The COPERNICUS Alliance Online Conference 2019, entitled “Reaching out for the Stars: Consolidating the HESD Constellation”, will take place from 9-11 September 2019. 

The 2nd International Conference on Technologies & Business Models for Circular Economy (TBMCE) will take place from 24-26 October 2019 in Portorož, Slovenia, organized by University of Maribor. TBMCE is devoted to presentations of circular economy concepts, technologies and methodologies that contribute to the shift of business entities and society as a whole to a more responsible, circular management of resources. 

Under the title “Skilled migrants in Austria: Needed but unwelcome?”, the WU Vienna Competence Center for Sustainability Transformation and Responsibility (STaR) hosted its first public panel discussion on 10 April. The event owed its inspiration to the ongoing research on migration at WU Vienna, where several groups of researchers across different academic disciplines are working on topics related to this important issue.

In this piece of news, Beatriz Perez-Soto shares her experiences with sustainable education and tourism as Visiting Professor at Universidad Metropolitana of Ecuador (UMET).

Charles University Environment Centre held the launch meeting of the project "Sustainable Local Development – Linking Theory and Practice" on 28 March, in cooperation with the National Network of Local Action Groups for local development and the University of South Bohemia.

Charles University in cooperation with RCE Czechia co-organised an event entitled “Our Common Present” to initiate a dialogue on SDG 12 ("Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns") in the Czech Republic.

In our series "A conversation with..." we talk with our members. In the second edition Rodigo Lozano invites CA members to participate in an interesting survey. He explains briefly what the survey implies and provides insights into aspects of his experience as an organisational sustainability change specialist at the comparatively young Swedish University of Gävle.

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UZH has approved an ambitious whole-institutional sustainability policy and released its first sustainability report. Furthermore, the University has published a new transparency list of third-party funding sources and signed the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA).

Three out of five project proposals submitted by University of Bern students to the Swiss government’s U-Change programme were approved and will start as of this summer. In addition, the University of Bern awarded three new teaching grants to lecturers from different faculties who wish to integrate sustainable development into their courses. Finally, over 600 participants met at the 4th Open Science Meeting organized by the Centre for Development and Environment at the University of Bern. The OSM 2019 focused on “Transforming Land Systems for People and Nature”, under the lead of the Global Land Programme (GLP).

The Center for a Sustainable University fosters sustainable development at Universität Hamburg in research, teaching, education, and administration. It has recently launched two innovative initiatives that aim to address the SDGs institutionally: the SDG Ambassador Programme and the Digital Sustainability Maps.

In the past months, the “European Virtual Seminar on Sustainable Development” (EVS) once again provided a unique learning sustainability experience. Almost 20 years after its creation, the EVS continues to be an innovative e-learning course. It fosters international and multidisciplinary exchange between staff and students who collaborate through ICT. The organizational model of the EVS is based on a flexible network of universities (including four CA members) who invest staff and resources and recruit students.

International Women’s Day is an opportunity to consider how women are advancing the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development in higher education. The COPERNICUS Alliance would like to celebrate contributions to the SDGs made by women working and studying in our member institutions – while also calling for action to accelerate moves to achieve gender balance across the higher education system and all other institutions.

The COPERNICUS Alliance invited its members to meet for a “Vision-and-Action Workshop” in Girona from 31 January to 1 February 2019. The purpose of the meeting was to convene past, present, and future CA members and the Advisory Board to envision the future of CA, design project ideas for the Erasmus+ call or other calls with expert support, build partnerships, and strategize about funding.

Supporting the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has become a key priority for the Conference of Spanish University Rectors (CRUE) – the most influential higher education association in Spain, composed of 76 universities. Through the adoption of a whole institution approach, it has recently established an Inter-sectoral Committee for the 2030 Agenda that will examine policies and programmes to identify existing opportunities to implement the SDGs effectively in the Spanish higher education system.