Sustainability Conference 2023: sharing success in sustainability

More than 70 senior and strategic leaders in higher education learned what it takes to be ranked number 1 university in the world for social, economic and environmental impact at Advance HE’s first-ever Sustainability Conference on 7 June.

In truly sustainable style, keynote speaker, Professor Clare Pollock, Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost at Western Sydney University, joined delegates from her office in Australia. Professor Pollock described how the institution secured number 1 in the world for social, economic and environmental impact in both the 2022 and 2023 Times Higher Education (THE) University Impact Rankings.

Sustainable Development Goals

THE University Impact Rankings take the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and map universities across the 17 goals. Universities can submit evidence for work they do in education, in research and in their operations against those goals.

Professor Pollock said: “We submit evidence against all 17 SDGs because we've been working on this for long before the SDGs were invented. That has contributed towards the fact that we score very well on a number of the SDGs this year.

“We're number one in the world on gender equality. Number one in the world on responsible consumption and production. Number one in the world on partnerships. We're also number two in the world on clean water and sanitation and number two in the world on life on land.

“But that reflects work that we've been doing for many, many years starting in our community and starting with that principle that our communities will thrive.

“So how do we operate in terms of getting achievements on sustainability? We have our decadal strategy. We also have a number of key leaders in the organisation who take responsibility for the work we do on sustainability. But it is not the work of any single member of the senior executive or single area of the university. It is clearly a commitment across everybody, across the university and all of the senior executives.”

Accountability

“One of our 10 key performance indicators the Board want us to report to them on is sustainability. In all of our operational plans, every school in the university, every division or professional area in the university, as part of the operational plan is required to have at least one operational initiative each year, which addresses one of the SDGs that is committed into the operational plans. It's reported on quarterly and it is then reviewed by the senior executive and it is reviewed by our Board as well. So we have accountability. We have commitment at the university level. We have indicators. We have plans and we have commitments and accountability against those plans.

“But we also very strongly want to make sure we engage very broadly across the whole of the university. We have what we call a digital engagement platform, where we invite submissions from many parts of the university about work that we do on sustainability. We draw on that work and those submissions to create an annual sustainability report that is available publicly.”

Sustainable operations

“We are now carbon neutral. We are well on the way to achieving our goal of being carbon positive by 2029. 91% of the waste generated on campus in 2022 was recycled. That is a very strong commitment in terms of ensuring that we can minimise landfill. We have 100% energy in 2022 from renewables. And we've got a very, very strong commitment for all of our people in our operations area.

“We've recognised that if we want to be truly sustainable, and we want to contribute to sustainability on a global level, whilst we might start in Western Sydney we can't stop in Western Sydney. And so we're very, very keen to make sure that we communicate and we share our learnings with other universities, with other businesses with their organisations around the world.”

Politics and the sustainable future

Lord Gavin Barwell, Senior Advisor to PwC and former Downing Street Chief of Staff, shared his personal insights on the current political and economic landscape with delegates.

He spoke about what to expect from any potential future change of government, how the next election might play out and what that could mean for a sustainable future in higher education.

Structural inequalities

In a session dedicated to structural inequalities in research on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Dr Ishan Cader demonstrated the value of collating data for the rankings to allow insights into practice. 

Dr Cader, who is a Director for Consultancy at Times Higher Education (THE), said more collaboration between universities in the Global North and Global South can deliver a more equitable and mutually beneficial approach to research on SDGs.

What delegates said