Kanika Chakraborty
The Education for Sustainable Development workshop deepened my understanding of sustainable development. Before the session, I mainly associated sustainability with environmental protection, climate responsibility, social justice, and economic balance. Through the workshop, I learned that sustainability is also shaped by people’s worldviews, values, assumptions, power relations, institutional roles, and ethical responsibilities. It is not only […]
Banks Going Green, and Against Everyone
“We will drill, baby, drill” – Donald Trump’s campaign slogan set the tone, and it certainly wasn’t a green one. In the wake of his election in 2024, six major U.S. banks announced their withdrawal from the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA). This United Nations program, which aimed, among other things, to stop financing fossil fuels and had brought together […]
Triassic Inferno: Fires raged across Europe for thousands of years during past global warming
The end-Triassic mass extinction, 201 million years ago, is linked to volcanism that resulted from the break-up of Pangea and which pumped out vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, causing extreme global warming of 5 to 10 degrees Celsius. As a result, tree-dominated vegetation collapsed, and the highly disturbed landscapes were colonised by ferns that […]
Heading for the Atlantic Ocean to study the impact of climate change on ocean circulation
This highly sensitive ocean system, which is showing signs of weakening, could collapse in the future due to the effects of climate change and polar ice melt, with effects on global ocean regulation and the climate that are difficult to predict. Studying the changes that could lead AMOC to collapse is the aim of the […]
What future for marine life in a changing world?
Photo: Chiara Castelletti (left), Pawel Burkhardt (right). Using advanced modelling techniques to digitalize marine species and their environment, the Michael Sars Centre and its partners aim to study the challenges faced by marine life in a changing ocean. On the left, a sea squirt larva, on the right, the nervous system of a comb jelly. Multiscale […]
The remarkable resilience of a tropical rainforest
Tropical rainforests are home to almost two-thirds of all vertebrate species and three-quarters of all tree species: they are the most species-rich terrestrial ecosystem on Earth. However, over half of these diverse rainforests have already been cleared, and their area continues to decline drastically, primarily for agricultural purposes. Is there a chance of regeneration, and […]
Profitably greening up in the city
Dr. Helen Toxopeus studied International Economics and Business at the University of Groningen. She then worked at ABN AMRO. She obtained her doctorate on Financing sustainable innovation at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. Within the Utrecht School of Economics, she has ties to the research group Strategy, Organisation and Entrepreneurship as an Associate Professor. Besides this, she […]
UM goes solar
It’s a very subtle change when viewed from below, but if you take a step back, you’ll see a new reflection on the roofs of Building D on the Richter campus. It’s the reflection of the solar panels that have just been installed and are now entering the testing phase. “This is the first of three […]
A study analyses the policies of 40 countries to combat climate change and identifies the most effective ones
This is the conclusion of an international study that compared the climate policies of 40 countries over more than 30 years and was published in the journal Climate Policy. Researchers from the University of Barcelona, the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, the University of Lausanne and the University of Oslo participated in the study. The research team, which included […]
CHARM-EU and Capstone Collaboration: Turning Academic Learning into Regional Impact
During the Grand Finale 2026, held on 27 and 28 January 2026 at the University of Barcelona, students from the 4th cohort of the master’s programme presented their capstone projects. We had the opportunity to engage in a discussion with Alba Graells from the Department of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Food of the Government of […]