Considerable recognition for the University’s sustainability initiatives in an increasingly unsustainable world

Published 17 December 2024

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Last year was the warmest year on record and 2024 is on track to be even warmer. Democracy is in decline and food insecurity is increasing as a result of military conflicts, economic crises and extreme weather. The ability of the United Nations to act globally is significantly weaker than before owing to the geopolitical situation. This comes at a time when we really need international cooperation to address the global challenges we are facing.

With almost all the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) moving in the wrong direction, knowledge, education and research regarding sustainability are becoming increasingly important. It is therefore gratifying to see the breadth of the University’s work on sustainability and the recognition we have received. On 10 December, QS published its ranking of universities’ sustainability performance. Lund University came third out of 1,743 universities. Let this sink in: third in the world. There is no other major ranking where LU or any other Swedish university has been among the top ten and now we are third.

The fact that Lund University is in third place after Toronto and ETH Zurich, and that we share third place with Berkeley, is almost unbelievable. One explanation is the long-term work the University has been undertaking on sustainability issues. In fact, we are in second place in the field of environmental research – only Singapore is ahead of us. Our strength also lies in the breadth of the ranking and the quality of work in many different areas. The QS sustainability ranking includes, for example, student influence and the proportion of female professors. And we are very good in these areas too.

The depressing developments in relation to the SDGs became clear during the conference “Knowledge for Sustainable Development – Our shared future in times of global conflict and crisis” organised by the University on 4 December. And while things do not look rosy for sustainable development, the conference was anything but depressing. The quality of the conference was very high. The programme offered interesting presentations and the 140 participants discussed the challenges in an open and curious way.

I am convinced that we as a university can contribute with knowledge required to meet the sustainability challenges ahead.

The Sustainability Forum was evaluated in 2024. This has been a thorough process, with a descriptive summary of what has been done in 2021-2024 and assessments of the work undertaken by, among others, the Research Board, the Education Board, the University’s student unions, Corporate Communication and the steering group of the Sustainability Forum. Overall, the work has been very comprehensive and of high quality.

But it is not just the Sustainability Forum that has done great work in 2024. Researchers at the University have published more than 3,000 publications related to the 17 SDGs. Teaching staff have integrated sustainability perspectives into their programmes and a new website on how we can all make sustainable choices at work has been developed. The travel habits survey conducted as part of the climate collaboration with CoAction Lund also shows that employees at the University travel more sustainably to work than the average in Lund.

Everyone at Lund University can be proud and very satisfied, but of course it would be even better if our qualitative sustainability initiatives also lead to sustainable development.

/ Per Mickwitz

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