From time-to-time things are going in the right direction...
It's not exactly like we're overwhelmed with good news every day. So I'm not going to list again the social and environmental disasters that are currently taking place on a planetary scale, nor those that are very likely to happen if we don't manage to change the trajectory that humanity seems to be pursuing. But I will rather try to show that from time-to-time things are going in the right direction [1]...
10 years ago, Rio+20
Forty years after the first Earth Summit in Stockholm in 1972, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNWCSD or Rio+20) was held in Rio de Janeiro. Bringing together more than 45,000 delegates including 90 heads of state, the conference, which was completely ignored by the press, resulted in a text that was castigated by most stakeholders for its lack of ambition. It is important to remember, however, that Rio+20 was a key step in bringing together the subjects of climate, poverty and sustainable development, which had previously been treated separately. This will lead to the launch in 2015 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the 2030 Agenda.
As I have decided today to speak only about the good news, I will keep silent about the spoilsports that could remind us that the press has once again shown a “deafening silence” on the exceptional launch of the SDGs[2] and that few States have really started seriously the things they committed themselves to...
However, 2012 marks a turning point in the consideration of sustainable development by higher education.
The final text adopted in Rio includes a six-paragraph chapter (229-235) on education. In addition to access to education for all, which has long been supported by UNESCO, higher education is mentioned for the first time as an essential lever for the paradigm shift.?Institutions are asked to go beyond dedicated programs and to disseminate sustainable development in a transversal way in all their training. Two other points survived the negotiators' cut in the text, the importance of continuing education and the exemplary nature in the management of their campus.
But it was beyond the text that the momentum in higher education was remarkable. With the support of the two Summit coordinators @brice Lalonde and @Liz Thompson, and with a number of colleagues and friends (a special thanks to @Mohan Peck without whom none of this would have been possible) I launched the HESI movement (the Higher Education Sustainability Initiative)[3] whose "Rio Declaration for Higher Education" represented more than a third of the 700 voluntary commitments at Rio+20[4] .
The chancellors, presidents, rectors, deans, and heads of higher education institutions thus recognized for the first time the responsibility incumbent upon them in the international effort for sustainable development. They committed themselves to:
With HESI, we have above all succeeded in changing attitudes. Until then, higher education institutions tended to pride themselves on producing Nobel Prizes, great scientists, and captains of industry, forgetting that they had also trained many of the people who had created the ecological and social crises (from subprimes to social and environmental dumping). In Rio, we witnessed a real revolution. It was not a question of making the universities guilty of the deviant behavior of some of their graduates but of making them recognize their responsibility in the construction of a sustainable world.
For the past 10 years, the academic world has been in a state of (r)evolution.
There have always been people engaged in higher education (faculty, staff & students), but until recently, few institutions had a real sustainable development strategy and the associated resources.
By launching its new accreditation criteria, including a chapter on "ethics and responsibility", a few months after Rio+20, the EFMD encouraged many business school directors to officially appoint people in charge of coordinating sustainable development at the school level. The arrival a few years later of new rating systems such as the Positive Impact Rating[5] and then the impact ranking of THE[6] further pushed institutions to structure their approach. For the past 3 years, schools have been facing a growing commitment from their students, who are shaking up their habits. Some movements, such as the réveil écologique in France, even challenge future recruiters on their inaction, sometimes putting the schools' management in a very uncomfortable position with regard to some of their historical partners. Like society as a whole, university faculty and administrative staff are becoming aware that climate change will impact everyone. Finally, the Covid 19 pandemic has shown the limits of a system that is still taught in most institutions.
Since the launch of HESI, sustainable development has become less of a peripheral topic and more of a strategic issue for higher education institutions, impacting programs, courses, research and campus management. Sustainable development departments (or similar), with dedicated teams and (real) budgets, are increasingly flourishing. Some institutions have even integrated quantified SD KPI into the school's strategic plan, and some French business schools have recently changed their legal status to become "mission companies" (a kind of French BCorp).
Directly or indirectly, HESI accompanies the movement in this sector. In recent years, 3 working groups have been trying to move the lines:
We have 8 years left to achieve the SDGs.
Will the world of higher education have sufficiently embraced the subject to be an effective part of the societal change we seek? No one knows, but HESI will continue to serve as an interface between the UN, higher education, science and policy making by organizing multi-stakeholder discussions and actions and sharing best practices.
领英推荐
As my partner @Aurelien Decamps and I used to say, we are at an absolutely fabulous moment in the history of humanity, a tipping point. The challenges are real, climate change is big, the loss of biodiversity is big, the eradication of poverty is big, etc. We could take all the goals of sustainable development, each of them is pretty huge.
But humanity is also at a point where it can seize absolutely magical opportunities. We have unlimited access to knowledge; tech allows us to connect people and ideas around the world to collectively find solutions. And to achieve this, the world of higher education must play its full role.
For its tenth anniversary, HESI is organizing the HESI+10 Global Forum during the next UN High Level Political Forum.
It will place particular emphasis on deepening understanding of the challenges and opportunities to better rebuild from COVID-19 while advancing the full implementation of the 2030 Agenda.
Three webinars are organized before the forum to feed the discussions during HESI+10.
If you wish to join HESI and participate in future events https://sdgs.un.org/topics/education/hesi
JC CARTERON
President of Sulitest / HESI Senior Advisor
[1] ?I know that most of my posts or info I usually relay on LinkedIn are not very optimistic. I'm the first to say that change needs to be radical and that we're not moving fast enough. But to keep enough energy to fight every day to change the systems (as we do at Sulitest) it is also sometimes good to recognize the (small) victories...
[2] co-v with all the actors of the society (civil society, companies, NGOs, territories...) it is to date the only common roadmap signed by all 193 States,
[3] HESI is currently chaired by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) and SULITEST. Other UN partners include UNESCO, UN Environment Programme, UN Global Compact PRME; UNU, UN-HABITAT, UNCTAD, UNITAR and the UN Office for Partnerships.
[4] We will also remember initiatives that have also contributed to change such as the "50+20, management education for the world", the PRME Global Forum and Unlocking the potential of Tertiary Education to accelerate Sustainable Development organized by some major networks (including our friends from EAUC, GRLI, AASHE, CGE, CPU...)
President and Vice Chancellor, Yorkville University. Professor Emeritus. Academic, Author, Innovator.
2 年So pleased to have the opportunity to contribute to this important initiative.
Directrice pédagogique - Ecopia | Pédagogies pour la transition écologique et sociale
2 年Very instructive and thanks to bring hope in this period!
hé oui bravo Jean-Christophe
Thanks for sharing these words, dear ???? (Jean-christophe) CARTERON! Proud and happy to be part of this journey with you and many others, and help build a better future for all.