Earlier this month, Binghamton University received a 2025 Campus Sustainability Achievement Award from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, founded in 2005 to promote sustainability on college campuses. The award recognized the Binghamton 2 Degrees project, a collaborative effort between the University and the local community to adapt to the threat of climate change.

The project focuses on identifying ways for students and Binghamton residents to prepare for life under 2 degrees Celsius of warming above pre-industrial levels, considered a “critical threshold above which dangerous and cascading effects of human-generated climate change will occur,” according to a 2023 study by NASA.

Binghamton 2 Degrees seeks to address the threat of climate change through research, art and collective action to promote sustainability in areas like energy and food production.

“It’s about integrating art and science to reach people and specifically to help our community prepare for climate change because it is already happening and is only going to intensify,” Pamela Mischen, the University’s chief sustainability officer, said. “Even if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases tomorrow, we have made what’s called a climate commitment.”

This year, the association announced 17 winners across four categories: the Lifetime Achievement Award; the Campus Sustainability Achievement Award; the Sustainability Student Leadership Award; and the AASHE Fellows. Since the awards program began in 2006, around 130 higher education institutions and individuals have been recognized.

Binghamton 2 Degrees has seven working groups: energy; food insecurity and agriculture; health; housing; infrastructure and resiliency; and refugees and social security. Comprised of faculty, staff, students and community members who meet monthly to address climate concerns, these groups aim to equip the community with ways to prepare for and mitigate the effects of climate change.

One such initiative is the transportation group’s local microtransit model, designed to connect rural residents to “provide access to food and medical resources,” according to Andreas Pape, director of Binghamton 2 Degrees and associate dean of the Graduate School.

“These kinds of networks are how we become a resilient community that can adapt to a changing world,” Pape wrote.

Mischen predicted that more people in New York City will move to the Greater Binghamton area because of rising sea levels and increased temperatures, which the local community must be prepared to handle. She said the community must address housing shortages to accommodate these potential newcomers.

“How will we accommodate a disaster that could impact many people downstate that will require assistance from upstate?” Mischen asked. “So that’s refugees, both international, which we are already seeing an increase in international migration as a result of climate change, specifically, as well as other destabilizing forces. But some of those reasons that other countries are destabilizing is also because of climate change.”

Meghan Fay Zahniser, the executive director of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, announced the award on Saturday in the Fine Arts Building corridor during the unveiling of a climate quilt project. The project, organized by Mischen, was one of several events promoting sustainability over the weekend.

Student groups like Zero Hour Binghamton, an environmental justice organization, also seek to promote sustainability and environmental awareness on campus and beyond.

“Like 2 Degrees, we emphasize trying to bridge the gap between the wider Binghamton community and the University,” said Jacob Weber, Zero Hour Binghamton’s president and a senior double-majoring in philosophy, politics and law and environmental studies. “Because there can kind of be like an ‘ivory tower effect’ there, where there isn’t a lot of interaction between students and community members. And so we focus on trying to rectify that through environmental justice activism.”