Commitment in action: taking the Durham Declaration on Climate and Sustainability to the EU level
30 April 2025
Emmanuelle Gardan, Coimbra Group Office Director
As a network of universities which recently committed to enhancing their collaboration on climate change and sustainability, there is a lot that the Coimbra Group can do to facilitate the work of the European Commission related to climate and environmental policy. This is the message that echoed on 30 April during a fruitful high-level meeting where the Coimbra Group was invited by the European Commission’s Director-General for Climate Action, Mr Kurt Vandenberghe, and his team, to outline the main orientations of the Durham Declaration and its next steps.
The discussion reflected a great sense of alignment between the Coimbra Group (CG) and DG CLIMA. In these times marked by radical changes globally, but one unchanged issue at the nexus of all others – the challenge of climate change – the cooperation between the academic community and the European Commission was emphasized as being more essential than ever. As such the Durham Declaration was welcomed as a very strong signal.
Several promising opportunities for future dialogue and collaboration with DG CLIMA have emerged from this meeting, which was attended by the Executive Board (EB) Chair, Ludovic Thilly, together with the Vice-Chancellor of Durham University, Karen O’Brien, EB member Danny Donoghue, and CG Brussels Office. They will further nurture the first orientations of the implementation roadmap.
The need to continue doing science and advancing the scientific knowledge base on climate change and this, in all disciplines, including also the social sciences and humanities, was largely discussed in light of the current context. It was also commonly agreed that more transdisciplinary research and cross-sectoral work are still needed in this field.
The meeting addressed the critical role that universities play in translating knowledge into innovations and solutions to the climate crisis. Networks like the Coimbra Group, where member universities are closely engaged with their cities and local communities, can greatly contribute to scale up local experiments at European and global levels to help achieve the climate and sustainable development goals. They can also help building more success stories about sustainability, and what it means for the industry, for the economy, for society.
Other dimensions tackled during the exchange of views include the impact of education; universities’ engagement in science-based policy making; climate disinformation; as well as the importance of international engagement on climate and sustainability. Universities have by nature a fundamental role to play here. At the Coimbra Group, we can count on the Global Partnerships and Latin America Working Groups and their long-standing relations with partners outside Europe. The announcement of a presentation of the Durham Declaration at the COP30 in Brazil later this year also received positive feedback.
We now look forward to engaging CG members in this constructive dialogue with the Commission, in alignment with the commitment taken to “support transformative change through our actions as partners with public organisations”, one of the seven principles promoted in the Durham Declaration signed by the Rectors of CG Universities on 26 March 2025.