Make it Work: Sciences Po's Initiative for Climate

How can Sciences Po become a more sustainable university and workplace? An online consultation, "Sustainable Campus" has been made to gather your ideas, proposals and votes to help Sciences Po become a more ecologically responsible university. This consultation is one of the pillars of our Climate Action: Make it Work initiative and concerns all of the Sciences Po campuses.

As announced by President Frédéric Mion in March 2019, Sciences Po is committing to a number of new initiatives for climate with the programme, "Climate Action: Make it Work". 

Becoming a more ecologically responsible university

Under this programme, Sciences Po is committing to take action for climate. Our in-house sustainability offficer is developing a coordinated strategy for sustainable development in order to make Sciences Po a more eco-responsible university. A vast study of all courses and research on the ecological transition presided by Bruno Latour has begun in order to ensure that the nature and volume of the teachings on the subject are in line with the challenges we face.

A number of projects will be launched via the new participatory platform Climate Action: Make it Work: via this website, Sciences Po students, instructors, researchers and staff can actively participate in leading the ecological transition on our campuses and beyond.

Ecology, the underlying theme of all our events

General consultations and conferences are regularly taking place on the subject of Sciences Po's ecological transition and actions to be taken for the climate. Make it Work* is thus also a series of events, keeping both guests and students informed about the latest climate happenings and debates.

A look back at the events that have taken place so far:

• The inaugural lecture of Bruno Latour, anthropologist and sociologist
• The inaugural lecture of Gilles Boeuf, President of the Scientific Council of the French Agency for Biodiversity (FR)
• The inaugural lecture of Jean-Marc Jancovici, energy and climate expert
• The inaugural lecture of Emmanuelle Wargon, General Secretary of the Ministry of the Ecological and Solidarity Transition (FR)
• The inaugural lecture of François Sarano, oceanographer (FR)
• The conference L’anthropocène et nous, with Bruno Latour and Yannick Jadot (FR).
• Conference with Jeremy Rifkin: The Green New Deal

Rewind: what’s been happening since the spring 2019

• The first consultation, which took place between April 23-30, called upon all of Sciences Po’s students, researchers, instructors and staff to propose and vote for questions related to climate for candidates in the European Elections. On 4 May 2019, Sciences Po hosted a number of candidates from different political parties for a debate (FR), during which questions sourced from the platform were addressed to candidates. The question that received the most votes on the platform was: How can we make Europe more resilient against a potential systemic collapse? 

*Originally launched in 2015, “Make it Work” was an immediate success when six months before the COP 21, students proved that it was possible to make climate negotiations “work”. Today, “Climate Action: Make it Work” regroups all of Sciences Po’s initiatives and commitments to make our university more eco-responsible.