COPERNICUS Alliance

The University of Bern has set itself the goal of becoming a climate-neutral institution by 2025 in all areas in which it has direct influence. This ambitious goal is not only a necessity for the University of Bern due to continuing unchecked global warming, but also a question of credibility, as it is one of the world’s most acclaimed research institutions in climate change research. Furthermore, in its Strategy 2021, the University of Bern commits to integrating sustainability as an interdisciplinary issue in all areas of the university and promoting the respectful use of ecological, economic and social resources.

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The CA is an official partner of the International Transdisciplinarity (ITD) Conference “Creating spaces and cultivating mindsets for learning and experimentation”. The #itdconf2021 will take place online from 13-17 September 2021 and we invite CA members to attend! The conference aims to provide a platform for engagement, discussion, and action that links transdisciplinary research, learning, and practice. It is co-organized by the Transdisciplinarity Lab (TdLab), ETH Zurich, and the Network for Transdisciplinary Research (td-net) of the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences. The Call for Contributions will open in January 2021.

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The University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) adheres to the Basque Country Platform against Food Waste. It has signed up to the Platform’s commitment to fight food waste and progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially SDG 12 ("Sustainable consumption and production").

How to teach sustainability in a disciplinary university landscape and reach students from all disciplines? The University of Graz addresses this common dilemma with a university-wide ”Basic Module”: Six optional introductory courses deal with interdisciplinary topics and provide an orientation, especially for young people at the start of their studies. Initiated by the RCE Graz-Styria, recently a new course dedicated to ”Sustainable Development” was added to the Basic Module, tailor-made for beginners.

Since the pandemic crisis, Higher Education Institutions have adopted a more agile approach by streamlining their processes for evaluations and exams. As experience and knowledge increases, resistance to digital technology diminishes and at the same time leads to a pedagogical transformation of Higher Education Institutions which also affects sustainability issues.

In the second edition of its report on actions towards the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, CRUE (Conference of Rectors of Spanish Universities) reflects on its commitment to the SDGs through implementation of dedicated conferences, debate sessions, workshops, and other initiatives. The Annual Report 2019 summarizes and analyses activities of the CRUE network and different working groups at Spanish Universities, discussing how they fostered the implementation of the 2030 Agenda at national and international levels.

OnTL is a new Erasmus+ project focusing on exploring the possibilities and limitations of transformative and online learning. One of the key roles of the CA in the project is to convene a group of experimenters willing to try out and reflect on approaches and methods of transformative learning in a virtual environment. We are looking for volunteer higher education educators to take part in a program of experiments, broadly in the time-frame January-September 2021. We expect this to be a fun and deep learning experience – do you want to join the group?

Since 2018, the working group “critical discourse on excellence” – consisting of members of intermediary and professorial staff originally at the University of Bern but now also at other Swiss HEIs – has been discussing the scientific practices we consider appropriate for achieving “academic excellence”. From this nucleus, an initiative emerged and is gaining momentum: the Better Science Initiative. COPERNICUS Alliance members are invited to sign the initiative and check on the programme of an upcoming online conference (20-21 November 2020).

Creating a space for exchange, reflection, new ideas, and community building for transdisciplinary research tdAcademy is a platform that seeks to assess the current state of transdisciplinary research and provide capacity-building opportunities for researchers in the field. At the same time, it aims to strengthen its global research community. These are the main ideas of the new tdAcademy project, launched in June 2020 by the Institute for Social-Ecological Research (ISOE), the Leuphana University Lüneburg, the Zentrum Technik und Gesellschaft from the TU Berlin, and the Oeko-Institut. After its initiation, tdAcademy will soon start its guests and fellowship program.

Transforming learning to transform societies towards sustainability is the aim of the ESD for 2030 framework. This roadmap for ESD in 2020-2030 will be officially launched at the UNESCO World Conference on ESD taking place on 17-19 May 2021, in Berlin, Germany. In the lead-up to the World Conference, UNESCO hosts a series of ESD online workshops in cooperation with the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany, and with the German Commission for UNESCO as advisory partner. The discussions and results from the series of online workshops will be used to further develop the conference program and help shape the agenda in Berlin next year. 

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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.