The Planetary Wellbeing Initiative: Pursuing the Sustainable Development Goals in Higher Education

Dear Colleagues,

Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) play a crucial role in enabling a societal transition to greater sustainability both in developed and developing worlds. Essential to this is teaching undergraduate and postgraduate students in a wide range of disciplines including, as examples, environmental science, psychology, sociology, bioscience, chemistry, engineering, agronomy, and ecology. Important learning can occur outside of classrooms, where students can see the implementation of actions by the HEI to enhance the sustainability of campus functioning. Outcomes include graduates with technical and professional understanding of sustainability, and hopefully, more with an understanding of sustainability-related challenges. Research in HEIs is crucial, again carried out in a wide range of disciplines, and in recent years, the available literature has become ever more extensive. HEIs frequently carry out this research in partnership with other organisations both on- and off-campus, including, as examples, industry, business, commerce, national and local state bodies and agencies, non-governmental organisations, and communities of many types and aims. While the environmental footprints of HEIs may not represent a major part of national-level footprints, the beneficial influence of HEIs is greatly increased through both the education of students and partnerships with off-campus organisations. Many HEIs own extensive campuses and land off-campus, so control space which can be used for living labs, where experiments in, for example, generating renewable energy, wastewater treatment, and growing organic food can be worked through, and infrastructure for energy generation and efficiency in consumption can be installed.

This Special Issue aims to bring together the many ways in which HEIs have been reported to address sustainability challenges both on- and off-campus, and to explore how a synthesis of actions might be employed to further enhance the role of HEIs in achieving society scale sustainability. We invite manuscripts from established researchers and final year doctoral students, and also, organisations that have relevant experience of partnership with HEIs. Researchers are also encouraged to submit “concept papers” which provide a synthesis of what we know now and how this might allow us to create a more sustainable future.

Prof. Dr. Richard Moles
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.