Most of us feel we don't have the time, expertise or chance to work on climate change and/or loss of biodiversity (“environmental change”).

1in5 involves a simple redirection of some existing efforts.

In the UK alone, every year, about 500,000 students complete an undergraduate degree. In their final year almost all students, in collaboration with us, expert academic supervisors, do a substantial piece of advanced work: a research project, a composition, a dissertation, a show etc. If 1 in 5 of these pieces of work focused on environmental change there could be a significant impact.

What could a collection of student projects achieve? Do you have the expertise and ideas to supervise environment projects? Our answers are: something significant, and yes. Read on.

Begin with uncoordinated environment projects, shows, dissertations etc - call them all "projects".

Educational impact. Students will develop knowledge and confidence, and gain the chance to turn some of their anxiety about the environment [1] into agency. The influence of a large student group, equipped with skills, ideas and connections, will ripple out through thousands of interactions with friends, family and future employers, and societal change will follow [2]. In addition, due to the law of truly large numbers [3], we anticipate after graduation, some will make exceptional contributions to arts, science, politics and beyond.

“Outputs”, the work produced by the students in collaboration with you. All of it will be valuable (see next section), but some work will be exceptional. Consider 50-200 students, the size of a traditional cohort. You should be able to think of work done by a final year student that led to a journal article, a performance or product. With potentially 100s of thousands of projects, again the law of truly large numbers [3] applies and some significant pieces of work should result.

Don’t have any idea for projects? The Project Ideas section might help.

Problems remain unsolved, ideas untried, because of the scale of resource or a breadth of expertise required.  When people collaborate (e.g. Wikipedia or Linux) the results can change the world. 

Work at scale. Within universities there are existing examples of problems being solved using scale such as the “many labs” initiatives in which groups of scientists coordinate to collect very large datasets.  “Innocence projects” that are run in some law schools are another example.  After agreement on an important problem or idea, 10s or 100s of projects could be aligned in pursuit.

Multi-disciplinary projects. A critical idea for addressing environment change might be in the head of a lecturer in Chemistry, the notepad of a PhD student in Journalism, or on a mechanic's bench in a garage in the Outer Hebrides.  Aligned projects could examine things like legal issues, or aesthetic and design factors. Or aligned projects could help a local council improve their recycling message, or a local business green its supply chain (see the UoM Living Lab for great examples).

1in5 is already running, but reach and impact could be magnified when some projects can be aligned.

The pandemic taught us how much can be achieved when ideas, data and materials are collected and shared.  Even when what is shared is partial, tentative or uncertain [4].  Currently when a project is completed it is filed away and forgotten.  Imagine an environment focused version of Wikipedia, let’s call it Enviropedia, and a repository for materials.  During submission the student is asked to add a two or three line summary of their work to Enviropedia, and link or upload their work.  Information, ideas and materials would very quickly accumulate that could be consulted, used or searched for emergent patterns by individuals (or computers) in universities and beyond.

You might not be sold on everything, but hopefully you like at least part of the proposal, and think its worth joining in.  You may have your own strong views on how to respond to environment change or where the focus should be. You may even be a climate sceptic.  You can participate in 1in5 whatever your views.  It is a framework, not an agenda, the project topics are up to supervisors and students. 

You may perceive flaws in 1in5 or have suggestions.  Let us know, help@1in5project.info

Hopefully you are willing to give the 1in5 a try.  If you supervise projects you could look at offering some related to environment change (FAQ-1 has ideas). If you don’t supervise projects but can think of some other way to help, please do. If you can’t imagine anything you can do, it would be great just to have you on board as a supporter. Click the “Join in” button below. Questions? Try the FAQs.

For those of you that would like to take a more active part, please join us.  There are problems to solve, resources to create, decisions to make, an infrastructure to put together, and an idea to spread.  We hope to set up a forum in the future, but for now email help@1in5project.info. 

[1] Climate change: Young people very worried - survey - BBC News

Original paper: Climate anxiety in children and young people and their beliefs about government responses to climate change: a global survey - The Lancet Planetary Health

[2] An example of a dramatic switch in societal attitudes is gay marriage. Changes in attitudes (and changes in the law that followed) have been have been attributed to greater integration between people who identify as gay and people with a heterosexual identity. Flores, A. R. (2014). Reexamining context and same-sex marriage: The effect of demography on public support for same-sex relationship recognition.  International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 26(3), 283-300.

Joe Biden credited the 18-35 generation for providing the platform for the “largest environmental plan in all of history”

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_truly_large_numbers

[4] Mature tools and methodologies already exist for making use of the “grey literature”, e.g. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/child-health/about-us/support-services/library/resources-z/search-tools-grey-literature