Scholars, students, and thought leaders from across the Yale community this week will engage with partners from across the region, the U.S., and the world to explore solutions to the climate crisis during a summit at the Yale Club of New York City.
The third annual Yale @ Climate Week NYC event — which will be held on Sept. 21 and 22 —coincides with Climate Week NYC, an international summit held annually in New York City to drive climate action. Climate Week NYC leverages the presence of international leaders who are present for high-level meetings of the UN General Assembly.
The combination of these major events provides a unique opportunity to contribute to the global dialogue around climate change, biodiversity loss, ecosystem degradation, and the effects of these crises on society, Yale leaders say.
“As the challenges facing our planet continue to intensify, the need for Yale to serve as a model for leadership, for collaboration, and for producing evidence-based knowledge about the nature of these challenges — and how humankind might solve them — grows ever more urgent,” said Yale President Maurie McInnis. “As citizens, leaders, and scholars from across the world gather for Climate Week, Yale is continuing to open its doors for the kinds of conversation and collaboration needed to advance the pursuit of knowledge in this crucial area.”
The Yale @ Climate Week NYC event is hosted by Yale Planetary Solutions (YPS), the university’s campuswide initiative uniting leaders and innovators across disciplines to accelerate solutions to the greatest threats facing people and planet.
“The measure of Climate Week should not be how many conversations we have, but what those conversations make possible,” said Julie Zimmerman, Yale’s vice provost for planetary solutions. “At Yale Planetary Solutions, we want to turn this moment of extraordinary convening into partnerships and actions that endure long after the week is over.”
Yale Planetary Solutions will convene a dynamic program focused on expanding collaboration with the United Nations during a special invitation-only session which was organized in collaboration with Cornell University’s Atkinson Center for Sustainability, Harvard’s Salata Institute, and UN University’s Centre for Policy Research. After opening remarks from Yale Provost Scott Strobel and Zimmerman, panels will showcase leading thinkers from academia, the UN, and major environment NGOs on opportunities for expanded collaboration to close the gap between knowledge and action.
The opening night will also showcase performances by Yale School of Music alumni and students who won the Gene Pinover Award competition, in which they were challenged to compose new pieces related to the challenge of climate change.
The measure of Climate Week should not be how many conversations we have, but what those conversations make possible.
Then, on Sept. 22 a diverse series of public sessions organized by faculty, staff, and alumni will explore potential solutions to the world’s most pressing environmental threats. Panel events will include discussions on the design of carbon markets; moving beyond the use of GDP alone to better measure societal progress, sustainability, and well-being; how cities can be leaders in the climate fight; how companies can reduce global warming by tackling non‑CO₂ “superpollutants”; how to decarbonize the electric grid; and bipartisan pathways to a sustainable future.
The Yale Club events will also include the launch of a “Resilient Cities, Reimagining Health” toolkit that will describe preventative urban initiatives that aim to protect public health in the face of the climate threat; the introduction of a forthcoming 2027 international study on public demand for climate adaptation that will inform national adaptation plans in the run-up to the next UN climate talks; and the launch of a “Corporate Roadmap for Superpollutant Action” by the Carbon Containment Lab, a nonprofit founded at Yale in 2020 and spun out in 2024. (View the full agenda.)
More than a dozen Yale schools, departments, and units are contributing to this year’s program, creating one of the university’s most interdisciplinary public engagements around climate and sustainability.
“Our faculty and alumni will be exploring how long-term climate goals — on natural capital, clean energy, carbon removal, and resilient cities — can translate into solutions we can actually deploy,” said Indy Burke, dean of the Yale School of the Environment. “Climate Week gives us a fantastic opportunity to do that work directly with government, business, and nonprofit leaders from around the world working toward the same goals.”
Scholars and practitioners from the Yale School of Public Health and its Center for Climate Change and Health will also come together to address what YSPH Dean Megan Ranney calls “one of the defining challenges of our time.” “The event highlights Yale’s extraordinary breadth of expertise while creating opportunities for collaboration across sectors,” Ranney said. “Those connections are critical to translating research into action and accelerating solutions that protect both human and planetary health.”
Throughout the week, members of the Yale community will also participate in:
- a day-long exploration of climate action opportunities that reawaken humankind’s sacred connection with Earth through “mediation and dialogue, music and movement, and evidence-based stories of transformation,” hosted by The Fetzer Institute (Sunday, Sept. 20),
- an event hosted by the New Haven-based incubator ClimateHaven that will explore opportunities to recover critical materials from industrial water (Sept. 22),
- a day-long “Nature Your City” event, hosted by the New York Botanical Garden, that will explore nature-based strategies that promote more resilient cities (Sept. 23), and
- a discussion on the sustainable benefits of implementing “circularity” — including systems that minimize the use of raw materials and generation of waste — which will be hosted by the Center for Circularity in Interior Design (Sept. 25).
“Since its creation in 2020, Yale Planetary Solutions has been strengthening and elevating the scholarship and collaboration of faculty, students, partners, and leaders from across campus to advance big ideas that will help us tackle the world’s most pressing environmental challenges and achieve a more sustainable future,” said Scott Strobel, Yale’s provost and the Henry Ford II Professor of Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry.
“Climate Week offers an important opportunity to create new partnerships that move these ideas from campus to the global community, connect innovators with investors, and accelerate transformative policies that scale these solutions worldwide.”
This story was updated on September 21.
