Environmentalism on campus: ‘Students don’t want to be told to turn the lights off’

Last November, as 600,000 people marched in 175 countries around the world to call for COP21, the UN's climate-change conference in Paris, to strike a deal to move quickly towards replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy, environmental activists at Trinity College Dublin had been hoping that 2,000 of their fellow students would take to the streets for the People's Climate March. But only 150 or so turned up, from the college's total of 12,000.

“The problem is that students don’t like marching,” says Cheryl Notaro, a member of Friends of the Earth who’s studying occupational therapy at Trinity. So how can you make environmental activism more appealing on campus – the kind of place you’d think would be its natural home?

Notaro was one of 30 or so students from colleges across the island who have just spent a weekend setting up an all-Ireland student-activism network. “We need to start the ball rolling, so that colleges can be role models on everything from preventing food waste to divesting from fossil fuels,” she says.

The weekend was organised by Áine O’Gorman, who chairs Trinity’s Environment Society. Her interest in environmental issues came from her involvement in the college’s fossil-fuel-divestment campaign.

“There are pockets of interest around college about the environment, and the students union has just set up an environmental lobby group, to draw people together,” says O’Gorman, a third-year economics and sociology student. She says that people don’t want to be told to turn off lights but are happy to attend fun events about vintage clothes and food waste.

Trócaire’s Burning Question fossil-fuel-divestment campaign has been a starting point for many student environmentalists. That campaign wants all universities and State bodies in Ireland to join the international movement to remove fossil-fuel companies from their investment portfolios.

“The power behind the divestment campaign has opened up space for sustainability on campus,” she says. “We met the provost for tea, and he challenged us to consider wider sustainability issues while we wait to see what the college does on its €6.1 million holdings in fossil fuels.”

Colm Duffy is one of the founders of the Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security Society at NUI Galway. He says that his university and others like it are not taking a holistic approach to environmental issues.

“Sustainability research is one of the platforms of the NUIG Vision 2020, so it seems hypocritical to be a global leader in sustainability research and yet be directly financing the fossil-fuel industry,” he says.

The NUI Galway fossil-fuel campaign discovered through a freedom-of-information request that the college has invested €3.4 million in oil and gas companies.

Students at Queen’s University Belfast had a more difficult task discovering the extent of their university’s fossil-fuel investment. After a sit-in the college gave them the details of its portfolio. “We had to go through all of the investments to work out that the university invests about €5.5 million in the fossil-fuel industry,” says Sarah McQuillan, a second-year geography student.

She says that it’s college staff, not students, who need to become a lot more environmentally aware. “Queen’s has a carbon-management tool, which looks at the levels of carbon-dioxide emissions from the university, yet there are no recycling bins in the student houses. Climate change is taught in politics, geography and international studies, yet the university won’t divest from fossil fuels.”

And students are keen to be part of environmental organisations beyond campus. “We’re plugged into the Post Carbon Galway campaign,” Duffy says, “and through it we plan to look at how Galway city could divest from fossil fuels.”

A focus on local food initiatives, such as a community garden at NUI Galway, and the Farm to Fork initiative at University College Cork, where vegetables are grown on college land and used in the campus canteens, constitute hands-on initiatives.

“It’s hard to get students engaged on climate change, but our organic community garden is connecting people with growing food. We live in an era of cheap food with a huge percentage of waste,” says Duffy, who is doing a PhD in climate-smart agriculture.

Johanna Murray and Leah O’Sullivan of UCC’s International Development Society are also keen to highlight food waste. “We plan to go into supermarkets to collect their excess food and bring it on to campus to highlight issues around food insecurity and poverty in developing countries,” says Murray, who is studying international development and food policy.

Both students are also part of the Design for Change campaign, which encourages secondary students to develop ideas to help children in the developing world.

The message these activists have is that if you want to engage their fellow students on environmental issues you have to go beyond individual campaigns. “It’s not just about carrying banners,” Duffy says. We’re planning pot-luck dinners, vegetarian nights and trips away. You’ve got to find ways to get people together to bond.”