This week, we published “Catalyzing Climate Action Through Universities,” a story that first appeared in SSIR En Español. We asked Paola Visconti, director of sustainability and social impact at Tecnológico de Monterrey and one of the article’s co-authors, about coordinating climate action at higher ed institutions and beyond.
What are some of the unique sustainability challenges or points of light—politically, culturally, or technologically—in Latin America?
Many people view the Global South through a lens of scarcity, focusing primarily on what the region lacks, but our work with other Latin American universities has revealed an entirely different reality. Universities’ vast, innovative, and highly impactful sustainability initiatives are defining the region, and contributing to the global agenda in two profound ways: by acting as trusted providers of science-based information to the public and by intentionally shaping the next generation of climate-literate decision-makers. Notably, they aren’t doing this in isolation. What truly sets the region apart culturally is a deeply ingrained sense of community. Latin American universities are treating sustainability and climate action as a landscape for collaboration, not competition. This spirit of inclusivity was on full display at the 2025 UN Climate Change Conference in Brazil (COP30), where universities from Latin America and other parts of the world came together to establish the Higher Education Pavilion for Climate Action—a space dedicated to highlighting the vital work that higher education institutions are doing to mobilize climate action. Although just a handful of universities funded and hosted the pavilion, it gave space and voice to the community at large, and stood as a powerful testament to the region’s commitment to diversity, inclusiveness, and collective strength.
You mention in your article that one persistent challenge is getting organizations to broaden their understanding of sustainability and climate action. Why does that matter, and how do the university’s climate program, Ruta Azul, and the groups it collaborates with think about or define these terms?
It matters because a narrow definition produces narrow action. If an organization understands sustainability only as reducing emissions or achieving a certification, it will optimize for those metrics and miss the deeper transformation the moment requires. Ruta Azul works from a systemic understanding; mitigation, adaptation, and regeneration are not sequential stages but simultaneous dimensions of the same effort. Mitigation reduces harm, adaptation prepares us for what’s already happening, and regeneration asks how our presence can actually restore the social and ecological systems we're part of. Defining terms this way also changes who is responsible; sustainability stops being one department’s job and becomes a lens on strategy, culture, operations, and education all at once.
Are you seeing more universities, or even other types of institutions or networks, taking up the more “transversal and integral approach” to sustainability you describe?
Yes. More and more universities and institutional networks are embracing a truly transversal and integral approach to sustainability. There is growing recognition that sustainability and climate action need to permeate every single aspect of life. Universities are perfect testing grounds for real-world solutions, and we are seeing a surge in “living lab” initiatives that are experimenting with new circular economy models in student housing, piloting biodiversity zones on campus grounds, or trialing smart-grid energy systems in campus buildings. This approach is an example of how university research can be used to innovate campus operations and at the same time be an educational tool. This type of collaboration fosters integral approaches to sustainability.
However, as universities drive this integrated approach, they are also confronting the modern paradox of artificial intelligence (AI). While AI offers brilliant tools for climate modeling and optimizing energy grids, the massive, energy-hungry data centers required to train and run AI systems are causing a surge in carbon emissions, electronic waste, and localized water scarcity due to intensive cooling needs.
Here, universities play an indispensable role in leading critical conversations around the ethics of AI resource consumption, including the evaluation of environmental trade-offs, setting standards, and leading the development of “green computing” frameworks and energy-efficient algorithms, and driving accountability among the next generation of developers and policy makers to weigh technological convenience against planetary health.
