Designing cars built from recycled phones, restoring a kelp forest, or rethinking our financial systems, there are endless ways students will transform our future towards a more sustainable, ethical, and liveable global community, in the backdrop of a world impacted by climate change.

Join our global experts to learn how climate change is transforming the future of work and what skills the next generation will need to rise to the challenge.

Earth Day has been celebrated globally for more than 50 years and is dedicated to promoting awareness of the health of our environment. During 2022, the thematic focus will be on climate action and the Climate Alliance will participate by exploring the intersection of climate and work via a virtual student event.

Across the globe, climate change is impacting careers and not only in closely related industries, such as renewable energy and technologies. First nation communities’ traditional work practices are being disrupted, agriculture and food security are threatened, health and emergency workers battle with climate-related sicknesses, viruses, and extreme weather events. Working practices and conditions for many are insecure, underpaid, and unfulfilling.

We invite students, researchers, and educators from around the world to share research and engage in live workshops designed to uncover what students want for their future careers and how we can make this happen. The program is designed to consider how climate literacy can be improved across diverse career paths and provide students with international networking opportunities.

The virtual event will be a mix of live and recorded sessions spaced over an extended period during April 22nd to accommodate diverse time zones. Registration to the event is free and all are welcome to attend the talks. Workshops will also be free but will have limited capacity to ensure sufficient opportunities for all attendees to interact effectively.

Full Program Available Here.

Predicting the future is hard. How climate change will impact work and careers in the future depends to a large extent on whether greenhouse gas emissions are effectively reduced. Let’s inspire the world to take bold climate action and transform our future workplaces for the better. We want to hear your ideas, aspirations, and how your studies are going to make your dream a reality.

We are looking for an inspiring student to meet our challenge for the opportunity to complete a two-week paid virtual internship with the International Universities Climate Alliance during COP27. The successful student will join our team to help coordinate our students and world-class students’ activities and social media campaigns during the UNFCCC activities virtually.

A shortlist of video submissions will be published on the Climate Alliance website and the winner will be announced during the Student Forum opening keynote on April 22nd, 2022.

We are looking for current university students anywhere in the world to send us a two-minute video describing how a workplace relating to your studies is being impacted, transformed, or undergoing an organizational culture shift because of climate change. The way in which climate change is transforming this context could be happening currently or predicted to occur in the future.

Application Form

To help you get started here are some ideas:

· Jobs that help communities adapt to climate change are expected to be a major employer of the future, in fact, the International Labour Organisation anticipates an additional half a million jobs in Europe by 2050. ILO Report

· Climate change is forecasted to increase the cost of food around the world due to lower food production, deterioration in food nutrition, and increased pests. Reducing food loss and waste has been identified by the IPCC as a means of both improving food security and reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions. IPCC Special Report here

· Water degradation can be reversed by turning to smart planning and coordination of sustainable farming practices and by deploying new innovative technologies. More sustainable agriculture can also help fight climate change: For instance, the report notes that wiser use of soils can help sequester some of the greenhouse gasses currently emitted by agricultural activities. Read More

· Archaeologists are trying to protect important historical sites before climate change creates irreparable damage. 47 vulnerable sites along Puerto Rico are being washed away after every major storm. Read More

About the Climate Alliance

The International Universities Climate Alliance (the Climate Alliance), is an innovative initiative established in 2020 by UNSW Sydney in partnership with over 50 world-class climate research universities. Universities are uniquely placed to help communities capacity build and accelerate climate transition at a global scale.

To this end, the Climate Alliance provides opportunities for its university members to showcase new research, improve global climate literacy and deepen industry partnerships through virtual events, research roundtables, coordinated media activations, and educational initiatives. As the world turns its attention to developing a realistic plan towards global decarbonization, our alliance aims to provide a source of reliable, credible research and best practice solutions.

Climate change targets present the world with both an enormous challenge to overcome and an opportunity to come together, share knowledge and invest in our shared future: this is the core work of universities and the drive which unites the 50+ members of the International Universities Climate Alliance.

Established in April 2020 and convened by the University of New South Wales in Sydney, these leading climate research universities come from every continent, encompassing thousands of the world’s most accomplished climate researchers, including hundreds who have worked as authors of reports for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The Climate Alliance’s vision is to become a global source of trusted scientific research and evidence-based on climate change science, impact, adaptation, and mitigation collectively referred to as ‘climate research’.

The Climate Alliance purpose is to bring together world-leading institutions with critical capability in climate research in order to:

• Provide evidence, be a trusted voice, and provide thought leadership on climate change to help accelerate action globally
• Communicate, advocate and provide outreach on evidence-based means to lower global carbon emissions
• Raise the profile of member universities by showcasing their research capabilities, innovation, and expertise
• Share knowledge and best practices on education and research training
• Enable member universities to build research and education collaborations via the Climate Alliance.