Sustainability Teaching Resource Library

A pilot project demonstrates how climate change education can be integrated into an existing medical school curriculum. Climate change is a health emergency, yet many medical schools provide minimal planetary health content in their undergraduate medical curriculum. This pilot project answered the global call to recognize the impacts of climate change on human health by creating a way to address the gap in the curriculum at the University of British Columbia.

Produced by the UBC Climate Hub student team, this is a pocket guide to community and collective action rooted in shared dignity. The guide includes sections on Heat, Wildfire, Air Pollution, Flooding, and Justice & Care.

This document is an annotated list of selected toolkits that support climate justice-focused community engagement. These resources have been selected from a diverse range of community engagement and climate justice toolkits, including those focused on university initiatives, engagement process, engagement ethics, organizational development, education and awareness, policy and advocacy, and communication. The toolkit review was conducted by Sustainability Hub and the Centre for Climate Justice (CCJ).

The HE Climate Action Toolkit, produced by the Climate Commission for UK Higher and Further Education, identifies critical elements to climate action across 5 themes: leadership, teaching, research, community engagement and campus management. These elements support institutions to reach net-zero targets, prepare students and staff with skills and attributes for a changing world, protect biodiversity and worktoward climate justice.

A collection of open figures for visualizing electron transport chains functioning within the global nitrogen cycle and the global carbon cycle. Suitable for microbiology and biochemistry courses within higher education.

This guide is designed to assist Faculty Curriculum Chairs and others involved in curriculum development. It outlines the steps necessary for the approval of new and changed curriculum at UBC Vancouver. It is maintained by the Vancouver Senate Curriculum Committee and Senate and Curriculum Services.

The “Embodied Carbon of Buildings: International Policy Review” report is an overview of current global policies and technical resources to measure and reduce embodied carbon emissions from buildings and construction materials. 

This report was commissioned by Forestry Innovation Investment Ltd. to better understand the range of approaches taken by leading countries to addressing these embodied emissions and the strategies that could be implemented in Canada. The information is based on a review of leading policy and programs across 15 countries around the world.

• Forestry Innovation Investment Ltd. (funder)
• SCIUS Advisory (contributor - Helen Goodland from SCIUS reviewed the work)

• Nicole Balles, UBC Civil Engineering
• Simarjeet Nagpal, UBC School of Community and Regional Planning
• Mohini Singh, UBC School of Public Policy and Global Affairs
• Shiyao Zhu, UBC Faculty of Forestry

Keywords: embodied carbon, GHG emissions, policy

The program allows for the formation of a learning community around a shared understanding of the ways in which climate change impacts us as a global community. Each week, participants are challenged with the hard questions around these topics and are able to bring both the ideas and innovative learning practices directly into their classrooms. Students are then able to see the global interconnectedness and understand complex concepts through comparative analysis of the effects, impacts, and resulting realities within their local communities.