Making use of the latest research and powerful case studies, Keri Facer, Zennström Professor of Climate Change Leadership at Uppsala University (Sweden) and Professor of Educational and Social Futures at the University of Bristol (UK), makes a series of recommendations in this paper for students, staff and policymakers that would deliver a new approach, from changes to day-to-day operations to the core educational missions and civic role of the university.

This paper argues that climate change is not a scientific and technical matter alone, but is driven by a set of underpinning issues relating to economics, social inequalities, how we produce knowledge and ideas of what it means to be human. Higher education therefore has an important contribution to make, not only in researching the technical and scientific aspects of climate change as it has for years, but in addressing these fundamental and underlying challenges at a whole institution level.