Episode 43 | Universities as Bridge Actors for Climate Justice : Conversation with Prof. Tristan McCowan

Aug 19
30 min read

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TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Kamille Beye [00:00:00]

Hello, listeners, and welcome to Conversations4Citizenship Podcast. I'm your host, Kamille Beye. Today we are delighted to welcome Professor Tristan McCowan, whose work focuses on the connections between higher education as a public good, quality in higher education, the purpose of higher education outside of workforce development and social responsibility. His research explores questions of higher education development, equity, and access to higher education opportunity and climate justice. In exploring his latest work, Universities and Climate Action, he examines the responsibilities that universities have and what they can do to help address the climate crisis. As we near 2030 and the end of the SDGs, it is natural to wonder what comes next. This important work becomes crucial as climate crises, war, rising capitalism, and artificial intelligence change the way we live, work, teach, and learn. Thank you very much for joining us at Conversations4Citizenship. To start with, Tristan, welcome. And can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how your research journey led you here?

Professor Tristan McCowan [00:01:07]

Thank you so much, Kamille. And it's a huge pleasure to be on the podcast. Thanks for this great initiative. So, I work at the Institute of Education, University College London, UK, where I'm a professor of international education, and I'm broadly located in the field of international and comparative education, with a particular focus on higher education internationally, and I'd say that my work as a whole focuses on the transformative potential of education, not that education is always transformative, but certainly it provides the key for unlocking all kinds of changes in society that we're aiming for in all education, but the bit of the puzzle which I now focus on mainly is in universities and higher education, and I'm particularly interested in the relationships between universities and society, given all of the different influences on it. Actually, my PhD research was on citizenship education, and what I was interested in at that stage was how different political visions translate into different kinds of curricular programs. I then had a phase of work looking at the right to education in the context of education for all, human rights education, and then it came to 2015 and the Millennium Development Goals were ending, and they were launching a new development agenda that would become Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals, and at that stage I wrote a book about the position of higher education and universities in the SDG agenda, and at that point I started getting more and more interested in environmental issues, climate crisis, so most of my work from that point onwards, over the last decade, has been focusing on higher education, the SDGs, sustainability, and climate, so that's my current focus, but and I suppose it's it's easy in hindsight to find connections between the different things that one has done in one's life, but I suppose the thread that I can see now going through that is the ecological crises we're facing really have a human dimension, and citizenship, human rights, environment are very closely connected in these twin social and ecological crises, and the solutions that we need in terms of transformation of citizens, both individual and collective transformation of consciousness and action. Those are things which are common.

Dr. Kamille Beye [00:04:07]

Thank you so much, and so I want to just touch on a couple of things that you mentioned. One, the role of citizens in this, and I think that ties back to the idea of the university as well. So, as students, citizens, lecturers, and university, what role can the university play in addressing the climate crisis with the idea of transformation of citizens?

Professor Tristan McCowan [00:04:29]

absolutely. So, I mean, I work in a university, I'm an advocate of universities in the role of higher education, but it doesn't mean that I'm not critical of them. I think the first thing we need to do is to acknowledge the historical complicity of universities in getting us into this very problematic position that we're in, universities may not be the primary cause of that, but they're certainly part of the problem historically in all sorts of ways, both, you know, in more concrete ways, in being the origin of science and technological innovation that has been directly applied to destruction of the ecosystem, exploitation of human communities, and so forth, but also more broadly, in terms of the part that universities have played in the paradigm of human separateness from the rest of nature, of accumulation and exploitation of nature for human benefit, and the accumulation of wealth to absurd levels, and the great degree of waste, and so forth, so universities are complicit, they're part of the role of formal education systems in promoting that, and it's important to acknowledge that, and it's not just a historical role, universities have a complex and contradictory involvement today, which is partly positive and partly negative. So, I think we need to acknowledge that, and then we need to try and understand those different, sometimes contradictory roles, and then try and move it in the right direction, so there's an analytical and there's a normative task, and in my own work I try and contribute to both of those things. Quite a lot of my work is developing theoretical frameworks for understanding the different kinds of roles that universities can play, the impacts of different activities, but also advocating for movements in the right direction. Universities have a particularly important role today, because they are educating an increasingly large proportion of global youth, and sometimes older generations, as well, you know, we're now looking at a gross enrolment ratio globally of more than 40%, and there's been a huge expansion over the last 30 years or so, and that expansion shows no sign of dampening, also universities train professionals for specific roles, many of which are critical to addressing climate crisis, not to mention their roles in research knowledge production of different varieties, so there are all sorts of roles that universities play that are critical for providing us with the tools to address the climate crisis and broader sustainability process, but I think it's important to develop a broader understanding of universities, and in my work, I work with three ideas of the roles that universities play.

