Universities are mobilising to have the leading role they can play in sustainable development formally recognised at the Jo’burg World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) — and beyond.
Although the agendas of previous world summits centralised education, they curiously failed to specify any explicit role for tertiary education — an omission the WSSD now has to rectify.
This is the mission a partnership of four university consortia, consisting of 19 universities from five countries, set itself last week. The Linked University Consortia for Environment and Development — Industry and Urban Areas (Luced-I&UA) draws on universities in South Africa, Botswana, Denmark, Malaysia and Thailand.
The universities of Botswana, the Witwatersrand, Durban-Westville, Natal, Western Cape and Cape Town form one of the four consortia, known as the Southern African Consortium of Universities for Development and Environment — Industry and Urban Areas (Sacude-I&UA). Denmark, Malaysia and Thailand each have their own similar consortia. Fully functional since 2000, the consortia have been funded by the Danish aid agency Danida.
Luced-I&UA held a conference in Botswana’s Chobe National Park last week in the run-up to the WSSD. “We must make universities more visible,” said Professor Robert Fincham, director of Sacude-I&UA, when he addressed the conference. “Higher education has made a muted contribution to sustainable development so far.”
The point of the Chobe conference, he said, was to “strategise the input of Luced-I&UA to the World Summit, based on what academics have already been doing”. What is the role of universities in sustainable development, he asked, and how can they make an impact?
For the past two years, the universities in Luced-I&UA have cooperated to increase and link their teaching and research capacities in environmental management, in environmental administrative units, organisations and the private sector in the participating countries. The main focuses are human resource development via the exchange of students, researchers and teachers; curriculum development; improved teaching methods; research networking; continued education; and joint research and courses.
Luced-I&UA’s mission includes providing indigenous human resources capable of promoting democratic reforms, social equity and sustained human development, Fincham said at the conference. This involves ensuring that indigenous culture and traditions are safeguarded and taken into the learning and research processes, to counteract brain drainage to other countries.
The consortium is also dedicated to establishing partnerships with civic society organisations and the public and private sectors that support economic and technological development.
“Universities’ role in sustainable development has been inadequately stressed so far,” Niels Thygesen, director of the Danish consortium, told the conference. “Priority has been given to primary and secondary education. And, since the 1992 Rio Summit, education has not been given a specific line of action. At the WSSD, education is a ‘cross-cutting’ issue, not a thematic area in itself.”
A major aim of the Chobe conference was to produce a declaration for presentation at the WSSD that highlights universities as indispensable partners as providers of higher education and research in sustainable development. The declaration will be read at a programme to be held next week under the joint auspices of Unesco and the national Department of Education.