Universities and Sustainable Development Goals

The project UniNEtZ Universitäten und nachhaltige Entwicklungsziele (translation: Universities and Sustainable Development Goals) wants to strengthen this role of universities in Austria. The interdisciplinary project, involving 17 universities at present (August 2018), aims to build up cooperation between universities in order to work on the SDGs in a more targeted manner. The scientific basis for guiding political decisions and for developing meaningful measures for SDG implementation will be provided by the participating universities in order to support achievement of the SDGs. In order to build on existing expertise, it is important to know the status quo of available sustainability research. During the past months, we have been working on a digital map of research activities related to sustainability topics, based on the definition of the SDGs. The aim of this approach is to identify current focus areas as well as underrepresented research fields related to SDGs to provide universities with a basis for targeted sustainability research. The results are directly integrated into the activities in the frame of the project UniNEtZ.