Dr. Kamille Beye [00:07:57]

I can't hear you. It just went out for a second.

Professor Tristan McCowan [00:08:01]

Oh, sorry, can you hear me now? Okay. There was, yeah, my, computer started making a loud noise. I think it's calming down. It was maybe overheating.

Professor Tristan McCowan [00:08:12]

Okay, so just to recap, most of those impacts are in what we might call a projective phase, so what universities can do to positively influence society outside of themselves to project their positive influence out on society both in time and space, so creating graduates who will then go out after their university experience and outside of the university to have a positive impact on society, creating research and other forms of innovation that can renew technologies for use in society, spreading ideas that can positively influence society. So, this is what we might call the projective influence of the university, but it's important to highlight two other ways of thinking about how universities interact with sustainability. The second is the expressive role, so this is practising what one preaches, actually walking the walk, as well as talking the talk. What do universities do themselves in their own backyard, their own carbon emissions, the way they treat their own staff, you know, the human community, as well as the direct environmental impacts that they have. So this is a very important piece of the puzzle, as well, and the final one is the constructive, and what I mean by the constructive is how universities actually shape the ideas that we're dealing with here. So, the very idea of sustainability, for example, is contested. Sustainable development, sustainability can mean a whole range of different things. The root of the concept is pretty bare, really. It's just about something that can continue through time that doesn't extinguish itself, and it can be filled in in all sorts of different ways. So, universities are central actors in rethinking what we mean by these concepts, and a whole host of other ideas as well, and shaping ideas of how human society should organise itself, and providing a space for others to be involved in this dialogue, and it's that constructive role, which I think is particularly important for universities. They're not the only societal actors that play that role, but they are a very important one, and we need to carefully defend the academic freedom that will allow universities to play that role.

Dr. Kamille Beye [00:10:55]

So, this is what you call in your book the idea of the university being a bridge actor between the communities at large and industry.

Professor Tristan McCowan [00:11:07]

So, bridge actors can come in different types. I mean, we can think of the university as a whole as a bridging actor, or we can think of specific communities, people that serve as bridging actors between the university and society, and it's that, that way that I've used it in, so in my book, Universities and Climate Action, which was published in 2025, I put forward a scheme for understanding the links between universities, society, and the ecosystem as a whole, and we can think of universities with all their different functions emanating impact outwards, possibly directly onto the ecosystem, so for example, the energy usage that they have, the kinds of direct emissions through fuel, as well as through electricity use, and upstream and downstream emissions, and so forth. So these are the kinds of direct impact that you've got on society, but actually, most of the impacts of universities, and the largest impacts in the long term, are indirect, and that's through the influence that they have on society, the way the economy functions, political sphere, cultural sphere, ideas about circulating around society, and this influence on society to a large extent takes place through what you can call bridging actors, so these are people that come into direct contact with the university, but take that influence out to broader communities. So, the most important constituency here are students themselves. So, most of the people in universities have a temporary existence, and they spend one, two, three, four, sometimes more, years within the sphere of the university, and then they go out and fulfill their lives as citizens, workers, their personal lives, but there are other communities and organisations that also come into that contact, so sometimes local communities will be involved in events and use facilities of universities, governments, private sector, civil society organizations might commission research or be involved in research and other forms of community engagement. So, there are other organisations that also serve as bridging actors, but possibly social media platforms or mainstream media also might interact with universities and filter the kinds of knowledge coming out, so this is what I mean by bridging actors, and they act as a filter, but they can also magnify these influences from the university outwards.

Dr. Kamille Beye [00:14:18]

and you talk about climate change as a wicked problem in your book, and I would like you to please elaborate on that for our audience. Why do you call it such? And then what's the difference between how you describe the climate crisis and maybe global warming?

