, specific professions.
Shallow interdisciplinarity, however, is eminently achievable. As a legal academic interested in biodiversity, it is beyond my skills to undertake the sort of fieldwork conservation scientists typically do. What I can do, however, is engage meaningfully with the scholarship of conservation sciences in my research and my teaching. Consider incorporating the critical analysis of course materials from inter-, multi- or alternative disciplinary perspectives in module learning objectives, and supporting students in achieving this through class discussions and assignments.
Perhaps the most exciting initiative in this regard is the compulsory introductory course on sustainability run across multiple faculties at the Université libre de Bruxelles. This exposes students to ideas of sustainability education, demonstrates to them the importance of engaging with the perspectives and literature of other disciplines, and begins to develop their skills so that they can do so throughout their degrees.
3. Show students how to take action
Finally, and building on these sustainability skills, universities can demonstrate to students how their education empowers them to take more direct action. This could be by challenging those in power for their failure to respond to the climate emergency, grounding such challenges in their climate anxiety. Or it could simply be in using knowledge that they have gained to engage in public debates, whether within their social circles, on social media or more formal arena, to advocate for “better” responses to critical global challenges from a position of epistemological authority.
We have a responsibility, and the opportunity, to support students in dealing positively with how knowledge they gain at university might affect their mental health and well-being. Let’s take it.
Rob Amos is lecturer in law at Birkbeck, University of London.
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