De Montfort University is a global academic hub chair and as such publishes a progress report on both the individual United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as well as a comprehensive report on all the goals.
Our 2025 report will show what the university has been doing in terms of research, teaching, partnerships and engagement in helping to meet those targets and raising awareness of the progress towards the 2030 aims.
This is the progress report for SDG 13 Climate Action. The full report on all the SDGs can be viewed here.
UN PROGRESS REPORT ON SDG 13 in 2025
A TOTAL of 35% of the targets set for SDG 13 look set to be met by 2030, but a further 65 are showing only marginal progress.
The UN warns in its 2025 progress report: “Climate change is accelerating. Extreme weather is intensifying, driving the highest climate-related displacement in 16 years and worsening food insecurity, economic losses and instability.
“The world cannot and must not let up on climate action. To keep the 1.5°C warming limit within reach, urgent investment in adaptation, resilience and emission cuts must accelerate, especially in vulnerable regions.
“The cost of inaction far exceeds the cost of action – and the window to secure a liveable, sustainable future is rapidly closing.”
MAJOR DMU NEWS ON SDG 13 IN 2025
DMU launches £1.3m grassroots climate action project
DE MONTFORT University Leicester (DMU) has secured more than £1.3m in National Lottery funding to lead a major new community-driven climate initiative aimed at embedding sustainability in some of the city’s most deprived neighbourhoods.
The three-year scheme will bring together five grassroots organisations working with diverse communities across the city. Backed by the National Lottery Community Fund, the programme will establish a climate action hub at DMU, designed to support local people in cutting emissions, improving wellbeing and influencing climate policy.
Partner groups – Leicester Nirvana Football Club, Somali Development Services CIC, ZamZam Unlimited Possibilities CIC, Saffron Acres and One Roof Leicester – will receive funding to deliver their own climate-related projects, from community gardening and recycling drives to arts-based workshops and youth training.
Flooding in the UK: How better collaboration between communities and authorities can strengthen flood resilience
A LACK of connection between local government and residents is a barrier towards community resilience to flooding, says new research co-authored by a leading climate social-science specialist at De Montfort University (DMU) Leicester.
The UK faces recurring flood events, with 5.2 million homes now at risk from flooding and coastal erosion. This increasing risk highlights the importance of resilience planning, according to the report published in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction by DMU’s Dr Ruth McKie and Dr Adam Aitken from the University of Salford.
DMU named among world's top universities for sustainable work
DMU is among the world’s best performing universities in helping to promote three of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). DMU was listed as =57th for SDG 12, Responsible Consumption and Production, and =61st for both SDG 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities and SDG 13 Climate Action.
The ratings come from the Times Higher Education’s Impact Rankings, which is the only measure of a university’s performance in the SDGs.
Leicestershire's universities are working together for a greener future
LEICESTERSHIRE’S universities - University of Leicester, De Montfort University (DMU), and Loughborough University - are proving that collaboration is key in tackling climate change.
The institutions joined forces in 2022 under the Universities Partnership, in a ground-breaking agreement designed to tackle local challenges, including climate change.
A cornerstone of their efforts is the Leicestershire Climate and Nature Pact, an ambitious commitment that unites universities, businesses, and local councils in a shared mission to achieve net zero by 2045.
MAJOR DMU RESEARCH ON SDG 13 IN 2025
Climate obstruction across the Global South
Faruque, M. O., McKie, R. E., Christel, L. G., Debucquois, C., Edwards, G., Gellert, P. K., Gutierrez, R. A., Hochstetler, K., Li, Y., Milani, C. R. S., Möhle, E., Oguntuase, O. J. and Walz, J. R. (2025)
THE Global South countries differ in their histories, development trajectories, political structures, and participation in multilateral organizations. They also differ in their vulnerabilities to climate change.
This identifies key actors and organizations undertaking climate obstruction activities in various sectors in the Global South. It examines these actors’ political aims, their alliances with other actors and organizations, and the strategies, tactics, and narratives they deploy to undermine both legislative and policy actions to address climate change.
https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197787144.003.0008
An Expansion Too Far? The Contested Space of Environmental Policy Discourses
Mitchell, A. (2025)
EVIDENCE linking urban traffic emissions to human illness and death and as a source of climate change is incontrovertible.
In August 2023, the London ultra-low emissions zone (ULEZ) was expanded to include all 32 boroughs, a move that sparked a strong reaction especially from the right-wing media in the UK.
The policy rapidly became politicised and cleaved along ideological lines. This paper uses sampled articles from two politically opposing news media to examine the processes by which policy can become politicised. Using semantic tagging, four themes are analysed to highlight the dynamics by which politicisation is accomplished in the media.
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17041955
Invaders and Containers: Cognitive Representations of Biological and Particular Matter (bioPM )
Mitchell, A. S., Lemon, M. and Drew, G. H. (2025)
AIR quality management concerns the assessment, analysis and mitigation strategies associated with ensuring that air is breathable and non-toxic.
Successful management is a cognitively intensive task, knowledge-focused and converges multiple sources of information to develop a shared understanding of a problem. To operate effectively in this space, managers and operational teams share common points of reference in discussing problems and solutions, strategies, tactical briefings, etc., and communication and technical language use are key to the discipline.
https://doi.org/10.3390/pollutants5030017
Gender and the transition to Net Zero Transport
Budd, L. (2025)
THE United Nations has identified climate change and inequality (including gender inequality) as being two of the biggest challenges of the contemporary global era.
