The Planetary Wellbeing Initiative: Pursuing the Sustainable Development Goals in Higher Education
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2022) | Viewed by 11090
Special Issue Editor
Interests: sustainability science; urban sustainability; community scale sustainability actions; organisational sustainability
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
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
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Keywords
- Higher Education Institute campus sustainability
- HEI partnerships with sustainable communities
- teaching sustainability at HEI level
- HEI research on sustainability
- HEI/greening industry partnerships
- healthcare sustainability
- HEIs and future sustainability
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