Vice Chancellor III UNESA together with the Director of Innovation, Ranking and Scientific Publications and PIC SDG13 attended the International meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Unesa. AC ID. SURABAYA—Building public awareness regarding climate change is not something simple. It requires a process and strong commitment to make it happen. UNESA, as one of the universities that cares about environmental problems, feels called to take responsibility for solving these problems.
The important thing that is implied is how to build an educational concept that is able to create public awareness in responding to the challenges of climate change. UNESA's participation in THE University Impact Forum held at the State Oil and Industry University Baku-Azerbaijan on 11-12 September 2024 is clear evidence of UNESA's seriousness in realizing SDG 13 on climate action.
Deputy Chancellor III for Research, Innovation, Rankings, Publications and the UNESA Science Center, Bambang Sigit Widodo, said that the 'Home of Champions' campus is ready to participate with the community in solving the problem of global climate change. The annual world agenda opened by Emin Amrullayef, Minister of Science and Education of Azerbaijan provided an important insight that the problem of climate change is a common problem and it is a shared responsibility to solve it.
“UNESA is quite optimistic about being able to strengthen the achievements of SDG 13, especially in the ranking of THE Impact Ranking next year. "Mr. Chancellor Cak Hasan also supports the initiation of an SDGs center at UNESA starting in 2025," said the lecturer who is homebased at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences (Fisipol).
Professor and Director of Innovation, Ranking and Scientific Publication, Nadi Suprapto continued, the forum began with an opening panel session which discussed the reasons for the urgency of SDG 13 for other goals. The initial session moderated by Nigar Arpadarai (UN-climate change high level champion COP 29 Azerbaijan) focused on two important things.
"Namely the impact of climate change on other SDG goals and how universities can use their influence on other stakeholders and become ambassadors in mitigating climate change," he said.
The panelists agreed that climate change is a very serious problem and must be resolved well for the sake of future generations. Adam Jageillo-Rusilowski, Academic Director of Innocamp PI Poland said that the issue of climate change is a big problem and should become a passion for the younger generation. This means that people's lifestyles must pay attention to the climate impacts they cause.
Furthermore, Christine Ozden (Global director of climate education Cambridge University Press and Assessment) as one of the panelists conveyed the need for innovation in climate change education through international collaboration, development of research methodology related to climate change, application of artificial intelligence ( Artificial Intelligence), and curriculum development on climate change.
Julia Selxas (Pro rector of NOVA University Lisbon) added the need to increase students' knowledge and skills about climate problems and how to solve them. This is in line with one of the research results published at //kneopen.com/KnE-Social/article/view/16004/ which states that students' mastery of concepts about climate change is still low. Students do not understand the variables of climate change and cannot differentiate between climate change, global warming, ozone layer depletion and the greenhouse effect.
According to Julia, higher education has a duty to produce learning materials and resources to support climate change education and there is a need for an interdisciplinary research community involving many institutions. In this regard, Christine added that there is a need for research to encourage scientific knowledge and leadership support through training, education, etc.
Eko Hariyono (PIC SDG 13 UNESA) said, talking about the curriculum, a lot of interesting information was obtained in the panel discussion activity. On that occasion, Eko Hariyono asked how to design a climate change curriculum and how to involve stakeholders in supporting climate change education in universities.
This question immediately received a very interesting response from the panelists. All the panelists said that the issue of climate change is an important problem and they share responsibility for the climate impacts in Azerbaijan, so they took the time to provide ideas and ideas related to the issue of climate change and its solutions which were then expressed in the form of higher education curricula in Azerbaijan.
Along with these activities, UNESA again received an invitation to attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference or Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC, now known as COP 29 in Baku, Azerbaijan on 11-22 November 2024. []
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Author: Nadi Suprapto, professor and Director of Innovation, Rankings and Scientific Publications at UNESA.
Photo: UNESA Delegation to THE University Impact Forum
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