The university is one of nine post-secondary institutions across Canada to be recognized for its sustainability and environmental stewardship on campus.
Last week, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) awarded Concordia along with eight other Canadian post-secondary campuses with its newly created Living Campus Certificate for “fostering sustainability and environmental stewardship.”
Canada’s WWF branch introduced its Living Campus Certificate in 2023 as a strategy to spread knowledge about biodiversity initiatives. The idea was to target post-secondary institutions, which tend to have large areas of property and can educate people on how to make an environmental difference.
“The WWF certification is like a communications piece for us in a lot of ways, it’s a way for us to get the word out,” said Urban Agriculture & Biodiversity Coordinator Jackie Martin from Concordia’s Office of Sustainability. “So when they know the initiatives that we’re doing on campus, people can get involved and benefit and learn from them.”
So far, a total of nine post-secondary institutions have been accepted for the first year, three in Quebec and six in Ontario. The other Living Campuses in Quebec are HEC Montréal and Vanier College.
To apply, schools had an academic year to complete the activities presented in an action plan they created, which follows four WWF requirements: to create opportunities to learn about and participate in the Living Planet @ Campus program, to lead at least one conservation activity, to lead at least one WWF engagement activity, and to help shape and inform the program.
To encourage student engagement, Concordia houses a variety of sustainability groups and projects, offering different programs such as the 7-week Graduate Sustainability Microprogram, the Sustainability and Zero Waste Instagram page, and the Sustainability Hub Discord server.
“What I see in the student community and among people who are really on the ground is that there is a great openness and motivation to create spaces and projects that promote environmental causes and lead to positive environmental impacts,” said Hamidou Maïga, founder of Hamidou Horticulture, a member of Concordia’s Campus garden initiatives.
“Is there room to do more projects? I think so. There are still many green spaces that are currently just lawned areas, which could eventually be used to establish pollinator spaces and areas for native plants,” said Maïga.
In efforts to improve the campus’ biodiversity, the Office of Sustainability designated over 2300 square metres of reduced mowing areas around the Loyola campus, mostly concentrated around the Jesuit Residence building, to naturally enrich the soil with native plants and bioactivity.
Jackie Martin regularly checks on this zone for activity growth, picking out harmful species such as poison ivy and curly dock, and planting bioacoustic recording devices to track different bird songs in order to determine which bird species frequent the area. Giant puffball mushrooms have been growing in the zone as of recently, which she hasn’t seen on campus before.
Martin is planning to invite different professors to conduct classes on the zones, such as professors from the Loyola College for Diversity and Sustainability.
The Living Campus certification bestows three years of the partnership between the WWF and each given school. For this coming year’s conservation activity, Martin intends to plant around 1400 trees in different zones of the Loyola campus. The initiative started on Monday, and will extend into November. Volunteer students will be invited to help on certain weeks.
“Change doesn’t happen overnight,” said WWF Canada Vice President of restoration and regeneration Elizabeth Hendriks. “Recognizing that finding solutions and successes is iterative, and that takes time. So the idea of a three-year partnership is recognizing that we will work with campuses to adjust their plans to advise where appropriate and not always appropriate, and it really is about sharing across the country.”
A previous version of this article erroneously identified the WWF as the World Wildlife Foundation rather than the World Wildlife Fund. This error has been rectified.