In recent years, the international higher education sector has grown increasingly aware of the intersections between its interests and activities and the profoundly disruptive challenges and realities of global climate change. The emergence of organised efforts to address these concerns — for example, through the establishment of the Climate Action Network for International Educators (CANIE), the student-led Erasmus by Train initiative, and the consortium-driven Green Erasmus Project, as well as the official prioritisation by the European Commission of the “environment and fight against climate change” in the 2021– 2027 Erasmus+ Programme – is testament to the sector’s rising sense of urgency and responsibility in this area.
In keeping with the objective of the EAIE Barometer (third edition) to shed light on key issues that international higher education professionals are grappling with today, one section of the Barometer survey offered respondents the opportunity to select two topics of particular personal or professional interest, from a list of seven current ‘hot topics.’ The respondents who chose ‘environmental sustainability and climate action’ as one such topic were then invited to answer a series of additional questions that sought to tease out indications of how they perceive the performance and commitments of their respective institution or organisation in this area. The data from these questions provides the foundation for the bulk of this report.
Numbers are not everything, of course. There is also much to learn from the qualitative experiences of institutions. This report, therefore, also includes examples of good practice emerging from the work of the International Education Sustainability Group (IESG), through its Climate Action Barometer (CAB), a global benchmarking study of climate action practices and emissions across the full range of internationalisation functions.