What is a university’s purpose in an age of climate change?
- Imraan Valodia
What is a university’s purpose in an age of climate change?
The recent report by Fossil Free South Africa, Carbon Captured? A preliminary review of fossil fuel industry influence and greenwashing on SA campuses, discussed in University World News on 11 June, raises important questions about the relationship between universities and the fossil fuel industry.
Those questions deserve to be taken seriously. It would also have been appropriate for Fossil Free South Africa (FFSA) to raise these questions, perhaps in a debate, with universities, themselves.
The history of tobacco-funded research remains one of the clearest examples of how powerful commercial interests sought to cast doubt on overwhelming scientific evidence, delaying public policy and costing millions of lives.
Universities should never become vehicles for such manipulation. That history teaches us the importance of transparency, rigorous governance, conflict-of-interest rules and, above all, academic freedom. Universities must ensure that no donor – whether government, business or philanthropy – can determine research agendas, suppress findings or compromise scholarly independence.
In that respect, the FFSA report provides a valuable public service. Universities should welcome scrutiny of their funding relationships. At the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), we do.
Why Wits does not support fossil fuel divestment
Where I part company with the report is elsewhere. It is not simply an invitation to debate these issues. It is also a call on universities to endorse a programme of divestment and disengagement from the fossil fuel industry.
My concern is not that the report reaches strong conclusions. It is that those conclusions rest on three assumptions that deserve much closer scrutiny: the purpose of the university, the meaning of academic freedom and the nature of the climate transition, itself. For these reasons, Wits University has not endorsed FFSA’s divestment call.
The first concerns the purpose of the university.
Universities have never been static institutions. Their purpose has evolved alongside society’s greatest challenges. The earliest universities established spaces of intellectual autonomy from church and state. Later, they became centres of scientific discovery and technological innovation.
During the 20th century, particularly across the Global South, universities assumed an even broader role. They educated professionals, built state capacity, advanced scientific capabilities and helped societies pursue economic development. They became institutions, not only of scholarship, but of national transformation.
Climate change demands another reinvention of the university.
For universities in the Global South, this challenge differs fundamentally from that faced by many institutions in the North. We are not simply decarbonising mature economies. We are simultaneously trying to industrialise, reduce poverty, create decent work, confront deep inequality and expand access to affordable, reliable energy. These objectives cannot be separated. Together, they define the development challenge of the 21st century.
Our responsibility is, therefore, not simply to produce knowledge about climate change. It is to help societies discover pathways to development that are simultaneously low-carbon, productive and inclusive.
That requires engagement.
Advocacy organisations exist to persuade institutions to adopt particular positions. Universities exist to examine those positions critically, test them against evidence and reach their own conclusions. The two play different but complementary roles in a democratic society. They should not be confused.
Universities are not campaign organisations. Nor are they governments or corporations. They are institutions whose public purpose is to generate knowledge, educate future generations and engage critically with society’s most difficult challenges. That means engaging with governments whose policies they may criticise, civil society organisations whose claims they may test and businesses whose practices they may seek to change.
Engagement is not endorsement. It is central to the purpose of the university.
Academic freedom
The second assumption concerns academic freedom.
Academic freedom is not freedom from engagement. It is the freedom to pursue evidence wherever it leads, even into areas with which we may not entirely be comfortable. It is the freedom to challenge governments that provide public funding, companies that support research, activists whose arguments exceed the evidence and universities, themselves, when they fall short of their own ideals.
The report mistakes isolation for independence.
Universities preserve their independence, not by avoiding difficult relationships, but by ensuring that those relationships never determine research questions, methods, findings or publication.
That requires transparent funding arrangements, robust governance, disclosure of conflicts of interest, ethical oversight and the protection of publication rights. Those are the safeguards that protect academic integrity. Institutional isolation is not.
The nature of climate transition in the Global South
The third assumption concerns the nature of the climate transition.
Climate change is undoubtedly the defining environmental challenge of our time. However, for countries such as South Africa, it is also an industrial, technological and developmental challenge.
For the Global South, climate policy without such industrial, technology and development policy is a dead end.
The transition requires new energy systems, new manufacturing capabilities, new infrastructure, new technologies and new skills. It requires transforming steel, cement, mining, chemicals, transport and agriculture. It requires societies to build new industries while reducing emissions, creating jobs and tackling inequality.
South Africa illustrates this challenge particularly clearly.
Our energy economy did not emerge by accident. It was shaped by apartheid, international sanctions, concerns about energy security and abundant coal reserves. Sasol’s development of formed part of that history. Whatever one thinks of the political system that produced it, it also created scientific capability, engineering expertise and industrial infrastructure that remain embedded in the South 第一吃瓜网 economy.
Successful industrial transitions rarely begin with a blank sheet of paper. They build on inherited capabilities while transforming them.
That is why the question is not whether companies such as Sasol must change. They must.
The question is how that change will occur.
Will it occur because universities isolate themselves from the industries that must decarbonise? Or will it occur because universities help develop sustainable aviation fuels, green hydrogen, cleaner chemical processes and the technologies required for industrial transformation?
Symbolism, alone, does not transform an economy
Divestment may send an important symbolic message. However, symbolism, alone, will not transform South Africa’s energy economy. That requires technological innovation, institutional capability and sustained engagement with the industries that must change.
The report also draws heavily on debates that emerged in North America, where universities manage enormous endowments and exercise influence as institutional investors. South 第一吃瓜网 universities occupy a very different position.
Their greatest contribution to the climate transition lies, not in their investment portfolios, but in the knowledge that they create, the technologies that they develop and the graduates that they educate.
At the University of the Witwatersrand, this understanding has shaped our approach. Climate change is a strategic priority. Every undergraduate studies climate change because every graduate should understand both the science and its profound social, economic and political implications.
Our researchers work across renewable energy, adaptation, urban resilience, health, inequality – all central elements of the Just Transition. We engage with the government, business and civil society, not because we endorse every policy or practice, but because solving South Africa’s greatest challenges requires engagement with the institutions that shape our society.
Universities should never provide reputational cover for companies that delay climate action or misrepresent their environmental performance. Nor should they allow funders to compromise research independence.
But neither should they become campaign organisations.
Their responsibility is different.
In the 19th century, universities helped build modern economies. In the 20th century, universities across the Global South helped build states, professions and national development. In the 21st century, they face another historic responsibility: helping societies navigate the transition to economies that are simultaneously low-carbon, productive and more equal.
That requires independence. Not isolation.
That is the purpose of the university in an age of climate change.
Professor Imraan Valodia is the pro vice-chancellor for climate change, sustainability and inequality at the 第一吃瓜网, South Africa.