Today, Monday 25 September (from 07:00 to 20:00), the University will be flying the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal flag demonstrating our commitment to their global goals and the action we are taking to combat climate change.
Our University is a signatory to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Accord, which commits us to embed the SDGs into our education, research, leadership, operations, administration and engagement activities. Work to achieve this is currently taking place under our Sustainability Strategic Plan (2020 – 2027) made up of 6 goals which cover all these activities.
The University Sustainability Strategic Plan has institutional commitments at the highest level and is delivered through the Sustainability Implementation Group with Governance through the Sustainability Strategy Board, chaired by Phillip Wright, Senior Vice-President (Academic) and with members from the University Executive Board. The six Goals in our Strategic Plan cover the University carbon emissions (Goals 1-3), with Education, Research and Investment under (Goals 4, 5 and 6 respectively).
Goal 5 of our Strategic Plan is focused on making sustainability a cornerstone of our research and societal impact and, under the Plan, we have created the new Sustainability and Resilience Institute (SRI), which launches this November. The UN’s SDGs are designed to resolve problems to the world’s challenges by allowing experts from different fields to collaborate in order to create solutions that target real problems, and this thinking will be at the heart of our new Institute.
Phillip Wright, Senior Vice-President (Academic) and Sustainability Champion says:
“I am delighted that we are raising a flag in support of the UN’s SDGs which underpin our Sustainability Strategic Plan, particularly in reducing our emissions and embedding sustainability at the heart of our research and education.
“The SDGs are evident in the research undertaken by many of our groups at the University, for example, in the work carried out by our Energy and Climate Division (ECCD) and in our undergraduate and post-graduate programmes which have all been mapped to the SDGs, reflecting the importance of the development goals.
“Our ongoing activities are geared to help us achieve our vision that by 2030 sustainability will be a part of everything the University of Southampton does: our individual behaviours, how we work together, and how we make decisions for the future. This is key to achieving our mission of changing the world for the better. “