Professor Tristan McCowan [00:14:37]

Sure, so wicked problem is not my own phrase, it's been in circulation for a few decades now, and what's meant by it is not wicked in the sense of evil, although very often the problems do cause extremely harmful impacts, but in the sense of wicked, in the sense of extremely difficult to resolve, so the idea of a wicked problem, as opposed to a simple problem to solve, is that there isn't a predictable intervention that can be implemented in a linear system, those kinds of problems might still be difficult, requiring a lot of resources and political will to solve, but at least the answers are straightforward and not contested. A wicked problem has a lot of those political difficulties as well, but the goalposts are shifting, so the kinds of policy responses that we might implement, or individual responses, might have different kinds of impact depending on when they're carried out, so in the climate crisis there are very worrying tipping points where various factors start to coalesce, and if action is delayed too much, the acceleration of the interaction of those processes might be so great that it's almost impossible to reverse. There might also be what could be called emergent properties, so factors that were not there at the start of the process, but that appear at a certain point in time. All of these things make these ecological challenges, climate, but also biodiversity, amongst many others, extremely difficult to solve, because they involve interactions between complex systems, the environmental system itself, atmosphere, and so forth, is a complex system. Human societies obviously display complexity, so these things may make them extremely difficult for us to address. On the second of your questions around global warming, so I think there's a, there's been a shift historically that the phrase global warming was very common in the 1990s perhaps the 2000s, and climate change more common for the last 15 years or so, I think. I read that 2015 was the year when there was a tipping point, when there were more Google searches for climate change than global warming, so that was probably the transition point, but it's been a slow transition, and you very rarely hear people use the phrase global warming nowadays, climate change is absolutely the dominant expression in all different kinds of constituency, and there are various reasons for that shift, some of them relating to the phenomenon itself, and global warming indicates increasing average temperatures, but people prefer climate change in the sense that it indicates the complexity of those processes, which may not always, you know, in a particular location, translate into hotter weather necessarily, because there might be a variety of different kinds of weather impacts, and sometimes colder weather, and so forth. So that's one of the reasons for preferring climate change. And then there are different kinds of interpretation. Some people say climate change is a bit more palatable, because it feels neutral and it's a more policy-friendly phrase, so it's better for policy uptake, but a lot of advocates, activists are critical of both of those phrases, and prefer either climate crisis or climate emergency in order to express the urgency of what's happening, climate change can also seem like something that's inevitable and harmless. So, using the words crisis or emergency indicates both that it's urgent in a time-bound sense, but also that it's extremely damaging, so, so many people use those phrases now. Of course, the complication of that is that it may be objectively a crisis emergency, but it doesn't mean that people are treating it as such, and sometimes the discourse of climate crisis and emergency may feel a little bit rhetorical in a situation in which people really aren't treating it, and you can see a real contrast with Covid, where concerted action was taken by governments and individuals, because, albeit with a considerable delay in some cases, it was treated as an emergency, with ultimately quite radical measures.

Dr. Kamille Beye [00:20:14]

I feel like if you go back to the COVID idea, it seems like the countries where people were dying, and of course where they had more resources, one they were delayed, but then they started helping, but they didn't help the poorer countries or those suffering the most, which takes me to the next question about the knock-on effects of climate change, and how can universities help communities that have done the least to contribute to climate change, or who have less of a carbon footprint?

Professor Tristan McCowan [00:20:42]

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is a, again, just going back to our terminology, the question of climate justice has become quite prevalent for exactly this reason, because people want to highlight the fact that this is really a question of fairness and justice, exactly as you've said. You know, everybody is affected by the climate crisis, ultimately, or will be affected if they're not currently being affected, but those impacts are not even, and depending on where one is located geographically, but also socioeconomically, there will be different strengths and types and colours of impact, and unsurprisingly, the wealthier people will be better equipped to protect themselves from those impacts, and then on the other hand, not all are equally responsible for the root causes of the climate crisis and the other social and ecological crises, and the wealthier communities in almost all cases have higher carbon emissions, and therefore bear the brunt of responsibility for those impacts, so this is obviously an extremely unfair situation, in which those with the greatest responsibility receive the least negative impacts. Not only is it an unfair situation, but it also makes it even harder to resolve the situation, because, of course, there's less incentive to change amongst those people who are actually causing the most damage, so it's actually contributing to the wickedness of that problem, as we discussed before, in terms of what universities can do. I think universities do have global responsibilities, and there's a lot that they can do for contexts all around the world, but I think we shouldn't slip into a kind of neocolonial perspective that universities in wealthy countries can save everyone. I think there's a balance between having responsibility, but also not getting beyond oneself in terms of what universities can do for places on the other side of the world, and ultimately what we need is an international higher education system in which there are high quality institutions everywhere, all countries, and not just countries, but contexts within countries, all need functioning, vibrant, good quality institutions, because responding to the climate crisis is necessarily contextual. It involves the universities working in particular locations, adapting the knowledge that is generated there to those specific places, educating real human beings with other real human beings. So, for these reasons, there can't be a small number of star institutions that solve the problem for everybody else. Also, there are some things that a few institutions can do. You can create a vaccine, you can make a technological innovation, and they might be used by millions of people. Those are important contributions, but they're not the only kind of contribution,

Dr. Kamille Beye [00:24:29]

and you had mentioned something earlier about the relationship between society and the ecosystem, and in your book you talk about the breakdown between the human and the non-human world, and I want to know, how, what's that relationship with the university, and of course, the idea of this climate justice, because some places are going to be affected more than others, and I'm thinking about people's reliance on agriculture, etc. and so I'm just wanting to know what your perspective is on that.

