COPERNICUS Alliance

The global energy transition is one of the biggest challenges the world faces. The Energy Academy provides extracurricular courses and activities designed to complement students’ and professionals’ main disciplines. The energy transition is tackled from a wide variety of perspectives: business, science, politics, law, society and spatial planning. No matter what your background is, there is always something you can do with energy.

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BIOPROFILES is an Erasmus+ project from the Autonomous University of Madrid seeking to develop environmental and sustainability competences of school children in four European countries: Slovakia, Italy, the United Kingdom and Spain. Through an active learning approach, the project is working with teachers in exciting learning projects and methodologies.

University and sustainability, good practices and alliances for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda were the key themes of the summer course “University and sustainability: travelling companions for a great mission”, organized by the Directorate of Sustainability of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). The objective of this online course was to showcase the steps that universities are making to address the 2030 Agenda’s mandate. The CA participated at one of the sessions with other higher education networks such as GUNi, REDS (SDNS), and Euskampus, and presented its approach to transformative networking.

Weaving together creative learning, place-based learning, education for sustainable development and futures education, the project will create a participatory, emancipatory and transformative learning experience in 20 classrooms. The project is led by the Society for Creativity in Education, Prague, and builds on the running applied research pilot project "Education for the Future", led by Laura Henderson and Jana Dlouhá at CUEC. Both projects aim to develop school pupils’ capacity to imagine and envision alternative futures, and their self-perception as agents of change in actively creating a just, regenerative society.

The 15th IRDO International Science and Business Conference entitled “Personal and Social Responsibility for a Sustainable Future” was celebrated on 4-5 June 2020 in Maribor, Slovenia. The conference was organized by IRDO (Institute for the Development of Social Responsibility) in cooperation with the University of Maribor and numerous supporting partners. The conference proceedings and conclusions are now available online.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has led Spanish universities to draw roadmaps for the future that inevitably include the implementation of the Agenda 2030 and its 17 SDGs. Several key actions have been promoted within the Conference of Rectors of Spanish Universities (CRUE) and implemented by its working groups in order to support the Spanish higher education system in addressing the COVID-19 crisis through sustainable development lenses. 

Associate Professor Živilė Stankevičiūtė of Kaunas University of Technology, School of Economics and Business, Lithuania, benefitted from the voucher offered by Marilyn Mehlmann on the occasion of the COPERNICUS Alliance Online Conference in 2019: Živilė attended a five-day workshop in Croatia in February 2020, followed by three months of online interaction to improve her transformative learning skills. Read her report on the event!

With the “Campus Planeta Plan” the University of the Basque Country strives for a healthy and sustainable environmental management policy in the framework of the EHUagenda 2030 for sustainable development. This plan aims to be a model for the whole university community to adopt new life and consumption habits in everyday practice at each campus.

The journal Frontiers in Sustainability recently launched a new section on Sustainable Organizations. This section offers opportunities to publish innovative and challenging papers. Interested researchers can get involved as authors or in other roles.

Virtual education has unexpectedly become a global necessity these days. The open source publication "Virtual conferences in higher education: Teasing out their transformative potential for sustainable development" provides insights into this topic.

With the foundation of the Centre for Professors Emeriti and retired higher education teachers, the University of Maribor breaks new ground in this field. Prof. Peter Glavič was elected head of the newly established centre, which will operate at the Rectorate of the University of Maribor. The aim is to close the intergenerational gap and show due honor to Professors Emeriti and retired higher education teachers. 

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Our colleagues from the University of Warsaw critically reflect on the implementation of a newly established interdisciplinary Sustainable Development graduate programme. One of the positive aspects raised is the high rate of foreign students enrolled, which enhances the intercultural approach of the programme and enriches academic discussions. A key challenge noted by the authors is the complexity of coordinating teaching by colleagues from eight university faculties.

Virtual events bear a huge potential to contribute to sustainable development by bridging geographical gaps on a global scale while reducing CO₂ emissions. Building on experience garnered during the COPERNICUS Alliance Online Conference 2019, we developed guidelines on how to prepare, host and evaluate virtual conferences.

With their EHUagenda 2030 for sustainable development the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) has provided a blueprint to bring their work in line with the SDGs and to find sustainable environmental, social and economic solutions to global problems. Over the last three years the university's scientific contribution to the SDGs has increased hugely.

Just founded at the University of Bern, the Wyss Academy for Nature promises to become a leading research and practice centre in the field of nature and people. Scientific teams will work with practitioners and representatives from policy, business, and civil society to develop innovations for the protection and sustainable use of nature across four continents. Made possible by philanthropist Hansjörg Wyss, the Wyss Academy is a joint endeavour of CDE, the Oeschger Centre, and the Institute of Plant Sciences, all of the University of Bern. CDE Director Peter Messerli has been designated to lead the new centre.

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The WU Vienna Center for Sustainability Transformation and Responsibility (STaR) hosted its first panel discussion at the WU Matters WU Talks public lecture series, titled “The UN Sustainable Development Goals: Why Should They be Your Business?” The event attracted a highly diverse audience of nearly 350 students, faculty and staff, business practitioners, locals and internationals. The issues tackled by the panelists concerned the ways in which SDGs can be embedded into different business models, the differences between the SDG framework and other means of fostering corporate responsibility, SDG communication, measuring SDG impact, and the thorny topic of “SDG-washing”.

The WU Vienna Center for Sustainability Transformation and Responsibility (STaR) organized the 1^st Research Conference on Responsible Innovation (22-23 November 2019, Vienna). The two-day conference brought together internationally recognized scholars from various fields and disciplines to reflect on the nature, drivers, and outcomes of Responsible Innovation.

The 2019 GSDR, entitled “The Future is Now: Science for Achieving Sustainable Development”, was unveiled at the United Nations in New York on Wednesday, 11 September 2019. Drafted by an independent group of 15 scientists co-chaired by CDE Director Peter Messerli (University of Bern), the report finds that the current development model is not sustainable, and the progress made in the last two decades is in danger of being reversed through worsening social inequalities and potentially irreversible declines in the natural environment that sustains us. The scientists conclude that a far more optimistic future is still attainable, but only by drastically changing development policies, incentives, and actions.

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