University Of Edinburgh: Commitment made to reverse nature loss

The Nature Positive Universities Alliance is a network of universities that have made an official pledge to halt, prevent and reverse nature loss by addressing their own impacts and restoring ecosystems harmed by their activities.

The alliance was launched during the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15) by the University of Oxford and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

111 Higher Education institutions from 44 countries have so far taken the pledge which aims to drive the world’s higher education sector towards a nature-positive future.

Nature positive
The alliance has been created to support the UN’s Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, a movement to avert climate catastrophe and mass extinction.

Universities that have made a pledge will take action to tackle their own supply chains and operational impacts on nature.

Institutions will also be encouraged to help guide wider communities to address the climate and ecological crises.

The University is delighted to be a founding signatory for the Nature Positive Alliance. Society faces twin climate and ecological crises and all of us, including Universities, need to play our part. We are already taking action, but with this pledge we commit publicly to going further and faster during this UN decade of ecosystem restoration

Dave Gorman
Director of Department for Social Responsibility and Sustainability, the University of Edinburgh
Ambitious targets
The University of Edinburgh has set itself ambitious targets to address climate, environmental and sustainability challenges, including a target to becoming net zero by 2040.

Other commitments include a complete divestment from fossil fuels and plans to capture and store more than one million tonnes of unavoidable carbon dioxide emissions.