Professor Tristan McCowan [00:25:07]

Yeah, so you know there is a long, sad history of negative human impact on the rest of nature, and I think even just the use of the term nature is problematic, and this varies between different languages, but many languages have a concept of nature, which excludes the human being, it's already problematic just the terms that we're using, because, of course, humans are a part of nature, but we very often use the word nature to mean that which is outside of humans and the things that humans have made directly, and this is a real problem. Through all phases of human existence, we have had negative impacts on the environment, sadly, and even 50,000 years ago, there's evidence of extinctions of megafauna, different kinds of animal populations, so it's not that we were ever in a golden age where we had an entirely positive impact on everyone, everything else around us, in terms of species and stuff. Having said that, there is a qualitative change in the past half millennium, so with the rise of capitalism, colonialism, and intensification of industrial production, consumption, so forth. There's been a step change in the negative impacts we've had on the rest of nature, and that's been brought about by a range of different things, partly the economic system of capitalism that has allowed for and encouraged far greater accumulation, new technologies that have allowed for much higher rates of industrial production, but also destruction of natural environments, but also changes in conceptions of human beings and their relationships with the rest of nature, so all of this division and its various manifestations are really at the root of the ecological crisis that we have.

Dr. Kamille Beye [00:27:49]

so I bring you to my idea of if we're treating nature outside of humans and vice versa. I think about the idea of interdisciplinary work in the university, so How can we increase discussions about climate change in every field, considering every field and every person has a part to play, at least in the universe, excuse me, especially in the university.

Professor Tristan McCowan [00:28:14]

I think that that's exactly the kind of link to make, and it can be hard to see what the role is of arts and humanities, or even social sciences, in addressing these questions. I think historically, environmental education, climate change, sustainability, all these issues have been dealt with, most commonly in geography and in some of the sciences, obviously environmental science in some of the root sciences as well, so these are where it's most commonly dealt with, but even in those subjects it is approached from a disciplinary perspective, and I think we need to think about multi-, inter- and transdisciplinary approaches, so multidisciplinary means thinking about how we embed climate and sustainability within existing disciplines, and even literature. I mean, there are lots of things that literary studies, arts can do to engage with ideas of climate and sustainability, particularly given the fact that, as we've discussed already, that these questions about how human beings see themselves and their relationships between one another and with the outside world are crucial to causing some of these problems, but of course, social sciences, economics, political science, sociology. It would be criminal not to address some of these things nowadays, because they are part of our existence, even without any advocacy. And then the natural sciences are involved, so we need to think about multidisciplinarity, but also interdisciplinarity, bringing those perspectives together, so that we can address these issues. Going back to the wicked problem idea, in order to look at something in its full complexity, we need to bring multiple perspectives to bear, not only separately but also in dialogue with one another, which is the interdisciplinary perspective, and finally transdisciplinary working, whether we're talking about education or research, going beyond disciplines altogether, and there have been some signs of this in universities of having challenge-led perspectives where we get away from disciplines and we think about building in all of those different approaches in a thematically focused way. Yeah, it is a very important area of work.

Dr. Kamille Beye [00:30:56]

Thank you. I have one more question, and then turn it over to Stella. So, I wanted to know, do you have any examples of some actions that universities are taking now that are helping to address climate change in their local area, or maybe beyond?

