Higher education plays a crucial role in implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015. This is due to the fact that higher education institutions (HEIs) are at the forefront of the discussion, promotion, and consolidation of a culture of sustainability embedded in the society, culture and economy of a region and nation.
Although the sustainable development goals (SDGs) are a collection of 17 interlinked global goals covering economic growth, social inclusion and environmental protection, education lies at the heart of the SDGs. Higher education can provide the multiplier and embeddedness effect on future generations. From an institutional perspective, HEIs are implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at diverse levels:
- Teaching level: curricular and extracurricular teaching and training, community involvement, practical experiences, capacity building for implementing actions, etc.
- Research level: focusing their research strategies on solving societal challenges; integration of the public sector, industries, and civil society as key stakeholders in research; implementation of interdisciplinary approaches; co-production of knowledge, etc.
- Third mission level: partnerships with communities, social entrepreneurship, industry innovation and knowledge exchange, support for student activism, promotion of regional development, etc.
- Management/governance level: integration of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in the strategic plan, implementation of green campus initiatives, promotion of sustainable behaviours, implementation of related key performance indicators, strategic resources allocation, measurement of their social and environmental impact, etc.
From a specific approach, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was operationalized into 17 SDGs, 169 SDG targets, and 232 unique Indicators (Global indicator framework for the Sustainable Development Goals, 2017). Until now, the Times Higher Education Impact Ranking has developed a methodology to benchmark HEIs based on a quantitative operationalization of the 169 SDG targets, selecting the ones related to higher education (The Times Higher Education Impact Ranking Methodology, 2021).
Nevertheless, qualitative approaches that support bottom-up initiatives linking individual contributions towards the SDGs are still missing. For this purpose, the SDG-iLevel Project emerge as a response that aims at visibilizing, promoting and mapping the paths for promoting individual contributions to the SDGs.
As part of the project, the institutions member of the consortium met the second week of November 2022, at the University of Rijeka, to discuss the progress of the first part of the project: desk research, university managers interviews, higher education staff survey, and SDG-iLevel Maps development.
The progress of this first group of tasks will produce its results for the first semester of 2023. They will allow to kick off the creation of diverse tools for supporting HEIs in their commitment to promoting diverse approaches to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Hugo Buitrago.
Accreditation Council for Entrepreneurial
and Engaged Universities (ACEEU)
