COPERNICUS Alliance

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.

The University of Warsaw has just announced the launch of a brand-new Master in Sustainable Development that will start in the next academic year. Students will cover a wide range of exciting and cutting-edge topics embracing the complexity of sustainability challenges and will gain the leadership skills needed to design solutions and facilitate change in different types of communities and organisations.

15 Austrian universities have recently founded the UniNEtZ network with experts from social and natural sciences, technology, arts and music to tackle the SDGs. Universities have taken responsibility to work on the SDGs in a transdisciplinary approach, to reflect the complexity of the SDG framework. CA member University of Graz, represented by RCE Graz-Styria, is the focal point of “SDG 11: Inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable cities and human settlements”.

Do you remember the Future Forward Summit in Brussels in October 2018? Check out the conference website to download keynote and workshop presentations, decide what to read next by choosing a book of the online conference library, and relive the best moments of the event in photos.  

► www.futureforwardsummit.com  

With approximately 180 participants over four days of interactive, creative workshops, diverse panel sessions, keynotes, brain-walks and field trips, the HSDS was an inspiring, energising and thought-provoking event, brilliantly organised by a helpful, professional team whom we heartily thank for their excellent work! Now you can access materials from the Summit online.

The COPERNICUS Alliance Conference 2016 focused on the sustainability transformation of institutional, national and international science systems. It reflected on policies and practices that support or hinder researchers and educators of higher education institutions to practice inter- and transdisciplinary approaches of sustainability science.