Professor Tristan McCowan [00:31:11]

Absolutely, yeah. So, a lot of the most inspiring examples that I've seen have been through my involvement in the Climate U project. So, this was a project which ran from 2020 to 2024 looking at how universities can engage with the climate crisis, involving lots of different countries around the world, and we've now, since the project ended at the start of 2024 we've become a network, and we have about 30 different members across the Americas, Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Pacific, and many of those members are in the Global South, in quite difficult circumstances, in terms of their resources available for higher education, and the challenges they are facing, but nevertheless they carry out extremely inspiring, impactful work in relation to climate action. Just to give a few examples of that, working with partners in Fiji, at the University of the South Pacific, working with coastal communities there. Needless to say, the Pacific Islands are faced with rising sea levels, incursion of salt water into agricultural lands, and destruction of coastal defences, and the universities are working with local communities to protect their communities, but using indigenous knowledge, and then working with schools to embed that indigenous knowledge alongside and in dialogue with mainstream scientific knowledge in schools, so that's one of the examples, also some fantastic community-led work in Tanzania, a community in the Indian Ocean, working with coral regeneration and mangrove regeneration as well, and then working together with the university to systematize the research that they've been carrying out, and to help other communities along the coast also join in their efforts. Also, some very inspiring work in Brazil, working together with schools to develop new approaches for engaging school children, there's one initiative in São Paulo state called Climate Detective, where the children went out and collected data in their communities, visiting different households and different features of their communities really being agents of the research process, and this very much follows the participatory action research model, which we implemented as part of the project, where communities become the researchers rather than the objects of research. There are, of course, lots of inspiring examples. I think it's important that we celebrate them, as well as point to the very real challenges.

Dr. Kamille Beye [00:34:32]

I think that's amazing. I have so many more questions, but for the sake of time, I'm going to pass it over to Stella. Stella?

Dr. Stella Micheong Cheong [00:34:42]

Oh, thank you so much, Tristan, for your inspiring talk. I really like your point and perspective on higher education, the role of higher education, and how to bridge the local community and civil society, and all of my questions are related to practical issues. I'm really interested in your thoughts, your reflections, and your experience. My first question is about the interdisciplinary research, as you mentioned, about the multidisciplinary approach, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach. I love this, but in reality, in practice, you know, as an interdisciplinary researcher, now I'm trying to conduct interdisciplinary research here at Yonsei with my colleagues, who are experts in neuroscience and sociology. Sociology is okay, but also psychology, and even library studies and business management, but I realised that it's really hard to mingle and collaborate, really, so mostly we ended up designing methodology, mixed methods, rather than shaping a new conceptual framework, which I had really hoped for. So I wonder what your thoughts are. In this context, how can you encourage your colleagues to bring multiple perspectives together to shape a new theoretical framework, or to reconcile these deeper disciplinary divides?

Professor Tristan McCowan [00:36:24]

Thanks. So, yeah, I mean, I think the educational side of things, teaching, learning, curriculum, and so forth, is actually moving more quickly in that direction than the research or knowledge production side of it, because if you look at the school level, it is still for the most part quite rigidly disciplinary in terms of root disciplines, and there are a few transversal areas at the school level that are interdisciplinary, but they tend to be quite marginal areas in the curriculum, social studies, life skills, and so forth, but at the university level there are definite shifts towards more interdisciplinary courses that are being offered at all levels, a lot of them are in professional areas, but a huge proportion of university students, even at undergraduate level, are not studying traditional disciplines, such as history, chemistry, economics, and so forth. So, there is a shift in education, but a slower shift, I think, in the research, scholarship, knowledge production sphere of things, where those disciplinary divides are held in place for good and bad reasons. I mean, there is, there are people who provide quite robust defenses of traditional disciplines, because they are, they have procedures and methods, designs, and criteria for truth validation that have emerged over long time periods and stood the test of time, and that have generated very valuable outputs, but at the same time, you know, a lot of it is simple conservatism and path dependency, because we've got a set of journals, we've got a set of academic posts, which then translate into the next generation, and it's quite hard to shift, so I think it is a difficult movement, you know, I don't think most people are arguing that we should abolish all disciplines with immediate effect, but certainly there needs to be a greater openness to interdisciplinary forms of work, and there are many ways in which you can encourage that, both through financial means, providing research funds, which a lot of countries and institutions are doing exactly that, building interdisciplinary work into research funding schemes, or sometimes that can take place, a lot of universities, including UCL, where I work, have challenge-led internal funding for students and staff, where you can have seed funding to work with an intrinsic interdisciplinary element that has to be built into it. Sometimes there are more radical approaches to restructuring institutions, so that they get rid of the departmental disciplinary structure and move into different kinds of faculty or school or department that build in that interdisciplinary element, but it's easier in some places than others. I work in an education faculty, which has always been fairly interdisciplinary, but in some areas it is much harder to break out of tradition.

