Committed to sustainability

Lowering the carbon footprint, recovering spaces through reforestation, and encouraging the change of habits. These are just some of the initiatives in sustainability that UC Chile has applied towards their commitment to sustainable development.

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The great socio-environmental crisis that the planet Earth is going through has a name and it is climate change. This crisis not only affects our environment, but it also affects our social and human dimension. In the attempt to stop climate change, governments, NGOs, and institutions, have gathered and implemented a global agenda for sustainable development. In this context, education institutions, especially universities, have an active and decisive role, through research, innovation, and teaching to new generations to lead the change that the planet needs.

President Ignacio Sánchez addressed the university's strong commitment and what motivates them to fulfill their promise: “UC Chile wants to move towards being a carbon neutral institution in 2038. For more than 10 years our university has been taking steps to confront climate change. We have felt inspired by our own university's mission and by the call that Pope Francisco has made to take care of our common home.”

In 2011, the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (UC Chile) formed a Sustainability Office which aims to create a culture of sustainability by educating, raising awareness, and mobilising its community towards a more sustainable development. To achieve their goals, the office also promotes the creation of sustainable ecosystems in all their five campuses and in the network of scientific field stations that the university has throughout Chile, incentivising projects that will allow a more sustainable management and operation. Some of the measures that have been implemented are a recycling system, organic waste recycling, shared bicycle system, sustainable food services and the implementation of solar panels. A pioneering initiative has also been launched to capture and use fog water for human consumption at the Atacama UC Station, in the driest desert in the world.

Within other initiatives, in 2022, an emblematic forestation took place in Campus San Joaquín, the university´s largest campus, which included around 805 native plants of fifteen types of distinct species in a space of approximately 574 square meters. The project was developed to regenerate and strengthen the campus ecosystem as well as contribute significantly to the absorption of carbon.

Research and academic efforts

One of the most important principles of the university is the creation and transfer of knowledge to contribute to society and promote cultural changes that will benefit the global development and welfare. This creation of knowledge is carried through its eighteen faculties but is concentrated in more than a dozen research centers that are the result of collaboration with institutions, the search for resolution of local and global needs and from our academics in their search for scientific evidence that helps solve challenges as climate change. Some of these centers are Center of Global Change, Center for Coastal Socio-Ecosystems, Center of Sustainable Urban Development, Research Center for integrated Disaster Risk Management, among others. The university's network of regional centers and stations also plays an important role, especially the Patagonia UC Station, which objective is to observe the effects of climate change in an area with little human intervention, with close collaboration with researchers from the Observatories Hommes. In these centers and stations, in addition to research, important work is carried out to train up students, from undergraduate to postgraduate, as well as work linking with communities. Along with the research centers, in 2018, the university decided to strengthen its academic area with the creation of the Institute for Sustainable Development, an interdisciplinary unit that seeks to articulate effort in sustainability in training and research. Then in 2019, a new line of general training was created specifically dedicated to sustainability and integral ecology, which implies that all students who enter UC Chile must pass at least one sustainability course and have a range of general training and electives to deepen the subject. In 2020, there were two courses for general training, now in 2023, the offer increased significantly, with currently fourteen courses offered. Today, more than 2,700 students have taken these courses, as part of the initiatives that aim to make sustainability a hallmark of the identity of its graduates.

Photo by Levi Guzman on Unsplash

"The urgent challenge of protecting our common home includes the concern of uniting the entire human family in the search for sustainable and comprehensive development."

Carbon Neutral by 2038

During 2019, the university adhered to the Charter for the Climate Emergency, which brings together institutions of Higher Education of around the world and declare that they recognise the need for drastic changes in our society to combat the growing threats of climate change. This action implied taking a commitment to carbon neutrality and joining the Race to Zero initiative (race for carbon zero), which seeks a commitment of the educational sector to Climate Action.

Achieving carbon neutrality means achieving that the net result of the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) that the university emits, captures and offsets is equal to zero. This implies that the university's efforts must be focused on reducing emissions through a first stage that seeks to achieve greater efficiency in its operation. For which is necessary the implementation of initiatives for climate and sustainability awareness that mobilises all the UC community. In a second stage, developing a strategy that allows increasing the GHG capture capacity that the UC inevitably produces. To develop this strategy, there was generated a participatory process throughout the year 2020 in which more than 150 students, academics and officials participated in ten working groups.

National and transnational collaboration

“The urgent challenge of protecting our common home includes the concern of uniting the entire human family in the search for sustainable and comprehensive development (…) We need a conversation that unites us all, the environmental challenge we are experiencing and its human roots, interest and impact us all.” Clear and urgent is the call for action that makes Pope Francisco in the encyclical Laudato si,’ inviting to solve these global challenges as a global community. Globalisation has shown that local actions and decisions have an impact on a much larger scale. As part of the Strategic Alliance of Catholic Research Universities (SACRU), UC Chile seeks to create a valuable and permanent bidirectional link with their international partners and promote collaborative, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research through their different research centers and institutions. In its crusade for sustainability, since 2018, UC Chile is part of the Hemisphere University Consortium (HUC), which brings together 13 universities from Latin America, the Caribbean, Canada and the United States, who come together to facilitate problem-based collaborations with the main objective of responding collectively to the SDGs (sustainable development goals) set by the UN. At a local networking level, UC Chile is a founding partner of the sustainable campus network that today brings together more than 41 Latin American higher education institutions. In this context, in the year 2021, was signed the “Clean Production Agreement for Higher Education Institutions”, which commit and incentive that universities within a period of 3 years meet sustainability goals associated with research, governance, links with environment, culture, and campus management.

Photo by Levi Guzman on Unsplash

“The university has a strong commitment to sustainability. We are immensely proud of the progress we have made, but we know that we have much to do."

Sustainable Mobility

To reduce the impact of long-distance travel, the Global Mobility Office and the Sustainability Office developed the “Green Guide for Mobility.” The initiative consists of practical instructions that help the international students that UC Chile receives, around 500 per semester, to have a more sustainable experience, without compromising the environment in the process. Lilian Ferrer, Vice president of the UC International Affairs Office, refers about how this practical instruction helps maintain UC Chile's commitment to the environment while promoting internationalisation, “As Office of International Affairs, we seek to install a “culture of internationalisation” that translate into a more sustainable exchange of knowledge, and promote a development culture and global commitment with our partners, networks, and friends of the world. The green guide for mobility works towards that goal.” Although there has been real progress, UC Chile recognises that there is still much more work to do. “The university has a strong commitment to sustainability. We are immensely proud of the progress we have made, but we know that we have much to do. We are fortunate to have an active and committed community, which is reflected in the commitment of our highest authority, academics, and a student community that is overly concerned and active in our issues,” assures Maryon Urbina, director of the UC Sustainability Office. In accordance with its principles and its commitment to the global community, UC Chile will continue to execute its climate action strategy, collaborating with its international partners and creating knowledge for the sustainable development of the planet, and aim to bee carbon neutral by 2038.