The United Nations oversees international issues and communities. It organizes developmental endeavors, encourages human rights and environmental wellness, promotes international peace and security, and serves as a forum where international issues can be brought forth.
Earth Summit occurred in 1992 and was coordinated by the United Nations (UN conference on Environment and Development). The summit happened in Rio de Janeiro and its purpose was to reshape economic and environmental development strategies to improve the environment and the social structures that allow such atrocities to take place. Earth Summit passed three important agreements: Agenda 21, Rio Declaration on the Environment and Development and Statement of Forest Principles. Additionally, two conventions opened at the summit, one about climate change (The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) and biodiversity (The Convention on Biological Diversity).
The UN Commission on Sustainable Development came out of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. The Commission is composed of 53 members elected for terms of office of three years, meets annually for a period of two to three weeks. The CSD meets annually in New York, in two-year cycles, with each cycle focusing on clusters of specific thematic and cross-sectoral issues. The 06/07 thematic cluster focused on progress in the following areas: Energy for Sustainable Development; Industrial Development; Air pollution/ Atmosphere; and Climate Change.
The UN established a plan entitled the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) for 2005-2014. The policy, conducted by UNESCO, promotes education as the basis of sustainable society and strengthens international cooperation towards development of innovative policies and practices of ESD.
UNESCO created guidelines for governments to adopt holistic and transdisciplinary approaches towards ESD implementation. ESD will be incorporated into national and strategic planning. It will educate to promote sustainable consumption and promote investments in education and raise public awareness.
The aim of ESD is to empower citizens to act for social and environmental change. This can be done by improving the quality and coverage of education and reorienting its goals to recognize the importance of sustainable development. It is important to rethink and revise education from nursery school all the way through universities so that they include more principles, skills, and values related to sustainability. Also developing public awareness of sustainability and informed voting would help communities and governments enact sustainability measures.
The Earth Charter, completed in March 2000 by an independent Earth Charter Commission, is a document that “establish[s] a sound ethical foundation for the emerging global society and help[s] build a sustainable world based on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace”. The Earth Charter emphasizes that a peaceful community, environmental preservation and conservation, human rights, and social development are correlated and contingent on one another in order, and that successful cohesiveness among those factors can create sustainable communities.
“Cooperation Programme in Europe for Research on Nature and Industry through Coordinated University Studies”
COPERNICUS-CAMPUS is a network of of 320 European universities from 38 countries that have adopted the following principles.
Universities have the “duty to propagate environmental literacy and to promote the practice of environmental ethics in society...They must commit themselves to an on-going process of informing, educating and mobilizing all the relevant parts of society concerning the consequences of ecological degradation, including its impact on global development and the conditions needed to ensure a sustainable and just world.”
The aims of the program are:
-To incorporate an environmental perspective into all university education and to help develop teaching materials as necessary;
-To stimulate and coordinate integrated, multidisciplinary and collaborative research projects;
-To disseminate the research and empirical findings widely to economic and political decision-makers
Principles of Action:
-Institutional commitment
-Environmental ethics
-Education of university employees
-Programmes in environmental education
-Interdisciplinarity
-Dissemination of knowledge
-Networking
-Partnerships
-Continuing education programmes
-Technology transfer
Talloires Declaration
The Talloires Declaration, signed in 1990, was the first official statement made by a set of university administrators for a commitment to environmental sustainability in higher education. It is a ten-point action plan for incorporating sustainability and environmental literacy in teachings, research, operations and outreach at universities. The Declaration states that the presidents, rectors, and vice chancellors of included universities are concerned with the rate and speed of environmental pollution. Problems such as adopting environmentally sound industrial and agricultural technologies, reforestation, and ecological restoration are in desperate need of change. They believe that universities play a major role in research, education, policy formation, and information exchange, and therefore should uptake the urgent actions needed to address those fundamental problems. The declaration agrees to take the following actions.
Increase awareness of environmentally sustainable development
Create an institutional culture of sustainability.
Educate for environmentally responsible citizenship
Foster environmental literacy for all
Practice institutional ecology
Involve all stakeholders
Collaborate for interdisciplinary approaches
Enhance capacity of primary and secondary schools
Broaden service and outreach nationally and internationally
Maintain the movement
As of June 2003, over 300 universities from 47 different countries have signed this declaration. These signatures are collected from both low and high income countries, and represent large and small public and private colleges, universities, community and technical colleges, and research centers.
Campus Environmental Sustainability Survey
The Campus Environmental Sustainability Survey (CESS) surveyed 59 four-year colleges and universities in theUS whose presidents had signed the Talloires Document. The results of the assessment broke the universities into three categories. 32% of the universities were classified Leaders, 34% as Average Performers, and 34% as Sustainability-Laggards.
Many of the campuses excel in recycling, but are hesitant to undertake more ambitious operations such as promoting alternative transportation, and buying renewable energy. The survey revealed that the majority of institutions have uncoordinated efforts towards environmental policies and actions.
The most problematic barriers include higher priority of other initiatives, lack of funding, lack of time, lack of commitment from students, faculty, and staff, and the “fear of change”. Awareness is another barrier, only 25% of the surveys returned even knew of their institutions’ signing of the Talloires Document. Some potential motivators to help pursue sustainability include the potential benefits to reputation, cost savings/finances, and regulatory pressures.
Higher Education Sustainability Initiatives in the United States
US Partnership Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (USPDESD)
The US Partnership is comprised of organizations, institutions and individual members committed to education about sustainable development and its purpose is to increase sustainable development education in theUnited States. The partnership participates in UNESCO, the main organization created by UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development; there is a permanent US representative to UNESCO.
Higher Education Sustainability Act
The Higher Education Sustainability Act 2005 (HESA 2005) was a bill proposed to the House on July 14, 2005, but unfortunately failed to pass by a margin of three votes. The act was designed to provide $50 million to higher education institutions and to non-profit organizations allied with such institutions. The goal of this funding was to form initiatives integrating environmental, economic and social sustainability. According to the Campaign for Environmental Literacy action to push congress to pass HESA in 2006 and no other details were available at this time. However, a bi-partisan action by the House of Representatives passed an amendment on the College Access and Opportunity Act for the Secretary of Education to convene a national summit of higher education sustainability experts in the next year. This action demonstrates the growing awareness of sustainability in United States higher education.
UI GreenMetric World University Ranking Background of the ranking
The UI GreenMetric World University Ranking is an initiative of Universitas Indonesia which is being launched in 2010. As part of its strategy of raising its international standing, the University hosted an International Conference on World University Rankings on 16 April 2009.
It invited a number of experts on world university rankings such as Isidro Aguillo (Webometrics), Angela Yung-Chi Hou (HEEACT), and Alex Usher (Educational Policy Canada). It was clear from the discussions that current criteria being used to rank universities were not giving credit to those that were making efforts to reduce their carbon footprint and thus help combat global climate change.
We were aware that a number of top world universities, for example Harvard, Chicago, Copenhagen have been taking steps to manage and improve their sustainability. There are also cooperative efforts among groups of universities. A grading system which includes information on sustainability at 300 universities exists under the title the United States Green Report Card.
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