Dr. Stella Micheong Cheong [00:40:15]

I do agree, but I think it's really helpful to all interdisciplinary researchers. In terms of workforce development, nowadays I'm conducting research on workforce development; that's why I wonder about your thoughts. Your work explores the purpose of higher education outside of workforce development and focuses on higher education as a public good, which is so fantastic. However, the global transition to green economy demands massive specialized workforce. So, how should universities balance the urgent societal demand, and the associated demand from students, for so-called green jobs with their broader, more philosophical purpose as a public good? Unfortunately, it seems that universities haven't yet developed proper curricula designed to produce graduates who are equipped to meet the associated demand. What are your thoughts on this?

Professor Tristan McCowan [00:41:36]

So I can understand why I might have given the impression of being against workforce development, but I don't. I think it's more of a rebalancing act, because I'm not suggesting that universities shouldn't be involved in preparing people. I don't think it's coherent to say that universities should produce oven-ready graduates, as it were, you know, there will always be an important part of learning about jobs, which has to take place in the workplace itself, and it's certainly not the only role of universities to prepare people for the world of work, but we have to recognize that the massive expansion of higher education that I alluded to before has taken place predominantly because people want and need jobs and they want to improve their conditions of living and those of their families, and a higher education degree contributes to that, which is an empirical fact, even though we can't guarantee a so-called graduate job for everybody who comes out of universities. People, at least, want to improve their chances of getting one. University degrees certainly do provide a chance, so, and it's also important to recognise that there's never been an age in which universities were completely dislocated from the world of work. Through all of the different traditions of higher learning around the world, in Asia or Africa, all of those early forms of higher learning had some connection with different kinds of high-level professions, even if they weren't only work-oriented, so we can't get away from the connection between higher education and work, but I think that we have to think of it in a certain kind of way, and for me, the two principles are that you can prepare people for work as long as you avoid two things, firstly avoiding unethical employment, so a lot of what has been encouraged in universities is really a kind of anything-goes global employability, but really the aim of the game is just to slot people at any cost into the highest paying job, which they can achieve, regardless of the moral formation of that person, and the kinds of work that they might be going into. I think this is clearly something that we need to oppose. A successful career is not the only criterion by which we can judge the fruits of education in universities. It might seem like an obvious point to make, but unfortunately it hasn't been taken up by most institutions, and the second is that we need to think beyond zero sum game employability. Higher education is a positional good in the sense that, in addition to providing absolute benefits to people, it also provides relative benefits: you can queue-jump, as it were, and get ahead of somebody else in competing for scarce jobs because you happen to have got a higher degree or a degree from a more prestigious institution, you're not becoming a more productive member of society, but you're using your certification to gain advantage over others, and it's that kind of zero sum game employability, for which people use the higher education system all the time, with the complicity of institutions, and which we need to avoid, so as long as we can avoid the unethical and zero sum game versions of employability, then we can think about how universities can actually create a workforce which is ethical and principled and which can contribute to the public good through their work rather than just thinking of jobs and high paying salaries as ends in themselves, about how work can be productive and for the benefit of all, and then we can fit those green jobs that you mentioned easily into that kind of framework, because, of course, really productive work for the benefit of all is, in today's world, going to be work which actually contributes to regeneration rather than destruction.

Dr. Stella Micheong Cheong [00:46:34]

Yeah, I do agree, and I'd like to ask you about the link between educational equity and climate solutions. I mean, as teachers, as researchers, how can we teach or guide ordinary citizens who deny climate change? There are some people like that. I'd like to share my own personal anecdote. During my PhD, I lived in a convent, you might recall, where a carpenter named Michael was responsible for maintenance and repairs. He's such a nice guy, but one particularly hot day, we passed each other and exchanged greetings: "Oh, hi, hello. Michael, isn't it incredibly hot today? At this rate, this may end up being the coolest summer we experience for the rest of our lives." He immediately asked me why I thought that, and I started to explain that the Earth was becoming increasingly warmer due to climate change, and asked whether he had seen the reports on BBC News; every single day, BBC News reports on climate change and the melting Arctic ice cap, but surprisingly, Michael firmly insisted that both climate change and global warming were a myth and a lie. I wondered how on earth I could convince him that this is the truth, but I failed to convince him. It made me wonder whether we rely too heavily on universities and the expert community to discuss complex issues rather than keeping in touch with ordinary people. You know what I mean? How can we share knowledge in ways that are meaningful and accessible to people from different social and educational backgrounds?

