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The Staff’s Column

SDU’s interdisciplinary climate initiative is good business 

We know it all too well. Something has changed. Through the media, we witness extreme weather events every day around the globe, including in Denmark. We have realised that the climate crisis requires that we must also change ourselves. Learn to do things in new ways. The only question is, how?

By Sebastian H. Mernild (Ph.D. og D.Sc.), 10/25/2024

Three years ago, the Executive Board decided that SDU should significantly increase its contribution to solving the major and often complex societal challenges that result from the climate crisis. With input from the academic environments, SDU Climate Cluster (SCC) became a reality in 2022. Across faculties and departments, the SCC was tasked with developing a framework for excellent interdisciplinary climate research. With 149 active researchers, the SCC is buzzing with activity today. Four elite centres, 25 fast-track projects, 13 research infrastructure purchases, 19 PhD projects and 10 postdoc projects plus 15 new postdoc positions from the EU’s Marie Curie programme have been launched so far. Distributed across the faculties, 41 professors, 66 associate professors and a similar number of junior researchers are hard at work developing climate research and delivering the solutions that society demands. 

Knowledge for change is urgently needed  

At the annual COP summits, answers are scarce, perhaps because making decisions about the future is like setting out on thin ice in a dense fog towards a place we have never been to before. It takes courage and a special effort to get everyone to come along. At SDU, we have the courage. We should therefore be proud that the outside world has recognised the societal value of SDU’s climate initiative and the many activities we have initiated in record time. SDU is being recognised in the climate field, and interest in our interdisciplinary development is spreading in society and among the foundations. We are increasingly being invited to participate in climate-related projects and contexts, and we are building capacity across SDU for the benefit of the rapid green transition demanded by the Danish Parliament. This also means that for every Danish krone invested by SDU, SCC researchers have already brought home DKK 1.70 in external project funding to SDU.  

We all have important roles  

The SCC must contribute to solving the climate crisis, but as an initiative we need to accomplish much more: We are also a bold and curious laboratory in which SDU can test, develop and strengthen its cross-faculty muscles with regard to management, research and administration. The first two years have shown that we can achieve great things when we develop together. Our ambition to develop and strengthen SDU’s cross-faculty competences and capacity is a case in point. We have deliberately changed both the playing field and the rules of the game for all players on the SDU team, not just the researchers. For when the SCC initiative asks researchers to work across disciplines, we are also asking the rest of the team – management and administration – to find new ways to solve tasks across departments and faculties. We must remember to recognise this special effort. It may be both difficult and challenging for the individual, but it is also crucial to the outcome.

Sebastian H. Mernild (PhD and DSc)
Sebastian H. Mernild

Head of the SDU Climate Cluster, former SDU pro-rector and Director of the Nansen Centre in Bergen. Between 2006 and 2020, he lived and worked in the USA, Chile and Norway as a researcher, head of research and professor. Since 2009, he has been a member of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and he was the lead author of its most recent climate report.

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Editing was completed: 25.10.2024