Green Campus Initiatives

Green Campus Initiatives

In 2007 Fordham pledged to reduce greenhouse gasses by 30% from our baseline year of 2005 as part of the NYC Carbon Challenge started under Mayor Bloomberg. This grew to a commitment to a 40% reduction. As of 2021 we have reduced CO2e by 36.8%.

Learn More About Our Response to the NYC Carbon Challenge

In keeping with the Jesuit traditions of the pursuit of wisdom and learning, education of the whole person and respect for the environment, we recognize the value of minimizing our environmental impact.

We will endeavor to design, construct and maintain our buildings, infrastructure, and grounds in a manner that ensures environmental sustainability and demonstrates sustainability best practices in a broad range of areas.

More Green Campus Initiatives

Green Buildings

All new buildings will be designed from an energy standpoint to achieve the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) New Construction Silver rating, ensuring that all new properties are environmentally responsible.

Sustainability News at Fordham

Walsh Family Library: Reflecting on 25 Years 

Walsh Family Library: Reflecting on 25 Years 

Just after the inauguration ceremony for President Tania Tetlow in October, revelers gathered in front of Walsh Family Library—aglow in purple and blue lights—to boogie down to the sounds of the famed Preservation Hall Jazz Band. It was hard to imagine that in 1994, this was just an empty patch of land, and not a …

Climate Action Report Details Path Forward for Sustainability

Climate Action Report Details Path Forward for Sustainability

Maroon is the official color of Fordham, but more and more, the University is embracing green. That’s the message of the University’s latest climate action plan annual report. “As a University, we’re working toward a more sustainable world and doing the part that we can do here, both in the physical plant, as well as …

In New Class, Addressing Climate Change and Food Insecurity

In New Class, Addressing Climate Change and Food Insecurity

We hear regularly about how climate change is impacting the weather. What’s perhaps less obvious is that it is also affecting the food we eat. In 2015, the U.S. Department of Agriculture warned in a report that the progress that has been made on global food security is likely to take a hit because of …

In Debut Novel, a Fordham Graduate Imagines Our Climate Future, Five Different Ways

In Debut Novel, a Fordham Graduate Imagines Our Climate Future, Five Different Ways

Business leaders, economists, political consultants, and military planners often use scenario thinking to prepare for what lies ahead and test possible courses of action—or inaction. For Andrew Dana Hudson, FCLC ’09, it’s a practice tailor-made for speculative fiction, one that influenced his debut novel, Our Shared Storm, which was published by Fordham University Press in …

Student’s Research Spotlights an Overlooked Inequality: The Disability Gap

Student’s Research Spotlights an Overlooked Inequality: The Disability Gap

Around the world, as countries grow more wealthy and advanced, what happens to those who face extra challenges with essential things like seeing, hearing, getting around, and interacting with others? That’s the question recently addressed by a Fordham student’s faculty-mentored research project. While scholars have long suspected that people with disabilities tend to get left …

Nancy Castaldo’s Latest Book Offers Kids Environmental Solutions, Hope Before the World Runs Dry

Nancy Castaldo’s Latest Book Offers Kids Environmental Solutions, Hope Before the World Runs Dry

Although World Water Day and Earth Day are in the rearview, Nancy Castaldo hopes you won’t shift your attention from the fate of the planet just yet. In her latest book, When the World Runs Dry: Earth’s Water in Crisis, published in January, she dives into global water security—or, more aptly, the lack thereof—tackling infrastructure, …

‘What It Will Save Us’: MOSAIC Panel Addresses Environmental and Climate Justice

‘What It Will Save Us’: MOSAIC Panel Addresses Environmental and Climate Justice

“I’ve been in this storm so long/ I’ve been in this here storm so long/ Crying Lord, give me more time to pray/ I’ve been in this here storm so long.” Fordham College at Lincoln Center graduate Marquetta L. Goodwine, Queen Quet of the Gullah/Geechee Nation, sang those lines from the spiritual “I’ve Been in …

University Honored for Stewardship of Trees

University Honored for Stewardship of Trees

Fordham’s commitment to caring for trees and protecting the environment continues to receive national recognition. For the fifth time, the Arbor Day Foundation included Fordham in its list of colleges and universities recognized for their commitment to trees through Tree Campus Higher Education, a national program launched in 2008 by the foundation. “Trees not only …

Fordham and Bronx Schools Collaborating on Air Quality Project

Fordham and Bronx Schools Collaborating on Air Quality Project

Through a new initiative called Project FRESH Air, Fordham is working with local middle and high schoolers to combat climate change and generate new air quality data in their communities.  “We want to set up a network of air quality sensors around the city and map out the air quality—particularly in the Bronx—and help students …

Climate Change and the UN Call to Action: Lecture Highlights Need for Multilateralism

Climate Change and the UN Call to Action: Lecture Highlights Need for Multilateralism

Cooperation and multilateralism will be key to combating the climate crisis in the next two to three years, said a U.N. expert on climate action at a Fordham lecture on Nov. 17. Selwin Hart, special adviser to the secretary-general on climate action and assistant secretary-general for the Climate Action Team at the United Nations, addressed …

Art and Action on the Bronx River

Art and Action on the Bronx River

On a Friday afternoon in April, Matthew López-Jensen stood more than 300 feet above a grassy plaza in Valhalla, New York, on a pedestrian path atop the Kensico Dam. The granite-faced dam blocks a 30.6-billion-gallon reservoir—a major source of New York City’s drinking water—and marks the start of the Bronx River’s 23-mile journey from Westchester …