{"id":7169,"date":"2018-01-31T08:00:36","date_gmt":"2018-01-31T08:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7169"},"modified":"2018-01-31T08:00:36","modified_gmt":"2018-01-31T08:00:36","slug":"universities-colleges-and-the-sdgs-purpose-and-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2018\/01\/31\/universities-colleges-and-the-sdgs-purpose-and-practice\/","title":{"rendered":"Universities, Colleges and the SDGs \u2013 purpose and practice"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is another word on the St George's House seminar, this time from regular guest contributor,\u00a0Steve Martin<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

24 hours at St George's House, Windsor, with a cadre of experts on sustainability would certainly not be everyone\u2019s idea of fun! \u00a0But, it was as near as it could be, because everyone who attended this conversation on SDGs and Further and Higher Education, felt fully committed to an open and engaging exploration of the role and purpose of universities and colleges, in contributing towards their implementation...\u00a0 And, most of the inputs were helpful catalysts in stimulating some wide ranging conversations and illuminating stories.<\/p>\n

As Carlyle said \u201clanguage is ... the body of thought\u201d, and, language can influence our actions. \u00a0Like Bill, I found the contributions on the second day the most powerful and potentially the most influential. \u00a0For some years now I have encouraged those in Further and Higher education to seek inspiration and ideas from the business community and, the input from PWC validated this thinking. \u00a0Awareness of the SDGs among the business community is staggeringly high (92%) compared with universities (see earlier blog<\/a> on EAUC\/NUS Sustainability Survey) and the general population (33%). More importantly, businesses are taking action: 71% say they are already planning how they will respond to the SDGs and 34% say they have already agreed their plans.<\/p>\n

Clearly, there is a lot of self interest in the so called benefits to business, especially relating to their future growth, but many are also aware of the benefits of profits from growth helping to solve social and environmental problems, like sustainable procurement coupled to poverty alleviation and decent working conditions. \u00a0In short, by changing their purpose and practice, many businesses envisage creating solutions that are scalable and socially and environmentally beneficial.<\/p>\n

Universities should also seriously think of re-purposing to meet the well documented sustainability literacy needs of students (NUS student surveys<\/a>). \u00a0Earth literate students are a critical and influential part of the solution to humanities global challenges. \u00a0 But, in general, universities are far too insular for many cultural and performance related reasons.<\/p>\n

Will this and their inertia lead to many of them becoming stranded assets, I wonder?<\/p>\n

................................................<\/p>\n

Steve Martin is\u00a0Honorary Professor at the University of Worcester,\u00a0Visiting Professor in Learning for Sustainability at the University of the West of England,\u00a0President of the charity Change Agents UK, a\u00a0WWF Fellow,\u00a0Policy Advisor to the UK National Commission for UNESCO, and a founder member of the English Learning for Sustainability Alliance (ELSA). \u00a0He can be contacted at:\u00a0esmartin@talktalk.net<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is another word on the St George's House seminar, this time from regular guest contributor,\u00a0Steve Martin. 24 hours at St George's House, Windsor, with a cadre of experts on sustainability would certainly not be everyone\u2019s idea of fun! \u00a0But,...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}