Wamkelekile, Welkom
UCT hosts global sustainable campus community
20 May 2026 | Story Stephen Langtry. Photos Supplied. Voice Cwenga Koyana. Read time 8 min.
The University of Cape Town (UCT) recently hosted the biennial International Sustainable Campus Network (ISCN) Conference. This year, the conference brought roughly 90 delegates from around the world to Cape Town for a week of workshops, keynote addresses and conversations about what it means to make a university sustainable in 2026.
The ISCN Conference used to run annually, but the network has since shifted to a two-year cycle to reduce delegate travel and the related carbon footprint. The 2024 edition was hosted in Switzerland. For 2026, the network opened a formal bidding process, and UCT made its case.
“I put a bid in for UCT to host this prestigious conference and made sure the bid really showed off Cape Town and UCT in all its beauty and diversity,” said Manfred Braune, UCT’s director of Environmental Sustainability.
A coalition of the willing
“In climate change research, we deal with a lot of contestation: denialists, misinformation, debates about energy technologies, and so forth. But at the ISCN, we could move beyond that. We know what to do. The question is how to do it best,” noted Dr Britta Rennkamp, a senior researcher at the African Climate and Development Initiative (ACDI), who worked alongside Braune and the Khusela Ikamva Sustainable Campus project team. “It‘s a group of like-minded and passionate people doing their best to transform their university … a coalition of the willing who are in the same boat as us.”
Many of those delegates, Dr Rennkamp pointed out, are wrestling with the same questions as UCT and have institutional counterparts in cities far from Cape Town. One of the key ideas behind these questions is that a campus should function as a “living lab” for sustainability. Braune explained that this is a central theme of the ISCN and is highlighted at each of its conferences, while also forming a key component of UCT’s Environmental Sustainability Strategy.
“Laboratories are often spaces that only certain researchers or students are allowed in,” Braune noted. “The idea of a living lab is quite different. You use your campus environment – the physical infrastructure, the open space, the projects already there or under way – and you allow those to be opportunities for teaching, research and engagement.”
The d-school Afrika, which hosted day one of the conference, is one such example of a living lab for sustainability: a building that doubles as a walk-through tutorial on green design, with multiple forms of signage and QR codes around the building, with students doing research on various aspects of the building’s design and operation, among other things.
An exhibition of sustainability research
At a welcoming event held at the historic Welgelegen building, the practitioners of the VC Conversation Series, Professor Thandabantu Nhlapo and Nomfundo Walaza, welcomed participants to UCT and reflected on their roles in advancing transformation. The event created a space for international delegates to connect with UCT students and staff in the format of an exhibition of sustainability research at UCT. The student-led Green Campus Initiative showcased their vegetable garden project.
The conference also became a platform to showcase the work of UCT’s Khusela Ikamva Sustainable Campus project, with team members running a workshop, presenting short talks and posters with some of the findings of this project. The day before the conference started, the Khusela Ikamva team hosted an open-invitation side event for the UCT community and conference delegates. “Since it’s quite a busy, structured conference setting, we wanted to make sure we could include students, or anyone interested to find out more, and offer a warm, relaxed welcome event to international delegates,” said Tegan Gibaud, a research assistant on the project who captured stories and photography across the week.
Plants, photos and a Kirstenbosch detour
The programme itself ranged wide. Professor Edgar Pieterse’s keynote address was, by several accounts, the highlight. Braune said that it was “thought-provoking, inspiring and challenging”. The short-talk session, which comprised 90 minutes of six-minute presentations from students, researchers and university operations staff from around the world, was a favourite. The third day took place at Kirstenbosch’s Moyo conference space, where participants broadened their perspectives on topics such as artificial intelligence, campus governance, and biodiversity. The programme also featured a well-received workshop facilitated by Happy by Nature, focusing on indigenous plants and their traditional uses by South African communities. Each delegate concluded the session by blending their own fragrant essential oil using locally sourced plant extracts.
“It was a nice reminder that we have a lot of similarities and a lot in common, even though we’re very far apart.”
For Gibaud, the most powerful element was a photo contest run by ETH Zurich on behalf of the ISCN, in which competitors submitted images from their own campuses. “It was a nice reminder that we have a lot of similarities and a lot in common, even though we’re very far apart.” The photos were beautifully exhibited in a cardboard folding structure that was moved from one venue to the other on every day.
UCT’s senior horticulturist, Noelene le Cordier, who manages UCT’s grounds and gardens, presented a short talk on day two on the reforestation of upper campus after the fire. She noted: “Attending the 2026 ISCN Conference was an incredibly enriching and memorable experience – one that left me inspired, energised, and deeply connected to a global sustainability community. The conference created a wonderful space for collaboration, reflection, and inspiration around the future of sustainable campuses and resilient landscapes.”
The work continues beyond the conference
The team’s message to the wider UCT community is that the conference is one milestone in the life of a broader, ongoing network. This network continues its work beyond the event and remains open to sustained engagement through ISCN’s online communities of practice, living-lab campuses, Scope 3 emissions initiatives, and other thematic areas. Anyone working in this space is welcome to join and participate.
“It’s an invitation for people in the UCT community … to join some of those communities of practice where this work of the network continues,” Braune said. More info about these communities of practice can be found on ISCN’s website.
“There’s a really good community out there tackling real issues.”
Rennkamp puts it another way. The mainstream climate story, she argued, can lead toward overwhelm, excuses and inaction. The ISCN conference offered something less common: a way to channel concern into care about the places within our sphere of influence, alongside people doing the same thing.
“There’s a really good community out there tackling real issues,” she noted. “A lot of them sit within our organisation and have counterparts all across the planet. You can get involved in this. She’s quick to add: UCT is not done. “We’ve got a lot to do still.”
Victoria Smith, the executive director for the ISCN, said of the conference and UCT as hosts: “We are deeply appreciative of our 2026 ISCN Conference host, the University of Cape Town. Together, we delivered an excellent three-day gathering that brought together diverse colleagues from 45 institutions across 20 countries. Most importantly, this year’s conference generated concrete outcomes that will help shape the future of our network.”
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