Alliance of Top Universities Urge G20 Leaders to Prioritise Net Zero Emissions

The “International Universities Climate Alliance”(IUCA) has called on the G20 leaders to increase efforts to combat climate change. In the run-up to the G20 summit, members warn that failure to do so will have devastating effects on future generations.

The University of Bremen is one of the founding members of the International Universities Climate Alliance (IUCA). The network was established in April 2020 by 35 worldwide leading universities in the field of climate research. In the meantime the number of members has grown to 48. The University of Bremen is the only German member.

IUCA university network wants to support policy makers

The IUCA network aims to communicate research results more effectively in order to make them more visible and thus better meet the challenges of climate change. With the just released statement, the member universities want to stress the urgency of immediate action in climate policy and show that research is assisting decision makers worldwide with advice.

Global alliance increases the visibility of scientific work

Professor Bernd Scholz-Reiter, president of the University of Bremen: “Being a climate university, we want to contribute our expertise from the field of climate research to the mission to communicate the scientific findings worldwide so that science becomes even more visible. The global alliance increases the visibility of scientific work in climate research.”

The network was initiated by the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney. Due to the devastating bush fires in Australia, the effects of climate change are particularly tangible there. But also floods in other parts of the world are visible consequences of developing global warming. Ian Jacobs, the president and vice chancellor of the UNSW Sydney, is sure: “There are many challenges ahead of us. The international climate alliance is a rich source of evidence-based knowledge for governments, businesses, industry, and the general public.”

The Climate Alliance is unprecedented in scale and scope and will support world leaders, policy makers and industry in planning for, and responding to, climate change. The advent of the Climate Alliance comes at a time when momentum is building for countries to decarbonise their economies.

The alliance will provide a central hub for universities to share the latest climate research and enable greater collaboration between leading research teams.

The IUCA members are working on identifying and implementing the most effective ways of communicating scientific findings on climate change to the public. The universities, which also include King’s College London and the California Institute of Technology, are particularly active in the areas of climate change research and its effects and also strategies for CO2 emission minimization.