The University of Arizona this week delayed the implementation of its climate action plan, citing a $177 million budget deficit. Despite rising revenue, the university is struggling with low cash reserves due to overspending, and is now dealing with rent freezes, fixed salaries and possible layoffs. Now the university’s climate commitments may be on the chopping block.
Nick Prevenas, director of media relations at the University of Arizona, said the administration is “currently reconsidering how to approach the final steps in developing the university’s Sustainability and Climate Action Plan to ensure it best supports the university’s Financial Action Plan .”
Six working groups and two technical teams worked on last autumn almost 100 recommendations to reduce carbon emissions at the university, including upgrading facilities, encouraging cleaner transport options and improving public awareness of sustainability issues. The list of final recommendations includes phasing out fossil fuels by 2030, creating positions to oversee socially conscious investment, and creating policies to handle donations from individuals or groups with ties to the fossil fuel industry. According to Prevenas, 6 percent of the University of Arizona Foundation’s endowment currently consists of privately managed fossil fuel investments, which are valued at about $75 million.
It is now unclear when or if those proposals will be implemented, and Prevanas did not respond to direct questions about how long implementation could be delayed.
“We’re the only public university in Arizona that doesn’t have a climate action plan,” said Samantha Gonsalves-Wetherell, a senior at the University of Arizona who has been a leader in the campus divestment movement. “It shows a lack of responsibility and accountability.”
Jake Lowe, executive director of the Campus Climate Network, says Arizona is not the first university to back away from divestment goals, noting that students at the The University of Illinois protested similar delays. But he says there is a financial argument for sticking to divestment targets, citing a recent analysis by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis which advocates a green transition.
“Weak economic performance and an unstable future for fossil fuels have made it clear that divestment can be accomplished without financial damage to any individual investment fund,” the analysis said. “Withdrawal is a defensive tool used to protect investors from the loss of value – losses as certain as climate change’s global reach.”
The news comes just weeks after a Grist investigation found that Arizona is one of several universities that rely on fossil fuel production, mining and other extractive industries to earn income from land taken from indigenous peoples. Extraction activists at the University of Arizona called the practice shocking, but not shocking.
Nadira Mitchell, a Diné student at the university who currently serves as Miss. Native American University of Arizonawas among those disappointed by Grist’s findings, and the delay in the climate action plan compounded her frustration.
“If sports funding isn’t cut and the climate action plan is,” she said, “it kind of shows what the university’s priorities are.”
