The climate crisis has called on higher education not only to advance impactful solutions but to strengthen its capacity to act across differences in scale, geography, institutional identity, and lived experience. Higher education now faces significant political and cultural headwinds, and climate action risks fragmentation due to political polarization, financial strains, institutional silos, and growing public distrust.
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.
