Goal 13: Climate Action

UOW is committed to the principles of environmental sustainability and has developed an Environmental Management Plan (EMP) to deliver improvements in the use of energy, water, waste management and campus biodiversity.

Research being undertaken at UOW is exploring the causes and impacts of climate change and practical solutions such as sustainable fisheries management, bushfire management and innovations in battery technologies, sustainable buildings and new materials. The University is currently spending approximately $8M installing solar photovoltaic panels and LED lighting to slash energy consumption at its Wollongong and Innovation Campuses. In addition, the University is investing heavily to provide public transport services, including $350,000 per annum to support Wollongong’s free shuttle bus in addition to its own bus routes.

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A team of students and staff working in collaboration with the University of Wollongong (UOW) are participating in the 16th Conference of Youth on Climate Change (COY16), which is the precursor to the UN 26th Conference of Parties (COP26). As part of the conference, our team has developed a Youth Climate Statement in consultation with students, academics, and members of Wollongong’s wider community. The statement establishes a set of climate change commitments of the University, as well as demands on a local, national, and global level. These commitments and demands will be presented as a part of COY’s statement to the UN Climate Change Conference of Parties in Glasgow on the 31st of October-12th November 2021.  

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UOW researchers have been investigating how mangroves have responded to sea-level rise in the past, providing us with crucial information about how our shorelines will change in the future with climate change. The team received a Eureka Prize for Environmental Research in 2019.

Global Climate Change Week (GCCW) was established when academics and students at UOW got together to talk about climate change action and solutions. Now, each year, academics, professional staff and local communities around the world come together to save the planet in a global movement The week involves a range of activities including open lectures, discussion panels, environmental lifestyle workshops and other events at UOW’s Wollongong campuses and venues around the city of Wollongong. The events are aimed at capturing the attention of students, policy-makers, and the wider community, demonstrating the need to take action against climate change. In 2019, 20 events took place in Wollongong for GCCW.

     

The ECO Antarctica project has established a new trans-Tasman network of Antarctic researchers with a wide range of expertise. These include marine and terrestrial ecologists, data scientists, environmental toxicologists, climate scientists and modellers, and experts in Antarctic and environmental law and policy. In 2019, the team showcased the wonder and science of Antarctica in a public exhibition called Antarctic Footprints. This allowed the public to explore some of the challenges that Antarctica’s coastal and near-shore marine systems face. This team has also drafted recommended protocols for uniformly monitoring and comparing terrestrial and marine zones for both climate and health of biodiversity around the coast of Antarctica. Collecting local climate and biodiversity data in a uniform way will contribute to science projects and national programs, resulting in informed conservation and environmental management throughout the Antarctic.

Working with Jakarta’s government disaster management agency and Twitter, UOW researchers developed an open source platform, Petajakarta.org, to crowd-source and automate flood reporting. This technology reduced the time and cost of situational awareness, empowered citizens to report flood information through social media, and improved human adaptability to environmental disasters. The tool saved lives by enabling community and first responders to avoid and navigate safely through flood zones. Economic benefits were realised through cost savings from manual reporting and reductions in flood-related injury, property damage and disease. This model for emergency response is now seen as best practice by international agencies and has been further adopted by seven cities in four countries.