Second Nature’s call to action in the face of these headwinds is simple and powerful: Unify for Climate.

Unification does not mean uniformity. It means aligning collective and complementary strengths. At the center of the call to action is a fundamental understanding that the strength of higher education lies in its diversity. Community colleges, research universities, rural and urban campuses, HBCUs, and Tribal Colleges each bring distinct perspectives, capacities, relationships, and forms of leadership.

This broader, more inclusive understanding of climate leadership shaped the 2026 Higher Education Climate Leadership Summit in Chicago, where nearly 400 higher education leaders gathered to reflect on the rapidly shifting political and institutional landscape. Throughout the Summit, participants explored how colleges and universities can continue advancing climate solutions while simultaneously responding to questions of democratic participation, equity, climate and environmental justice, and community resilience.

Speakers and participants repeatedly emphasized that colleges and universities are not only sites for research and innovation, but also civic and cultural institutions capable of shaping public discourse, strengthening resilience, and helping communities navigate complex sociopolitical transitions. Discussions challenged narrower definitions of sustainability leadership and emphasized the importance of grounding climate work in the lived realities of communities disproportionately impacted by climate change and toxic pollution.

A recurring theme throughout the Summit was that networks and convenings matter because they create conditions for alignment, reflection, and collective imagination. In periods of uncertainty, these spaces can help institutions move beyond reactive responses toward a clearer sense of shared responsibility and leadership.

This broader understanding of collective climate leadership is also reflected in Second Nature’s Climate Luminary Honors program, which recognizes institutions advancing climate action beyond decarbonization, including justice, resilience, workforce development, research, and community engagement. The program reflects an intentional effort to broaden the narrative around who leads—and what leadership looks like—within higher education climate work.

Fragmentation is easy in moments of uncertainty. Collective leadership requires sustained coordination, shared learning, and a willingness to imagine forms of climate action rooted not only in institutional ambition, but in mutual responsibility and interconnectedness. It requires an inclusive, adaptive network that is not limited by a poverty of imagination. The work ahead for higher education is not simply about accelerating climate solutions. It is also about strengthening the relationships, networks, and collective capacities necessary to sustain them.

Unify for Climate emerges from the belief that higher education has both the responsibility and the capacity to help build more connected, equitable, and climate-ready futures—not through isolated institutional action alone, but through deeper coordination, shared learning, and a nuanced understanding of what collective leadership can make possible.

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While many of the federal investments and the IRA’s incentives and tax credits that support a clean energy transition are sunsetting, we hope this map tool can serve as a resource for higher education sustainability professionals to make the case for continued investment in climate action projects, attract new funding streams for these types of projects, and support clean energy advocacy efforts at the federal, state, and local levels.

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The event, which took place a few blocks from the White House, provided a welcome contrast to the barrage of presidential executive orders that have deprioritized clean energy solutions and proposed to slash federal funding for key climate programs, such as those in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) which provided critical support for the higher educations sector’s efforts to accelerate impactful climate action.

The 2025 Summit created a much-needed and timely space to garner the sector’s collective and complementary strengths, resources, and expertise, celebrate examples of impactful and equitable climate action, and challenge our sector to practice rigorous honesty to address the challenges that will continue to unfold in the months and years ahead.

As part of the effort to celebrate impactful climate action across the sector, Second Nature’s inaugural Climate Luminary Honors recognized six member institutions for their exemplary climate action efforts across five distinct categories: decarbonization, justice, community, workforce, and research, along with special recognition for Climate Resiliency in Action. The honorees include Carleton College, Emory University, University of Pittsburgh, Central Community College, University of Toronto, and Warren Wilson College, all demonstrating higher education’s essential role in driving sustainability, equity, and resilience.

While federal rollbacks of climate programs and the overarching current political space were topics of discussion during the 2025 Summit, the prevailing “climate” of the Summit was a call to action for changemakers in the higher education sector.

The programming, plenaries, and peer-to-peer discussions surfaced the urgent need for aggressively expanding the very definition of climate action, calling the sector to engage in subnational advocacy to defend and protect the work already accomplished and continue what remains to be done to create clean-energy solutions to safeguard our planet and our communities (especially those disproportionately impacted by climate change and toxic pollution). 