Professor Tristan McCowan [00:49:38]

I think that's, yeah, a great question. And I, I remember a phrase of Chris Rapley, a colleague at UCL, saying that, you know, as universities we can't just throw papers over the wall, as if we could just produce research and then society will just naturally take it up, and I think we need to think really creatively about that kind of engagement with the general public, some people, some academics do this extremely well, but not all. I think you've touched on a really crucial issue around climate change denial. It's a small minority of people globally. I mean, all surveys conducted indicate that the vast majority of people around the world believe that climate change is real and take it seriously and support policies that deal with it, but there is a minority, concentrated in certain countries where there have been active lobbies trying to encourage it; the US and Brazil are examples, they're not the only ones, but they're examples of countries where corporations, sometimes allied with certain political interests, have been actively propagating ideas to try and deflect people's ideas on climate. The strategies have changed somewhat over time. There was an outright denialism that was quite common some years ago. It's a little less common now; your carpenter notwithstanding, Stella, most people have moved on to a slightly more subtle strategy now, which is to accept the existence of climate change, but to deflect responsibility, perhaps moving responsibility from corporations or from governments to individuals, or maybe deflecting it into the future, so it's not such an urgent problem, or through technological faith: the idea that we don't really need to do anything, because all we need to do is invest a little bit, and the technologies that will appear in 5, 10, or 20 years will save us all. So there are various ways of deflecting, and these are not casual or coincidental, these are actively planned, and if you want to see a very good analysis of this, the book and documentary Merchants of Doubt show a very clear trajectory from the way that the tobacco company lobbies tried to deal with the harmful health effects to the same strategies now being adopted by fossil fuel companies to try and distract and to delay, and so forth. So these are very well funded lobbies that use very sophisticated tactics to try and put off action into the future to try and maintain profits, so there are very strong forces at work, even so, the vast majority of people do believe that climate change is real, and the vast majority of practising scientists also support that, but nevertheless, it puts us in a difficult position in both research and education, because, of course, it's antithetical to the scientific method not to entertain some doubts. I mean, science advances because we open our minds to the possibility that we're wrong, and so the rather defensive position that scientists have had to take in order to counter the denialist lobby, you know, is quite a difficult balancing act, really, to maintain one's openness as a scientist, but also having to advocate for scientific consensus, is a difficult one, equally in the classroom, it's quite hard to have an open environment where you allow all views to be expressed, or perhaps all views within limits, but also to address the reality of people's doubts about climate change, is a difficult balancing act. I think that we shouldn't ignore climate denial. I think it's something that we should bring out into the open and to dissect and to think about explicitly rather than pretending it doesn't exist, because I think it's an important learning opportunity for our students to try and understand what the denialist position is really saying, where does it come from, what are the implications, is it really coherent? I think this is actually a very important learning opportunity for students to try and understand things, and various other conspiracy theories or other minority views. I think epistemically it's a very important process for us to think through these, and we should approach it not as a terrible threat that should be excluded from classrooms, but to deal with it and try and understand it, and then go beyond.

Dr. Stella Micheong Cheong [00:54:55]

Yeah, yeah, precisely. So, thanks to Michael, since then I have thought about this critical issue. How can I teach or guide those kind of people, and how can we make a conversation with the ordinary citizen? So, yeah, let me open the last question, maybe this one is my last question, because you pointed out the root causes. In terms of root causes, I think honestly the current environmental crisis, or climate crisis, results from the Industrial Revolution and the developed countries that led it, but nowadays there are many developing countries. While I was preparing for this episode, I saw some statistical evidence, developing countries like Indonesia still rely heavily on coal for around 60% of their electricity. I was really shocked by seeing this evidence, and they face a massive financial gap in meeting their climate mitigation targets. So, I wonder what your thoughts are. How can we resolve this Global North and South divide? Have you ever thought about this? How can universities in the Global North effectively collaborate with and support institutions in the Global South to address this monumental financial and technical disparity?

Professor Tristan McCowan [00:56:46]

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we are in an extremely difficult position, because we have a dysfunctional global governance set up. We have 200 or so nation states that are mostly in competition with one another, militarily, economically, in other kinds of ways, and it's extremely difficult to do the kinds of things that we need to do all together to address this problem, and then, of course, just added to the mix are historical injustices of colonialism and inequalities, and you know the citizens and governments of the poorest countries in the world, you know, rightly say, well, you know, you have enriched yourselves through destroying your environment and the global environment, so you know, don't stop us from improving the quality of life of our citizens by doing the same thing. It's completely understandable, but actually, if that happens, if every country proceeds on exactly the same pathway through dirty industrialization, then we're completely done for as a planet, so we have to go on a different pathway. How we get there is an extremely difficult thing, and it absolutely involves changing the unfair global rules, reducing the disparities in resource usage between the wealthiest and the poorest communities in the world, and wealthier countries supporting the poorest countries in making that transition, and of course it's ultimately absolutely in the interests of the poorest countries that they do leapfrog technologically, and they don't move through that phase of extremely destructive industrialization, because of course it's better for their own populations ultimately, both in terms of the global impacts and the local pollution as well, but it's not an easy transition, and I think we need to overcome some quite extraordinary barriers that we have in our competitive global political system, in order to provide the kinds of cooperative basis for supporting all countries.

