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  • Università e Società
  • Centro di ricerca interdisciplinare sulla Sostenibilità e il Clima

Earth Day 2026: Our Power, Our Planet. Interview with Roberto Buizza

Publication date: 22.04.2026
Roberto Buizza
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Education and communication on climate change have been having positive effects: the human responsibility for the ongoing climate change is not denied any more, and investments to make a transition towards net-zero are progressing. There has been progress, but too slowly, emphasizes Roberto Buizza, professor at the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa. On Wednesday, April 22, on the occasion of Earth Day 2026, Buizza will open the Circle U. Climate Day – Solutions for climate change in inland and vulnerable areas with a lecture. The event is organized by the University of Pisa at the Natural History Museum of Calci. We spoke with him about several topics: the issue of climate change, the current geopolitical situation, and the commitment of the Interdisciplinary Research Center on Sustainability and Climate to addressing sustainability-related challenges.

Prof. Buizza, as thousands of events are being held to celebrate Earth Day 2026 (22 April), what is the current situation? Are we making progress towards addressing climate change, the major challenge that is affecting the Earth? 

We are making progress, but too slowly. Knowledge about climate change is more diffuse than years ago, thanks to major investments in education and communication projects. The number of people who deny that climate change is caused by human activities is getting smaller and smaller. Technological solutions to the decarbonisation of at least 90% of human activities are available (say everything but aviation and high-intensity energy industries, which together counts for about 10% of the global average emissions) and are becoming increasingly cheaper. S cheap that they can compete head-on with traditional, fossil-fuel based technologies. 

The major problem now is the diminished political will to achieve the target of net-zero by 2050, sustained by the pressure of extremely rich and powerful fossil fuel lobbyists. This is the key problem that we have to address. 

The slogan (or wish) of the 2026 Earth Day is ‘Our power, our planet'. The reality, however, is not very comforting, between war conflicts, climate crises and growing inequalities.

Earthday.org talks about 1 billion people and 150.000+ partners working to drive positive action: these are very large numbers. Earthday.org also invites us to not  underestimate our power: “When your voice and your actions are united with thousands or millions of others around the world, we create a movement that is inclusive, impactful, and impossible to ignore.”. 

Education and communication on climate change have been having positive effects: the human responsibility for the ongoing climate change is not denied any more, and investments to make a transition towards net-zero are progressing. For example, let me recall the results of two major studies that support this statement. Firstly, the results of the world largest survey on climate change run by the United Nations Development Program, which statistically represent 87% of the world’s population, that show that climate change is on people’s minds everywhere. Globally, 56 percent said they were thinking about it daily or weekly. Secondly, let me recall the study published by Nature in 2024 by Andre et al, on the “Globally representative evidence on the actual and perceived support for climate action”. They reported that a representative survey across 125 countries, based on nearly 130,000 interviews, revealed widespread support for climate action, with 69% of the global population expressing a willingness to contribute 1% of their personal income, 86% endorsing pro-climate social norms and 89% demanding intensified political action. 

Thus, if I think about the Earthday.org slogan ‘Our power, our planet’, I will say that there is an increasing awareness that it we have the power to manage at best our planet. This positive news must be stressed, as they contrast very powerfully the ongoing reality that indicate very clearly that there are still many obstacles to take the right decisions to do so. 

So, let us talk about reality: what is happening to the Earth climate?

Unfortunately, the reality is that global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, although at a slower paste than a decade ago. As a result, the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) in the atmosphere continues to increase, and the Earth climate to warm. 2024 was the warmest year on record, followed by 2023 and 2025. The warmest 10 years since the industrial revolution has occurred in the last decade, reminds us of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO). 

Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) reported a few days ago that March 2026 was the third warmest March since 1980 globally, and the second hottest for Europe. In 2026 the daily sea-surface temperature (between 60o South and 60o North) has been increasing very fast, and could soon surpass the 2024 levels (Figure 2). Looking ahead, with a strong El Niño predicted for the second half of 2026 and 2027, temperature in these two years is expected to be also very high, with global warming possibly reaching 1.7oC. Projections for the next decades indicate that with these emission levels, global warming will reach 2.0oC by 2040.  

As a result of the increasing temperature of the atmosphere and the oceans, sea-ice melting has also accelerated: Copernicus Climate Change Service has reported that in March 2026 the Arctic sea-ice extension has reached the lowest level since 1980 (5.7% below the 1991-2010 average for March). The consequence is that sea level rise has also been accelerating and is now at about 0.4 cm/year, a value that is double what was observed 15 years ago, as the European Space Agency (ESA) Climate Office reminds us. 

Overshoot Day for Italy is set for May 3, 2026. In 2025 it was May 6. In 2024 on May 19. What can we do concretely to reverse the trend?

The overshoot day (Figure 1) marks the date when the demand for ecological resources and services in a given year exceeds what the Earth can regenerate that year. Thus, having an overshoot day before the end of the year means that more resources than what the Earth can regenerate in one year are used, and that resources that are not going to be regenerated are consumed. Having continuously early overshoot days will bring at one point the planet to have no more ecological resources available for humanity. 