This call to action was clearly and passionately articulated by the speakers in the opening plenary, a panel of committed student climate activist leaders in the closing plenary, and throughout the Summit.

Learn more about the 2025 Higher Education Climate Leadership Summit and Second Nature:

• View the complete Summit agenda with over 70 sessions and over 150 speakers
• Meet awardees of our inaugural Climate Luminary Honors initiative
• Learn more about becoming a member of our Climate Leadership Network
• Sign up for our monthly newsletters to get the latest climate action and policy updates
• Read coverage of the Summit in The Hechinger Report

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Second Nature’s work to accelerate climate action in higher education has spanned five U.S. presidential administrations, facing various headwinds and tailwinds throughout this time. One thing has remained constant: the higher education sector plays a vital role in helping society overcome the challenges caused by climate change.

VISIT OUR CLIMATE POLICY PAGE

Since 2006, with the launch of the Presidents’ Climate Leadership Commitments and the Climate Leadership Network, Second Nature has been leading the higher education sector’s efforts to create and implement ambitious, equitable, and effective climate solutions.

Through our institutional members’ strengths in research, education, and community engagement across institution types and geographies, the Climate Leadership Network has played an essential role in accelerating the nation’s climate solutions. Second Nature has also been a key alignment partner for international higher education networks, contributing best practices from the US and learning about successes from our global partners.

At Second Nature, we remain fully committed to this mission and look forward to redoubling our efforts in the years ahead. Our work today is more critical than ever before, and we stand ready to support our member institutions as they sustain and intensify their efforts to address humanity’s most urgent global climate challenges.

The post Second Nature Statement on Higher Education’s Role in Strengthening U.S. Climate Actions appeared first on Second Nature.

The 2024 Higher Education Climate Leadership Summit was hosted by Second Nature and the Intentional Endowments Network in Long Beach, California, February 11-13, 2024. With over 450 attendees, this year’s Summit had the largest-ever turnout in the history of the event!

Participants attended 35 sessions and heard inspiring keynote and plenary speakers on topics ranging from Scaling Action at the System Level and HBCUs & the Climate Imperative to Harnessing the Power of Storytelling for Climate Action.

Over three days, attendees had the opportunity to reconnect with colleagues and forge new relationships on their climate action journey. Inspiring stories of innovative climate solutions and collaborations emerged during keynotes, plenaries, program sessions, and energetic peer-to-peer conversations throughout the Summit. 

“The Summit was the perfect way to recharge my batteries and return to work with new direction and hope. The opportunity to gather with fellow sustainability officers from around the nation and share our journeys, struggles, and dreams is immeasurable.”
– 2024 Summit Attendee

The Summit featured inspiring plenary sessions and keynote speakers, including:

• Heather McTeer Toney, Executive Director, Beyond Petrochemicals
• Dr. Michael L. Lomax, President and CEO, United Negro College Fund (UNCF)
• Lisa P. Jackson, Vice President, Environment, Policy, and Social Initiatives, Apple
• W. Kamau Bell, Comedian, director and producer
• Nalleli Cobo, Activist & Co-Founder, People Not Pozos & South Central Youth Leadership Coalition

One of the essential takeaways from this year’s Summit was that climate leadership doesn’t only come from places of positional power such as presidents and chancellors but equally resides in faculty, staff, and students at a diverse range of institutions, whose efforts have created new models for engagement to accelerate climate action.

“Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI) didn’t feel like a fringe topic but rather was very central. Thank you!”
– 2024 Summit Attendee

We consistently heard about the deep connections on climate justice that continue to develop between campuses and their surrounding communities. These collaborations demonstrate how higher education can play a crucial role in creating climate solutions in partnership with historically marginalized communities, often disproportionately impacted by climate change.

Reflecting on this year’s gathering and looking towards the future, Second Nature President Tim Carter noted:

“At the Summit we heard many isolated examples, individual case studies, and distinctive ways of thinking and doing that demonstrate the wide range of ways our sector can lead on climate solutions. But as I mentioned in my opening remarks at the Summit, if we are going to truly mobilize our sector to address the climate crisis at the speed and scale it demands, we also have to build diverse relationships with people at a broad range of institutions – and in this diversity, we have to unify.

