Duke sustainability requires endowment transparency

The Board of Trustees recently approved Duke’s Climate Action Plan, demonstrating its commitment to environmental advocacy and sustainability. 2024—Duke’s target year for carbon neutrality using a mixture of offsets and real campus energy reductions and diversification—is now a date to watch. The University’s B+ score awarded by the college sustainability report card augurs well the feasibility of these administrative targets.

Ignominiously though, Duke’s F in endowment transparency is emblematic of the many steps that we must take between now and 2024. This abysmal score and the administration’s perennial reticence with regard to the larger issue of transparency demand proper responses and draw serious questions about the contents and overall sustainability of our investment portfolio. If the administration is heavily invested in Duke Energy and other corporations supporting the construction of a new coal-fired power plant in Cliffside, N.C., and other environmentally unsound projects, how committed is it really to the promotion of sustainability and other critical environmental reforms? Does Duke really want to promote itself as the environmental Janus of our times? Only full endowment transparency can rectify this glaring issue.

In conjunction with these administrative omissions, the work being done by various student groups, and their sustainability and recycling coordinators in particular, shows that sustainability is slowly becoming a central pillar of Duke’s administrative and campus cultures. From Eco-Olympics to the mere existence of a Climate Action Plan for our University, our B+ for sustainability is a reward for the significant progress that has been made on most fronts (endowment transparency withstanding). It is equally indicative, though, of the multiple steps that must still be taken in order for us to achieve carbon neutrality within the Plan’s set timeframe. 2024 will therefore serve as the ultimate test of our growing environmental consciousness and commitment, and, as mentioned earlier, is a date to be remembered from now on by students and administrators alike.

Mikael Owunna

Co-president, Duke Environmental Alliance

Pratt ’12