Dr. Stella Micheong Cheong [00:59:24]

Yeah, I do agree. Tristan, I'm going to wrap up, but before that, would you like to share with our listeners a little bit about your current research or future research?

Professor Tristan McCowan [00:59:42]

Absolutely, so the main work that I'm involved in at the moment is around the post-2030 agenda, so what's going to replace the SDGs, the Sustainable Development Goals in 2030. What's the new development agenda going to be? Should the idea of sustainable development be at the heart of it, or should we replace that idea with another idea, pluralism, fairer futures, some other kind of idea, some idea of justice that might provide a firmer basis for the future trajectory of the world, and how, if at all, is that architecture of global development going to be set up and regulated across all of those countries? So that's what I'm involved in now, opening spaces for the educational community, universities particularly, to be involved in those debates, because it will be too late if we leave it much longer. The agenda will already be set in distant corridors, and I think it's really important that we come together at this stage and have a broad public debate on what kind of world we want to create and how that should be agreed between all the countries.

Dr. Stella Micheong Cheong [01:01:14]

Wow, Tristan, I really like your inspiring talk, and thank you for reminding us that universities must transcend their reputation as an academic aristocracy, and move beyond neo-colonial approaches, to become essential bridge actors in the pursuit of climate justice. I believe this conversation will help global citizens carry this call for deep reflection, civic action, and global solidarity forward as we work together alongside our local community to build a more equitable future. I'm closing the episode. I'm Stella Cheong. Thanks for listening to Conversations4Citizenship, and look for us on Twitter at @C4C_Ed and bluesky @c4cpodcast.bsky.social. A transcript of today's conversation with Professor Tristan McCowan can be found at www.conversations4citizenship.com. This episode of Conversations4Citizenship was produced by me, Stella Cheong, Adam Lang, and Kamille Beye. Recorded and sound mixed by Stella Cheong. Thank you so much. Take good care. Bye bye.

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of Conversations4Citizenship, Professor Tristan McCowan of UCL traces higher education's complicity in ecological breakdown before revealing its transformative potential. Moving from the projective, expressive, and constructive roles of universities to inspiring community-led initiatives in Fiji, Tanzania, and Brazil, he shows how institutions can become bridge actors for climate justice. The conversation closes by asking what should follow the SDGs after 2030. Listen wherever you find podcasts.

EPISODE NOTES

How should universities respond to a crisis they helped to create? In this episode of Conversations4Citizenship, Dr Kamille Beye and Dr Stella Cheong are joined by Professor Tristan McCowan of UCL, author of Universities and Climate Action, for a wide-ranging conversation on higher education and climate justice. Beginning with the historical complicity of universities in ecological breakdown, the discussion moves through their projective, expressive, and constructive roles, the nature of climate change as a wicked problem, and the uneven burdens borne by communities least responsible for the crisis. From there, the conversation turns to interdisciplinary collaboration, the tension between green workforce demands and higher education as a public good, and the challenge of engaging climate denial in everyday life. It closes with inspiring examples from Fiji, Tanzania, and Brazil, and a call to shape the post-2030 agenda together. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts, and join the global conversation.

This episode is hosted by Dr. Kamille Beye. Please subscribe to the podcast through Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music or Audible. You may also follow @c4cpodcast.bsky.social on Bluesky. We look forward to hearing your feedback. If you would like to explore participating in our podcast and submit your blog post to the C4C, do not hesitate to reach out through the online participation form or email us at conversations4citizenship@gmail.com

If you are curious about Climate Crisis and the Role of University check out his new book, 'Universities and Climate Action' and read his works linked below.

McCowan. T. (2025).Universities and Climate Action. UCL Press.
Mccowan, T., & Buckner, E. (2025). Critical Perspectives on Universities and the Sustainable Development Goals. Comparative Education Review, 69(4), 697-702.
Buckner, E., McCowan, T., Faul, M. V., Welply, O., Jiménez, J., & Denton, F. (2025). Charting the path after 2030: what should higher education’s role be in the future of the sustainable development agenda?. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 1-20.
Centre for Global Higher Education