The global transport sector, which currently accounts for around a quarter of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, remains a long way from reaching its Net Zero target and largely fails to deliver gender inclusive services which recognise and meet the different mobility needs, priorities and services both between and within genders.
Gender and the transition to Net Zero Transport
Property flood resilience (PFR): exploring the experiences of commercial property owners
Xiao, H., Proverbs, D., Joseph, R. and Adedeji, T. (2025)
THIS research explored the current views and experiences of commercial property owners and users towards the practice of property flood resilience (PFR) to identify the barriers and develop improved implementation strategies.
The research adopted an exploratory approach using six recently flooded commercial properties as case studies and examined them through site visits, interviews and documentary evidence to achieve triangulation of the enquiry.
https://doi.org/10.1108/IJBPA-08-2023-0122
A study of the temporal and spatial evolution trends of urban flood resilience in the Pearl River Delta, China
Xu, W., Han, P., Proverbs, D.G. and Guo, X. (2025)
IN VIEW of the increasing threat of flooding across the world and specifically the vulnerability of the Pearl River Delta region to these risks, this study undertakes a spatial and temporal evolution of flood risk in the region, including an assessment of urban flood resilience.
By combining the pressure-state-response model and the nature-economy-society-infrastructure framework, an urban flood resilience index system is constructed. The order relation analysis method, Criteria Importance Through Intercriteria Correlation method and the VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija Kompromisno Resenje evaluation method, they were then combined to quantify urban flood resilience and reveal the hierarchical relationships that exist between key factors.
https://doi.org/10.1108/IJBPA-11-2024-0228
Flying towards Net Zero: Decarbonising aviation amid a climate crisis
Pantaleki, E. and Budd, L. (2025)
IN 2021 the international air transport industry committed itself to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050 in line with the Paris Agreement to keep global temperature rises below 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
Yet, in 2022, as demand for air travel rebounded following the COVID-19 pandemic, air transport’s CO2 emissions reached almost 800 million tonnes, approximately 80% of the pre-pandemic level.
This aims to review the key technological propositions (including sustainable aviation fuels, hydrogen and electric/hybrid aircraft), and international regulatory interventions which aim to facilitate commercial aviation’s transition towards net zero.
Flying towards Net Zero: Decarbonising aviation amid a climate crisis
Evidence for motivated control? Climate change related distress is positively associated with domain-specific efficacy beliefs and climate action
Ogunbode, C.A., Player, L., Lu, S., Park, M.S.A., Doran, R. et al (2025)
RECENT cross-sectional and experimental research has found measures of climate change related distress to be positively associated with measures of efficacy beliefs.
Authors of some of these studies have interpreted this finding in terms of motivated control, that is, people who experience climate change related distress are motivated to believe that they can help mitigate climate change.
We extend this notion of motivated control by assuming that efficacy beliefs flowing from climate change related distress play a role in encouraging climate action.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2025.102695
Climate anxiety in perspective: a look at dominant stressors in youth mental health and sleep
Ogunbode, C.A., Player, L., Lu, S., Park, M.S.A. and Doran, R. (2025)
THERE is growing evidence that climate anxiety is associated with significant effects on the mental health and wellbeing of young people.
However, the relative importance of climate anxiety for young people's mental health has hitherto been unclear, as climate anxiety has largely been studied in isolation from other common stressors.
This study sought to contextualize the significance of climate anxiety for the mental health of UK young adults relative to other concurrent psychological stressors.
https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.70057
Rhetorical Strategies Employed by Big Oil in the Context of IPCC Reports of Climate Change
Mitchell, A. S., and Bhattacharyya, S. C. (2025)
DESPITE long-standing evidence linking fossil fuel combustion to greenhouse gas and climate change effects, and the growing advocacy for reductions and regulatory limits on their use, fossil fuel corporations remain hugely profitable and influential.
In response to scientific evidence linking Big Oil’s corporate activities directly to climate change impacts, tactics favoured by Big Tobacco to medical evidence linking smoking to cancer appear to have also been adopted by Big Oil in responding to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) findings.
https://doi.org/10.3390/world6030128
Climate policy obstruction on the right and the far right
Plehwe, D., Farrell, J., Araldi, L., Brulle, R. J., Bryant, J. C., Callison, W., Davies, K., McKie, R. E., Mitralexis, S., and Racu, A. (2025)
THIS chapter considers scholarly research on the constellation of actors and movements situated on the right wing of the political spectrum and the strategies, tactics, and narratives they engage in to obstruct climate action.
It begins by clarifying conceptual and empirical boundaries around the related terms “conservative,” “neoliberal,” “right-wing,” and “far right,” and then briefly traces the history of these concepts.
The chapter then analyzes climate obstruction by the neoliberal and conservative right followed by that of the revolutionary and authoritarian far right.
https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197787144.003.0005
Community resilience to flooding in the UK: A study of Matlock, Derbyshire
McKie, R.E and Aitken, A (2025)
THE United Kingdom has faced recurring floods since 2019, with 5.2 million homes at risk.
This has prompted the UK government to prioritise resilience planning in flood prone areas. This study focuses on community resilience in Matlock, Derbyshire, which has experienced intensified flooding since 2018.
Using qualitative interviews and a focus group, the research examines evidence of community resilience and the barriers to its development by focusing on community activities during flooding incidents.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2025.105266
SDG 13 Climate Action