LiA Reflection #1 - Creating a Climate Change & Sustainability Leadership Programme

For my Leadership in Action Project, I had the absolute honour and privilege of developing a proposal for a Climate Change & Sustainability Leadership Programme for Durham University, in collaboration with the University’s Centre for Sustainable Development Law and Policy (CSDLP).
The aim of this project is to provide an interdisciplinary exploration of climate change and sustainability for participants. This part-time programme would teach and enable students to find links between crucial topics of climate change and sustainability, fostering a multidisciplinary understanding and appreciation of these interlinking issues. For example, students would investigate the natural and human drivers of climate change, explore the philosophical and sociological questions surrounding climate change and from this delve into climate justice, law and climate ethics. Moreover, the programme would empower and give agency to the participants, through providing an environment in which intellectual exploration, bold thinking and civic engagement are encouraged and supported.
This programme would aim to serve the communities of the Northeast, specifically Durham and Newcastle. The Northeastern Chamber of Commerce have identified a massive skills gap in the current and upcoming workforce concerning sustainability and climate change expertise in all areas - such as technical, legal, social, and this programme would aim to help educate and empower upcoming students in these fields.
Outcomes from my LiA are to research and create the curriculum for such a programme, illustrate the need for this in the Northeast, and to present the full proposal to the CSDLP at the end of my LiA.
So far, this has been a thought-provoking, challenging and fun project. It is a very moving experience to go from seeing how climate and sustainability is taught, to then proposing how the ideology, methods and content of sustainability and climate change could be changed to synergise a different approach to how we see and teach about these prevalent issues. My supervisors, Dr. Rozemarijn Roland-Holst and Dr. Simona Capisani have been incredibly supportive, helpful and asked really good questions when I was hitting roadblocks. They have really stretched my understanding and perceptions of climate change and sustainability and I am so grateful for their time and feedback.
The biggest leadership learnings from this project can be summarised into three main categories and are as follows:
- Leaders can catalyse their impact by listening and leading through their humility:
I think what this experience really showed me is that leaders are not meant to have all the answers, but should embody humility by listening to others that do, and then collate these findings into a strategic approach.
- There is great power in the narratives we hear and how they are communicated:
Through developing this curriculum, I have seen how sustainability & climate change has been taught, and how this influences our perceptions of these problems and our ability to solve them. As leaders we should understand the power of societal narratives and try to understand how they might be impacting our people and teams.
- We have so much capacity to do good!
In a world strife with so many problems, it can sometimes feel like our actions have relatively little to no difference, but this summer has shown me that a person’s actions can have a ripple effect on the people and spaces around them, and we all have the capacity to create true change if we wish.
So let’s keep going everyone, and see what kind of world we will create!
Please sign in
If you are a registered user on Laidlaw Scholars Network, please sign in
This is incredible work, Sophia! Making information on climate change and sustainability more accessible is so, so important. Your optimism and drive are inspiring — keep us updated as you continue this project!
Thank you so much Trisha for just this lovely comment and encouragement, it really means a lot!