SDG
Read SDU's sustainability report
The University of Southern Denmark's sustainability report for 2021 has landed. The report maps SDU's work with sustainability last year and highlights a number of concrete results and examples.
This text has been machine translated.
SDU works strategically with sustainability. A recently published report provides an overview of what is being done to promote sustainability across the University of Southern Denmark in 2021.
A solid starting point for the work
Flemming Bridal Rasmussen, chief consultant at SDG HUB, is the man behind the sustainability report, which he has received help to design from Jan Vang and David Hansen from SDU TEK. According to him, one of the main points in the report is that SDU has a really good basis for working with sustainability.
- A large part of the examples of sustainability-relevant research that we bring in the report stem from research and research environments with many years behind them. This especially applies to the examples from TEK, SUND and NAT. At the same time, there is a growing recognition that sustainable development also calls for insights from the social sciences and humanities when it comes to the importance of, for example, market forces, law, culture, history, behavior and communication. And here the report shows that research environments from SAMF and HUM have a lot to offer.
According to Flemming Bridal Rasmussen, the same picture applies on the educational front.
- There is currently a discussion about what sustainability-relevant education is. One bid could be to look at the competencies that UNESCO and the OECD point to as particularly relevant. A Maggi cube of it could sound that one can in communities create solutions to complex problems through critical and systemic thinking. It sounds to me to be the essence of what the educations at SDU work with.
At the same time, Flemming Bridal Rasmussen emphasizes that the report also shows that SDU has a large range of subjects and courses with a focus on various topics within sustainability.
The Sustainable Development Goals are an obligation
According to Flemming Bridal Rasmussen, it is important that an institution such as SDU talks about the university's sustainable efforts. According to him, you are obliged to do this when you strategically choose to work with the world goals.
- You can use the report to get an insight into how we as a university work with sustainability and contribute to finding solutions to the societal challenges we face. You often hear about the things that are wrong, and not so much about what is actually being done, he says.
An annual report must help to ensure that SDU is on the right track
This is the second in a row. In the future, there will be an annual report on the sustainability efforts to create visibility of what is happening in the organization and what comes out of the strategic decisions that are made. And to show the world how dedicated we are to what we decided in 2019,
It is about learning from the year that has passed, and as Flemming Bridal Rasmussen explains it, there are also some things in the report that SDU must work with in the future.
- We still have a challenge with gender equality on some points, and we continue to experience researchers and employees struggling with the work life balance, so we can make a difference. We should also like to see a dive into our own climate footprint, he concludes.