Second Nature exists to accelerate this type of shared progress. We will be laser-focused in the year ahead on demonstrating how our network and our network activities can help drive climate solutions forward. It will be through diversity and the unity that comes with it that we can build cohesion, strength, and resilience, doing more as a sector together than we could ever imagine on our own.“

 

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Foster: encourage or promote the development of (something, typically something regarded as good)

Reciprocal: given, felt, or done in return

Relationship: the way in which two or more concepts, objects, or people are connected, or the state of being connected

Hope: a feeling of trust or a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen

On September 11 and 12th Second Nature hosted an event that felt like the words above: a space grounded in sharing, vulnerability, love, accountability, and wisdom. Our first event of this kind, Fostering Reciprocal Relationships for Climate Action: A Midwest Gathering was designed to strengthen our connectivity and relationship-building capacities to increase our collective strength. This is viewed as a critical step in advancing our collective impact around climate change.

During this small conference, attendees from institutions across the region gathered on the Menominee Reservation to center and learn from Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. Students, sustainability staff and faculty, and diversity, equity, and inclusion professionals learned more about what it means to be in authentic relationships with those who hold different identities, digging deeper into the hard questions around cross-cultural and cross-racial relationships while moving towards the collective goal of climate action.

We felt grounded by the wisdom of those who shared with us: Rebbeca Edler, College of Menominee Nation; Katherine MacHolmes, DEIAJ Associate for Second Nature; Wade Fernandez, international award-winning Menominee musician, and Rosa Cabrera, University of Illinois Chicago. Other panelists and session leads led conversations with openness and humility which allowed the small group to share personal and vulnerable experiences with each other. 

“Let the stories lead and the science follow.”

These words come from Jeff Grignon, whose Menominee Forest tour was a highlight for many. Jeff’s natural ability to speak about the forest as part of us will hold a special place in all participants’ hearts. He compares fungi, critical to the health of the forest, to our internal (heart)work being critical to our ability to do the external work of climate action and social justice. If we have not done the work internally, it will show up in our relationships – tending to what people cannot see is just as important as tending to what they can. 

Jeff also spoke about looking to the plants like we do our human elders, observing them to find the teaching they have for us. To fully experience this, Jeff asked us to go find a group of plants and observe them using all of our senses, to let them teach us. Each of us felt humbled to be welcomed not only onto the Menominee Reservation, but also to the Menominee Forest. This is a place the Menominee have carefully and lovingly stewarded for centuries, which we were given permission to visit during our stay.

For Blythe Coleman-Mumford, Second Nature’s Southeast Climate Programs Manager, the Midwest Gathering was a unique space that fostered dialogues that manifested authenticity and genuine curiosity. The experience encouraged her to sustain a softness, vulnerability and presence that enabled her to connect with people in a way she hadn’t allowed herself to before, or had previously felt unsafe doing. Blythe was deeply encouraged to see the space created by the Midwest Gathering offer an opportunity for growth for non-BIPOC participants, and a site for reflection for BIPOC participants on their own journeys in cross-racial and cross-cultural relationships. The Gathering created a rare chance for both BIPOC and non-BIPOC participants to see each others’ work being done in real time. 

In Katherine’s words, the space felt like it honored everyone in the room. It honored and held each of our diverse identities, and left us with the understanding that a new world is possible. But in order to build it we have to slow down, intentionally come into community with each other, moving beyond our fast-paced culture and develop our ability to hear, see, feel, touch, and taste this newness.

We can do it together. We’ve felt it now.

Thank You

We are extremely grateful to Rebecca Edler and the College of Menominee Nation for their support of this event; to the Menominee who graciously welcomed us to the Menominee Reservation; Wade Fernandez who shared the gift of his music and presence; the staff at the Menominee Casino and Resort who hosted us; Jeff Grignon for sharing his wisdom and teachings about the Menominee Forest; Nicholas Schwitzer of CMN’s Sustainable Development Institute for sharing his photos and videos with us; and to all of the speakers for sharing their time and wisdom:

• Chris Caldwell (College of Menominee Nation)
• Sougata Bardhan (Lincoln University)
• Rosa Cabrera (University of Illinois, Chicago)
• Blythe Coleman-Mumford (Second Nature)
• Paisley Sierra (University of Minnesota, Morris)
• Rebecca Edler (College of Menominee Nation)
• Katherine MacHolmes (Second Nature)

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