7 October 2024
Ahmedabad University Launches Its Climate Institute
The Climate Institute set up at Ahmedabad University symbolises a cross-cutting and interdisciplinary effort to address the climate, energy, and environment challenges in the Global South, emanating from the persistent use of fossil fuels over several years. Coalescing local, national, and global resources, the Institute aims to execute its mission through three principal pillars: Education, Research, and Impact.
While inaugurating the Institute, the Vice Chancellor, Professor Pankaj Chandra suggested that dealing with climate change necessitates an inter-disciplinary approach. A University is the right place to address this challenge because it can bring together the requisite skills, perspectives, and application of knowledge from different vantage points, including the impact of climate change on different domains, including democracy, transportation, health, and many other areas.
The Institute will enable the University to bring together the power of diverse disciplines and all the intellectual activities around the issue of climate change, taking place at the various centres and schools of the University, including the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the School of Arts and Sciences, the School of Management and the recently established Bagchi School of Public Health.
The comprehensive education programme offered by the Institute at the Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctoral levels is designed to nurture a well-educated workforce and create future leaders capable of tackling global climate issues. The Institute will also offer specialised Executive Education programmes in Climate and Energy for mid-career professionals in government and industry. In addition, it seeks to build interdisciplinary research capacity by recruiting new faculty, and graduate student and postdoctoral researchers. A strong national and global network of partnerships also aims to translate research insights into policy and provide innovative technology-based solutions for environmental issues.
The focus of the Institute would be on optimising its strengths in the following three broad areas: Energy and Climate Change, Cities and Settlements, and Air and Water. Taking forward the work of the University’s Global Centre for Climate Change and Energy (GCEE) and its engagement with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Sixth Assessment Report (IPCC’s AR6), the vertical on Energy and Climate Change at the Institute will focus on a range of issues, including climate change mitigation and adaptation, energy transition, technology and policy innovations for the Global South, and sustainable development.
Building on the expertise and experience of the University’s diverse faculty, the vertical on cities and settlements will develop data-driven approaches on urbanisation and its relationship with climate change. It will also identify urban mitigation and adaptation solutions that enable the transformation towards sustainable cities.
The third vertical on air and water would adopt synergistic approaches on ground and space-based measurements with modelling to support policy design. The potential areas of work in this area would cover the impact of Short-Lived Climate-forcers on air quality and health, air quality modelling for the Global South, and the setting up of a water quality laboratory to conduct interdisciplinary research around water quality, infrastructure, climate, and health.
The Climate Institute will leverage partnerships with various global and national Universities to collaborate on energy and environment economics, and promote research on India, including the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, the International Growth Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Warwick University. It will also forge partnerships with national universities and research organisations, notably the Centre for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (CSTEP), as well as local institutions based out of Gujarat such as Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology (CEPT), Pandit Deendayal Energy University, Gandhinagar, and National Institute of Design.
The Institute will be led by Dr Balaji Srinivasan as Founding Executive Director, Professor Minal Pathak as the Academic Director and Lead of the Cities and Settlements vertical, Professor Anant Sudarshan overseeing the Energy and Climate Change vertical, and Professor Aditya Vaishya for the vertical on Air and Water.
The Advisory Board of the Institute includes academic and policymaking experts, including Michael Greenstone, The Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago and Director of the Energy Policy Institute; Christopher Webster, Dean of the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Hong Kong and Senior Development Fellow at the University of Cambridge; Dr Shamika Ravi, Member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister and Secretary to the Government of India; Rajagopalan Balaji, Professor and Former Chair in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder; Anu Ramaswami, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, and the High Meadows Environmental Institute; and Namrata Kala, Associate Professor in Applied Economics at MIT Sloan School of Management.
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