After over a year of preparation and planning, the University of New Mexico announced its first comprehensive Sustainability Strategic Plan to organize the University’s sustainability goals into two main areas, on Oct. 28.
The plan's two focuses are transforming campus operations and building sustainability engagement and culture. The first section of transforming campus operations contains measurable goals and objectives to create greater sustainability on campus, and the second section focuses on building culture and community within the University.
The Director of UNM’s Office of Sustainability, Anne Jakle, said the first steps in the creation of the plan were to gather a baseline of data and to learn what the University community’s priorities are.
The process, which began in April of last year, included focus groups, two public town halls and a campus-wide survey.
The plan sets UNM to meet the standards of State of New Mexico Executive Order 2019-003, which aims to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions to 45% below 2005 levels by 2030. UNM has reduced its emissions by 11% since 2005.
Jakle said the plan is ambitious, but she believes the goal is achievable, and the release of the Sustainability Strategic Plan puts the University on the path to accomplishing it.
“I believe that every action and goal that we have put in this plan is achievable, or at least that we can be on a pathway to achieving it in the next five years,” Jakle said.
Jakle said that the Sustainability Department is looking at multiple ways to get funding for projects on campus, including using preexisting university funds, federal grants and rebates, energy savings performance contracts and state legislature appropriated funding.
Some of the projects the plan hopes to implement include shifting the University's heating system to a geothermal-based system, modernizing the University's irrigation system, increasing access to recycling infrastructure, enhancing composting systems and investigating the idea of an on-site composting facility and expanding bike, pedestrian and micromobility infrastructure on and near campus.
“I think collaborations are the key to implementing this plan, and they're the key to sustainability in general,” Jakle said. “When we can work together and bring more resources towards these things, that's great.”
For each of the action items in the plan, the organization or department that will champion that initiative is listed, and ranges from Parking and Transportation Services, to UNM Food, to the UNM Golf Courses.
“The idea is it draws from areas all over campus so that everybody's coordinating and moving in the same direction. And then there'll be touch points multiple times a year for those groups to come together on sustainability, what we're doing, implementation, reaching our targets and then it could enable more coordination across campus,” Jakle said.
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The Sustainability Department hopes to expand the number of events it hosts to spread awareness of its efforts around campus, and plans to host at least five per academic year and collaborate with student groups to co-host those events, Jakle said.
“We're going to amp up the communication. One of the things we found in the strategic planning process was that lots of good things are going on, but nobody knows about it,” Jakle said.
Another part of the plan is to create a sustainability corps of student representatives to engage in peer education and outreach, and the creation of a campus-wide Sustainability Advisory Council.
“Getting the Sustainability Council up and running will be a core priority, and mapping all the implementation of the plan, and also getting that sustainability corps up and running as well. I think you'll be seeing a lot more communications and programming out of our office now that we have the capacity,” Jakle said.
Jakle said that UNM has done a lot of work on sustainability in the past and this plan is a way to move the University forward in the same direction.
“We really do need the engagement of students, staff and faculty, and the support across campus to both through individual behavioral actions and also through supporting some of these bigger campus initiatives. To really succeed in the implementation of this plan, everybody has a role to play,” Jakle said.
Jaden McKelvey-Francis is the editor-in-chief of the Daily Lobo. He can be reached at editorinchief@dailylobo.com or on X @jadenmckelvey
