Carleton University must now ramp up its commitment to responsible investment and environmental sustainability after it recently signed a Climate Charter for Canadian Universities.
The charter regulates investments in businesses and requires universities to regularly measure the impact of their investment portfolios in accordance with environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors. It will also foster collaborations with businesses to reduce carbon emissions.
“Signing this Charter aligns well with our strategic initiatives and only strengthens our commitment to sustainability, which includes the goal to be a Carbon Neutral campus by 2050,” Carleton’s Vice-President (finance and administration) Lorraine Dyke wrote in a July 18 press release.
Philip Mansfield, Carleton’s sustainability manager, told the Charlatan the university is currently aligned with the 2050 goal—meeting a reduction of 10 per cent of carbon emissions each year—though this target mainly focuses on direct energy use rather than investments.
“Some of these areas, such as procurement, such as investments, such as waste and travel … We still need to fully review and this [charter] is part of that,” Mansfield said.
Angela Winder, pension fund administrator at Carleton, said the university adopted responsible investing policies a decade ago and has been moving away from fossil fuel investments since.
In December 2021, campus organization Climate Action Carleton organized a sit-in to demand that Carleton divest from companies investing in the fossil fuel industry.
To their success in March 2022, Carleton’s Board of Governors (BoG) approved decarbonization strategies in its endowed and non-endowed funds.
According to Winder, the charter will work alongside existing policies to help position the university as a leader in responsible investing without divesting from companies that may need to lower their emissions in the future. By divesting, the university would lose control over the sustainability of these companies, Winder explained.
“It’s just a way for us to validate the work and the actions we’re taking on our campus and show that we’re not doing it in a silo, but we’re actually doing it against a little bit broader best practice within the university sector,” Mansfield added.
In 2021, Carleton ranked 39th overall and 2nd in Canada among 956 universities internationally in the UI GreenMetric World University Rankings.
Fifteen universities signed the charter when it was first created in 2020, including the University of Ottawa, University of British Columbia (UBC) and McGill University.
Winder and Mansfield said Carleton joined as soon as it was invited.
Winder said Carleton is currently measuring and setting targets for reducing carbon emissions, which they will report to the BoG to prove its consistency and eventually learn from other universities.
“Any kind of collaboration that we can do with our peers … we’ll end up having a greater influence when we go to engage with the companies to address climate change issues such as carbon emissions,” Winder said.
Mansfield and Winder said students likely won’t be directly affected by the charter in their daily lives, but it will work as a bigger picture effort to hold the university accountable for reducing overall carbon emissions.
“It always seems like a slow road but … a lot of great work has already happened towards this,” Mansfield said.
Featured graphic by Angel Xing.
