Background
The Second Nature Climate Leadership Network is comprised of colleges and universities (called signatories) in nearly all fifty states and the District of Columbia who are taking action on climate change and preparing students through research and education to solve the challenges of the 21st century.
Each Climate Leadership Network signatory signs (the President/Chancellor does) onto at least one formal commitment with respect to climate leadership. These commitments are a signature program of Second Nature called The Presidents’ Climate Leadership Commitments, and can include a Carbon Commitment (focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions), a Resilience Commitment (focused on climate adaptation and building community capacity), or a Climate Commitment that integrates both.
These signatory institutions report on their yearly progress through the Reporting Platform, publicly sharing their climate action plans, greenhouse gas inventories and more. For a list of all of the signatory institutions and to see their reports, visit the Second Nature Reporting Platform.
Bellevue College’s Commitment
Bellevue College is a signatory to the Second Nature Presidents’ Climate Commitments, which showcases to our community that sustainability is important to our college leadership. It sets the goals that we must strive to achieve, and provides a network to compare to our higher education peers. Our college president signs this annually.
Since 2007, Bellevue College has been a signatory to the Carbon Commitment. The BC Office of Sustainability staff is looking at signing the Climate Commitment instead of the Carbon Commitment in FY 20-21, to incorporate aspects of climate adaptation and resiliency into our college planning and operations.
Why sign the Carbon Commitment?
The Carbon Commitment focuses on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and achieving carbon neutrality as soon as possible. Higher education cannot fulfill its obligation to support a thriving civil society if that society is not sustainable. Carbon neutrality provides an imperative and shared vision – that climate action and sustainability is central to higher education’s mission in the 21st century.
This commitment, as well as the Climate and Resilience Commitments, focus on the integration of sustainability in education curriculum, expanding research efforts, public reporting, and creating and revising an action plan.
Our Progress and Actions
Progress towards meeting our Carbon Commitment and how we achieve our sustainability goals are broken out into a Greenhouse Gas Emissions Audit and the BC Climate Action Plan.
