BDS Undermines Climate Action. Universities Should Take Note

Universities stand at the forefront of climate action. More than 1,050 universities across 68 countries have committed to halving their carbon emissions by 2030, and their scientists and scholars are conducting the research needed to achieve these goals. But activists are pushing student governments and administrators to consider an idea at odds with this mission: divestment from Israel.

The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement falsely claims Israel is a “settler colony” and “apartheid state” and seeks to delegitimize and isolate Israel through economic, cultural, and academic boycotts. Beginning during the Second Intifada, BDS does not aim to change Israeli policy, end war, or achieve a two-state solution; rather, it seeks to dismantle Israel and outright deny the Jewish right to self-determination. Despite the campaign’s anti-peace stance, at least 86 BDS resolutions were proposed in the 2023-2024 school year, with 77 passing. While moral and historical flaws provide ample reason to reject BDS, students and universities must also consider practical implications. For example, a September JLens report found that if the 100 largest US university endowments fully divested from Israel, they could forgo an estimated $33.2 billion in returns over the next decade — jeopardizing funding for scholarships, research, and campus facilities.

Yet another overlooked consequence of BDS is its threat to climate progress. By targeting one of the world’s trailblazing cleantech nations, BDS disrupts critical climate innovation, weakens environmental peacebuilding efforts, and emboldens right-wing politicians in Israel and beyond who resist climate action. Students and universities that support BDS aren’t just taking an ill-advised political stance — they’re contradicting the very climate goals they have pledged to pursue.

From their groundbreaking achievements in clean energy and food tech to their unmatched wastewater recycling and desalination, Israel’s cleantech industry is playing a pivotal role in the global race to tackle climate change. Israeli entrepreneurs have launched over 850 climate solutions companies, earning Israel a ranking of No. 6 on the 2017 Global CleanTech Innovation Index. Israel’s world-renowned academic institutions offer a critical foundation for the development of these new technologies.

Boycotting Israel would mean boycotting all this crucial work. Around two-thirds of the investors in Israeli startups are international, and partnerships and acquisitions with international companies offer opportunities to bring Israeli technologies to more communities who could benefit from them. Academic institutions offer similar synergies. For example, the University of Copenhagen focuses on climate change as a core research area and partners with Israel to study green technology. Rather than supporting this collaboration, activists specifically protested it — most notably Greta Thunberg, who was arrested in September for blocking the university entrance. While Israel’s startups and universities have fortunately stayed resilient through decades of BDS activism, BDS makes no effort to hide its hostility toward Israeli climate solutions. 

BDS doesn’t just target Israeli climate innovators — it also targets global ones. The aforementioned JLens report identified 38 publicly traded US companies frequently targeted by BDS due to their alleged ties to Israel. Of these, 11 rank among the top 42 corporations worldwide for holding the most green patents. In other words, activists are advocating boycotting and divesting from over a quarter of the top innovators in green energy, which collectively hold nearly 40,000 green patents.

In fairness to BDS proponents, the eleven companies targeted by BDS with large numbers of green patents — Boeing, Caterpillar, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Ford, GE, GM, IBM, Intel, Lockheed Martin, and Motorola — include some companies with notably dreadful climate credentials. But divesting from them is not the climate win it would appear to be. As an investor, divesting point blank from the entire fossil fuel industry offers zero incentive for companies to pursue cleaner practices — they can’t win the investor back anyway, so their time is better spent finding a different investor who will support them. That’s why most ESG managers take a different approach, instead investing in the companies who are making the most environmental progress as compared to their industry competitors. By this metric, even ExxonMobil and Chevron find their way into ESG portfolios by clearing the low bar of being more environmentally proactive than their fossil fuel industry peers. As counterintuitive as this strategy may seem, studies have shown it to be far more effective at generating actual change than blanket divestment, which is why boycotting these top BDS corporate targets would bring climate consequences.

BDS is not about climate — it’s about isolating Israel, no matter the cost. But in pursuit of this mission, BDS doesn’t stop at punishing green innovation; it directly targets environmental peacebuilders too.

The Middle East is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, and experts warn that climate-change-driven extreme weather, natural disasters, economic strain, water shortages, and agricultural losses could exacerbate social inequalities and increase the risk of armed conflict. Fortunately, many initiatives have flipped this issue on its head — identifying climate change as a common hurdle for Israelis, Palestinians, and other Arab neighbors and designing collaborations that both address the climate challenge and build regional trust. 

For example, the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies is an academic and research institute on Kibbutz Ketura in the south of Israel bringing Israeli, Palestinian, and international students together to study topics around environmental management and cooperation. EcoPeace Middle East is an organization with offices in Tel Aviv, Ramallah, and Amman developing cross-border collaborations on water, energy, and climate. On a larger scale, international agreements such as the Abraham Accords have spurred new environmental alliances between Israel and countries such as the United Arab Emirates — which, despite not involving Palestinians, represents a huge step toward wider regional peace. All three initiatives received 2024 Nobel Peace Prize nominations.

Instead of supporting these bridge building efforts that help Palestinians, BDS explicitly aims to destroy them. BDS claims any collaboration with Israel — even in civil society — normalizes Israel and helps maintain the country’s existence. In 2014, Vassar’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine “staged an action against” an international studies course on Jordan Valley water issues due to the Arava Institute being part of a planned trip to the region. As for EcoPeace Middle East, the group’s former parent organization Friends of the Earth published a statement in support of BDS in 2013, which forced them to cut ties and rebrand. In 2018, the BDS website then published a call to specifically boycott EcoPeace Middle East. Activists similarly opposed Project Prosperity: a deal borne out of EcoPeace Middle East’s work which would have created a water-for-energy agreement between Israel, Jordan, and the UAE, but fell apart after October 7. Moreover, even though nearly half of Palestinians view the Abraham Accords positively, BDS opposes the treaty, claiming it “served to undermine the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people.” Even when Israelis, Palestinians, and their neighbors come together to tackle shared climate challenges, BDS pushes for division — undermining solutions that could foster both sustainability and stability in the region.

In doing so, BDS plays right into the hands of politicians who have been weak on climate policy. In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has drummed up populist support by “fighting BDS,” and his government has favored natural gas expansion over a clean energy transition in Israel, neglecting to use the very technologies his nation’s startups are creating. Similarly in the United States, some pundits suggest President Donald Trump gained traction during his campaign by driving a wedge with Democrats on anti-Israel protests. As president, he has now withdrawn from the Paris Agreement, quashed critical offshore wind projects, and even frozen funds from USAID’s Middle East Partnership for Peace Act program, through which the Arava Institute and EcoPeace Middle East had both been receiving grants for their environmental peacebuilding work. While BDS proponents would likely not support either leader, their actions have undoubtedly created conditions for politicians with lackluster climate agendas to gain power while disproportionately punishing the academic and civil society organizations who seek a sustainable and peaceful future.

Of course, there are more principled reasons to oppose BDS than its negative climate impact. BDS is historically misguided, economically untenable, and with a clear mission of dismantling Israel in its entirety, stretches far beyond a fair and reasonable critique of the Israeli government. But for students and university administrators weighing BDS proposals, it is essential to recognize the full list of consequences. Beyond its many other failings, BDS undermines climate innovation, disrupts environmental peacebuilding, and aids leaders who stall meaningful climate action. Any institution committed to sustainability must think twice before embracing a movement that actively works against it.