On 1st October 2020, the University of Strathclyde will be launching their new Centre for Sustainable Development. The new centre will aim to bring a coherence to the University’s own global socially progressive vision, and focus its long-standing research and education work on sustainable development into a single strategic approach, with the SDGs providing focus and direction.
The current global focus on the UN Agenda 2030 vision and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provides an internationally recognised framework within which to generate a major step-change in the profile and perceived importance of sustainable development. It is, notably, a whole system approach, embracing a comprehensive perspective on sustainable development that will facilitate greater transdisciplinarity in addressing the most challenging global problems. It furthermore aims to inspire the growth and development of new perspectives on research and knowledge exchange and of new educational programmes.
The new centre at the Glasgow-based university will provide a platform for enhanced cross-national and cross-institutional work to address the global grand challenges. Notably, they will look to build on their exceptional relationship with industry to take their work beyond the boundaries of academia and accelerate the real world impact of their projects. The Centre will facilitate a culture change on how we approach such work, as well as provide a conduit to promote this approach to other academic institutions, funders and partners to support future education and research engagement.
Here at the Alliance we are excited about how this new centre could contribute to ongoing work attmepting to enhance policy coherence for sustainable development (PCSD) in Scotland. A big part of enhancing PCSD is premised on the need to focus on interdisciplinary, whole system approaches to problem solving. We look forward to working with the new centre in the coming years.
The launch event will be hosted by the Principal, Professor Sir Jim McDonald, with a keynote address by Joyce Msuya, Deputy Executive Director and Assistant Secretary-General, UN Environment Programme. This opening event aims to provide you with the opportunity to hear more about this new and exciting initiative.
Thursday 1st October 2020
Time: 13:00 – 15:00