Balliol is to have a new Climate and Biodiversity Committee, the purpose of which will be to propose what the College can to reduce its carbon footprint and improve the biodiversity of its gardens and open spaces, and put that into action.
‘The College has already taken some steps to play our part in avoiding doing even more damage from climate change: disinvesting from fossil fuels, buying all our electricity from renewable sources, providing more veggie/vegan food, putting energy-saving thermostats on our heating systems, and constructing our new Master’s Field buildings to the highest environmental standards. But there is still more we can do,’ the Master wrote in her weekly email to all current members of Balliol.
The new Climate and Biodiversity Committee, made up of student environmental representatives and staff and chaired by a Climate Fellow, ‘will be looking at our gas consumption, water use and waste produced, in order to measure our carbon emissions, and set targets for reduction. A next step will be to measure the impact of our travel (local, national and international) to see what steps we could sensibly take to reduce carbon impacts; we will also want to look at the secondary carbon impacts of the stuff we buy (food, services, other goods).’
To improve the College’s biodiversity, the committee will, the Master said, ‘use as the basis an audit carried out last summer by a “citizen science” group of students from the JCR and MCR, which looked at things like our insect and bird life, pollinators, soil quality (worms as proxy!) and how much carbon we sequestrated through our plantings and trees. The survey covered our gardens and grounds at Broad Street, Master’s Field and Holywell. You can read the result in the attached report. We seem to do well on birds and worms, and have a fascinating range of trees. It suggests that, in consultation with our gardeners, more wild areas and flowering plants are the way to go. We already have plans for putting up swift boxes and hedgehog hotels on the Master’s Field site.’
The new committee will put forward a plan for the College to agree, and will monitor progress.