The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is my home institution.  These are some resources for groups and activities at UCLA that are related to the environment.

There is no central list of everyone involved in research and teaching about climate change, sustainability and the environment. There are directly and indirectly related research projects and graduate and undergraduate courses in several different departments.

Public health

The UCLA Center for Healthy Climate Solutions is part of the Fielding School of Public Health. “At C-Solutions we work alongside communities to turn public health research into actionable policies and practices. Our faculty are experts in climate change and the health implications of climate-induced crises including air pollution, wildfires, extreme heat, drought, and disasters. We focus on identifying public health co-benefits and building resilience through research, education, and collaboration with our community partners.”

“The UCLA Center for Public Health and Disasters promotes interdisciplinary efforts to reduce the health impacts of domestic and international, natural and human-generated disasters. Our faculty and staff have diverse backgrounds that include emergency medicine, environmental health, urban planning, engineering, international health, health services, epidemiology, gerontology, sociology, and community health. The Center collaborates with state and local public health agencies, community-based organizations, schools, hospitals, and agencies in the public and private sector to address the critical issues that arise when disaster impacts a community.”

As part of these efforts, you can find a heat map that has information about emergency room visits for heat-related problems around California. This is an effort to help plan mitigation efforts and build resiliency. From the site: “This interactive map of heat-related health outcomes in California shows the excess daily emergency room visits that occur on an extreme heat day compared to the usual, non-extreme heat day. It shows this excess by county, zip code, and voting district.”

Sustainability at UCLA

If you have a question or suggestions about the university’s efforts and activities to maintain a sustainable campus: email:sustainability@ucla.edu or https://www.sustain.ucla.edu/contacts/

Nurit Katz, UCLA’s first Chief Sustainability Officer, responded to inquiries about plans (as of November 2022) to expand solar energy capacity at UCLA:

“Currently the university receives 10MW of offsite solar from a historic renewable rate agreement with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) and has on-site solar at Ackerman, Engineering VI, and Parking Structure 9, as well as solar water heating on the residence halls. The university is currently exploring expanding on-site solar through the LADWP Feed-in-Tariff Program, which would add an additional 5-10MW of solar to the campus. You can learn more about UCLA’s climate and energy initiatives at https://www.sustain.ucla.edu/climate-and-energy/”

https://www.sustain.ucla.edu This website covers the whole of sustainability at UCLA across academics, operations, and engagement. It serves as a portal to a breadth of programs all over the university including links to the websites below.  

https://www.ioes.ucla.edu This is the website for the Institute of Environment and Sustainability (IoES), one of the major hubs of academic sustainability programs at UCLA. IoES moves science to action on the front lines of environmental progress. The Institute houses many different research centers, the Environmental Science Major, Environmental Systems and Society Minor, the PhD in Environment and Sustainability, and a DEnv program, as well as the award winning Sustainability Action Research Program: https://ioes.ucla.edu/sar . There are other related majors and programs at UCLA such as the Climate Science Major, and there are many other research centers related to sustainability at UCLA located in different schools and colleges you can find links here: https://www.sustain.ucla.edu/academics-and-research/

https://www.uclahealth.org/sustainability  This is the website for the specific sustainability programs at UCLA Health. The mission of sustainability at UCLA Health is to create a culture in which all staff, patients, and community members are engaged in making our planet a healthier place. 

The Luskin Center for Innovation is concerned with policy and civic engagement about issues of sustainability (climate, energy, environmental equity, transportation, urban greening, water).

This site, home of the “La Grand Challenge,” has a long list of relevant centers at UCLA: They point out that over 400 faculty and thousands of students are involved with environmental issues! Contact: (310) 206-6778 or SustainableLA@ucla.edu

The Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies. Communications from Sustainability at UCLA.

There are also UCLA student organizations involved with sustainability.

Environmental Law

The Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment “trains environmental lawyers and leaders.”