The fact that Italy’s overshoot day keeps happening earlier in the year, indicates that we are contributing to consuming the Earth resources, and to make the situation worse. This is not the only bad news from our country: in term of greenhouse gas emissions, Italy is not performing as it should to achieve the European Union ‘fit-for-55’ target (a reduction of the emissions of 55% by 2030, compared to the 1990 level). Italy should reduce the emissions by about 10% a year to achieve that level by 2030, while it has been reducing the emissions only by less than 2% a year (data from Our World in Data).

Is Sant’Anna School and in particular the Interdisciplinary Centre on Sustainability and Climate (CISC) involved in research projects to address sustainability and climate change?

Yes, we are involved in many research projects on sustainability and climate. The Interdisciplinary Centre on Sustainability and Climate (CISC) research activities are based on an interdisciplinary approach, that sees experts with very different backgrounds in natural and social sciences, and engineering (management, law, ethics, philosophy, mathematics, physics, engineering, sociology) cover circular economy, climate change and biodiversity, help to establish sustainable communities, and investigate how best to design governance approaches for a sustainable transition.

One of the CISC four teams focuses on work to analyse and model the life cycle of products, processes, services, systems, and organizations using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. A second group of scientists focuses on modelling complex systems, the estimation of uncertainty, and the development of strategies for biodiversity management in large, medium, and small businesses. A third group aims to analyse the dynamics of sustainable development and value creation, from an ethical perspective, of territorial systems and businesses, supporting them through participatory governance processes, stakeholder engagement, and the definition of management strategies. And the fourth group explores the structures, logic, and dynamics of the European Green Deal and the innovation processes driving the energy transition, and integrates the analysis of European sustainability policies with the development of innovative solutions for energy and environmental transformation.

We are doing as much as we can, given the resources we have, to give our contribution to understanding the challenges linked to sustainability and climate change, and to find solutions that can bring us to a more just, sustainable and decarbonized world, with the aim to move the overshoot day towards the end of the year.

Are you also involved in education and training activities, such as the National PhD in Sustainable Development and Climate Change

We are indeed involved in offering courses in different areas of sustainability and climate both to undergraduate and graduate students, organising seasonal schools (40 hour courses) that covers interdisciplinary aspects of these areas. We have also been among the founders and key players in the Italian national doctoral training program on sustainable development and climate change (PhD-SDC). 

For example, in February 2026, CISC contributed to the Seasonal School ECLIRE, on the Ethics of Climate Change, and on reshaping the responsibilities for present and future generations, organized by our colleagues of the Institute of Law, Politics and Development. ECLIRE provided the participants with the normative keys to analyse climate mitigation policies in the light of criteria such as historical responsibility, global asymmetries of economic power and adaptive capacity, and duties of justice towards future generations. 

In June 2026, we will be running the first version of the Seasonal School DESIRES, on the design of sustainable and resilient production systems. DESIRES will introduce participants to the extremely relevant topic of designing production systems that are sustainable from an environmental point of view and resilient to climate change and other environmental pressures. Still in June, our colleagues of the Institute of Law, Politics and Development will be running the Seasonal School SUSTAIN, on the legal and policy perspectives of sustainable agriculture and food systems in the EU. SUSTAIN will introduce participants to the urgent topic of the European Union’s transition towards sustainable agriculture and food systems, situating it within the broader global debate on food security, sustainability, and climate resilience. 

Going back to the PhD-SDC, this is a key initiative of CISC, that we are coordinating since the end of 2025 and that we designed with the colleagues of the Scuola Normale of Pisa and Istituto Universitario di Studi Superiori IUSS of Pavia in 2019/2020. On the PhD-SDC, we are working very closely with the colleagues of IUSS Pavia, where the PhD-SDC has its Administrative and Coordination centre. Over its five PhD cycles (started in 2021 to 2025), the PhD-SDC has seen the support of 60+ Italian Universities, and has funded about 430 PhD students. Students that have doing great research work in many different areas, as documented by their PhD thesis.

Do you have a final message on this Earth Day 2026?

I would like to stress three facts.

Firstly, we need to re-think and redesign how we use the Earth resources. We cannot continue to use more ecological resources that the Earth con re-generate in a year, as this is having negative impacts already on society and ecosystems, and will have even more negative impacts on the future generations. Time is running out, and we have to move fast in this direction. 

Secondly, there is no safe level of global warming. The more the Earth warms, the stronger the negative impacts of climate change, and the more difficult addressing the problem becomes. It is thus in the interest of everyone to address climate change. It is even more so for Italy given its exposure to the impact of climate change. Furthermore, replacing oil and gas with renewable sources will reduce the cost of electricity generation (as Spain has been showing very clearly to all of us), and replacing combustion engines with electric ones will have substantial co-benefits on health.

Thirdly, we have the technologies and the financial resources to make human activities sustainable and decarbonize. Economic estimates say that by investing about 2-3% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), we could achieve net-zero by 2050. The technologies (e.g. to generate electricity, to electrify transport, or to thermally insulate buildings) are available, and are even cheaper than the fossil fuel based ones.

Thus, I strongly encourage to embrace the transition towards a more just, sustainable and decarbonise society. Let us all work together to convince the world leaders to move in this direction.

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