The notion of climate change can be daunting. Volumes of research from a wide range of fields irrefutably showcase that our Earth’s future is perilous and climate change is indeed real and serious. The issues are complex and multi-faceted: extreme weather, sea level rise, air quality, public health, food security, and pandemic preparedness to name a few. How can we discover, translate, and enable scalable, data-driven solutions to the global problems of climate change and environmental degradation? At UCI, we recognize that solutions to planetary problems must reach planetary proportions. UCI’s Solutions that Scale aims to converge scientists and academics, policy makers, business leaders, and global citizens to identify and accelerate climate change solutions that scale.
The capacity of a society to calibrate and effectively scale climate change solutions rests both on its ability to understand modeling tools for the earth system as well as a desire to collaborate on coordinated, rational action.
Our Goals
The UCI Solutions that Scale initiative strives to provide and create comprehensive solutions through three different arenas
Education and research
Public policy
Corporate industry
Universities must work together with policy makers and industry leaders to enable scalable change. UCI Solutions that Scale will build technological and collaborative capacity in climate change research, policy arenas, and the business world by:
Identifying key dimensions of scalability
scalability would be assessed when attempting to design and implement effective climate solutions.
Educating and providing analysis for impacts of prospective climate change solutions
Developing technological, educational, and communications resources
these resources could catalyze and add value to proposed climate solutions by making technologically-sound solutions more feasible to enact, and rendering the policy outputs of governance structures more efficient, actionable and productive at local to global levels.
How will we do this?
UCI Solutions that Scale started with a modest group of motivated scientists, academics, and administrators (the Executive Board) who recognized that the potential for real solutions to climate change can be achieved by breaking down barriers and silos that are common at large research universities. Once UCI Solutions that Scale was able to formulate it’s vision, mission, and goals, initial pathways to success emerged.
In order to achieve our goals, initial areas of focus that we have identified for the 2020-2021 academic year include:
Invite faculty members at UCI to join the initiative, which would include informational seminars for interested individuals.
Implement a pilot graduate fellowship program, specifically designed to support convergent climate change research involving multiple schools and departments. This pilot program will be the first of its kind at UCI with leadership from several schools offering funding to create these fellowships. It is expected that the inaugural Solutions that Scale fellows would be selected in early 2021 with an anticipated start in Summer 2021.
Publish a comprehensive white paper as part of a public launch.
Explore initial external partnerships, in particular with data-driven technology organizations and climate change advocacy networks. This would facilitate new conversations in our areas of focus and provide opportunities for mutually beneficial partnerships.
We expect to identify additional strategic areas of activity as we progress through some of the initial objectives. Solutions that Scale will also embark on near and long term strategic planning to ensure the initiative’s future success.
