COPERNICUS Alliance

From 2-5 April 2024, the SDG-iLevel project held a combined staff workshop and project meeting at Leuphana University Lüneburg. 15 academic staff members from University of Girona, University of Rijeka, and Kaunas University of Technology joined the workshop on "Empowering university staff for contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals". They brought a diverse range of expertise, resulting in rich discussions and valuable contributions to the ambitions of the SDG-iLevel project.

One of the main goals of the SDG-iLevel project is ready for use: On a newly created website you can access over 30 self-nudges (small behavioral prompts) that encourage the users to think about their roles in the university and their current and potential contributions to specific SDGs. Check it out and see how you can easily implement sustainable habits in your daily life! 

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On 7 February 2024, a distinguished panel of experts met as part of the new "Rethinking Higher Education Dialogue Series" to discuss the recently adopted "Recommendation on Education for Peace and Sustainable Development". The event, organized by the UNESCO Chair in Higher Education for Sustainable Development at Leuphana University Lüneburg, aimed to delve into the implications of this revision, which sets forth a comprehensive framework for aligning education with global aspirations for peace and sustainability.

Again this year, on 16 February 2024, the University of Padua will join "M'illumino di meno", a campaign promoted by one of the national public service radio stations (Rai Radio2), aimed at raising public awareness on energy saving. For 20 years, the initiative has seen the participation of Italy’s most important institutions who choose to turn off the lights of the best-known monuments and buildings of the country. The 2024 edition proposes a focus on international alliances – all CA members and friends are invited you to join the initiative by switching off the lights of their buildings on 16 February! 

This year's edition of the Higher Education Summit was special: The 3-days online conference was the great result of a fruitful collaboration between the COPERNICUS Alliance and the students from oikos International. More than 100 participants joined the discussions on learner-driven education, which means that not only students, but also teachers and other educational and societal stakeholders learn by closely collaborating – a real Copernican Revolution in Higher Education! Recordings and further materials are available now.

Saving resources, reducing environ-mental impact, promoting sustainable mobility – the University of Graz has been consistently pursuing these goals for years. Now it is setting another milestone. It is the first university in Austria to set up a software solution, the "data warehouse", which centrally collects and evaluates all data on environmental performance.

On 22 November 2023, oikos Graz organized a fishbowl talk on the question: "How can lecturers and students work together to integrate sustainability into all fields of education?". The event was part of the oikos Academy, a series of events hosted by oikos chapters all over the globe, bringing together different stakeholders who want to transform higher education. By enabling students to take ownership of their education, the program aims at making higher education future-ready, learner-driven, and regenerative.

From 31 October to 2 November 2023, the 13^th Global RCE Conference took place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia under the theme "Whole Community Approach for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)". The three-day conference highlighted the importance of adopting a whole community approach, which involves collaborations among various stakeholders such as the education, government, and industry sectors, together with members of the community in advancing ESD. Among the 165 participants was CA Advisory Board member Jana Dlouhá, who represented the CA also in the Ubuntu Committee Meeting. 

At the recent UNESCO General Conference in Paris, the Biosphere Reserves Institute (BRI) at Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development (HNEE) was designated as a UNESCO Category II Institute. An international governing board will be set up for the BRI, to help shape its work and integrate it even better into the international research landscape.

"Out and about sustainably in Bern" is a sustainable city guide for students of the University of Bern (and other people interested in the topic). The book invites readers to consider what they need for a satisfied and good life and contains facts, ideas and tips in the areas of sustainable development. The latest English version is now available!

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Sustainability has become an integral concern for those who organize and/or participate in events at university. Despite an increasing social and environmental awareness, there is still a lot of work to do. For this reason the Campus Planeta Commission of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) has elaborated a guide with recommendations on how to organize environmentally sustainable events.

The GREENMOBILITY project is focusing on raising awareness about urban green mobility. The project partners from Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Lithuania, and Sweden will deliver training courses to help learners develop knowledge, skills, and attitudes that promote ways to think, plan and act with empathy, responsibility, and care for our planet and for public health. The aim is to support education and training systems in shaping systemic and critical thinkers who care about our planet’s present and its future.

A special collection of the Frontiers in Sustainability Journal was dedicated to the theme "The Role of the Human Dimension in Promoting Education for Sustainable Development at the Regional Level". It features ten articles by 32 authors in total. Members of the CA Team and CA Advisory Board have been involved as editors and reviewers. The aim of the research topic is to reflect on sustainability transitions on a regional level, the diverse actors and learning processes and how this impacts reaching a complex but common goal. The articles draw on experiences from the international network of Regional Centres of Expertise.

The Jena Declaration was launched in 2021 and currently counts almost 1,000 individual and institutional signatories. The CA is proud to support the declaration alongside many UNESCO Chairs, international organizations and academies of sciences, arts organizations and networks, business companies, and civil societies movements. The Jena declaration commits to the UN SDGs and follows six principles. It is a plat­form to coor­di­nate local com­mon actions glob­al­ly for a deep trans­for­ma­tion, which involves NGOs, schools, and others to encourage communities and governments to actively change in favor of sustainability. 

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Politics4Future is a project aimed at pre-service teachers towards achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 4.7 (ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development). It is an intercultural hybrid teacher education curriculum developed by a group of universities including Leuphana University Lüneburg. Politics4Future is implemented as part of an existing cooperation between the partners under the newly launched UNESCO Chair network on Education for Sustainable Development and Social Transformation.

The University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) is committed to environmental protection and a healthier and more active campus and lifestyle. For the tenth time in a row, the UPV/EHU has participated in the celebration of the European Mobility Week from 16-22 September 2023 under the slogan "Combine and Move!".

The 10^th edition of the Living Knowledge Conference will take place from 26-28 June 2024 at the University of Girona. Under the theme "Building and sustaining next generation engagement" it aims to bring together all involved in doing or supporting research with and for communities, including those newer to the field. If you are working with or supporting community-based research, engaged research, citizen science, science shops or similar, and are ready to favor interactive sessions over one-way presentations, you are welcome to submit your proposal by 23 December 2023.