UMBC's Climate Action Planning @ Climate Leadership Summit

The Higher Education Climate Leadership Summit, hosted by Second Nature and the Intentional Endowments Network, is the premier annual gathering of higher education leaders committed to addressing inequality and the climate crisis.  

We invite you to virtually join us April 5-8, 2022 as we meet to foster courageous conversations and radical collaborations in our shared pursuit of a just, sustainable, and thriving carbon-free society.  We hope to spur conversations and partnerships that are difficult and challenging yet essential and transformative. Come connect with your peers and key champions across sectors to build relationships and find solutions to the most consequential climate issues of our time.

The 2022 Summit will build off of the year-long 2021 Climate Action Pursuit, and include the same intersectional tracks: Racial Justice, Neutrality and Decarbonization, Policy, Community Resilience and Investment, Student Leadership, and New Knowledge. 

The overall process of UMBC's Climate Action Plan will be discussed by Ryan Kmetz, Director of Sustainability, and other session panelists. 

Process and Progress: Reporting Across the Climate Leadership Network

Session Description: Meeting climate commitments, and reporting on progress, is an ongoing process. While a climate commitment signatory may strive to implement long term operational and technical decarbonization projects with the academic and educational experience for the campus community, for those that have added the resilience commitment, the process extends to developing a formal partnership with the surrounding community to assess vulnerabilities and risks and identify opportunities and strengths in response to a changing climate. All of this, of course, also includes reporting internally to departments and supervisors and externally to municipalities, states, funders, and voluntary programs, like the Climate Leadership Commitments. Second Nature understands that this is a lot of work and we want to leverage and communicate these efforts with an emphasis on the process. This session will feature best practices and lessons learned from the Climate Leadership Network.