The UniNEtZ (Universitäten und Nachhaltige Entwicklungsziele) project focusses on making contributions to the transformation of society toward sustainability in line with the UN Agende 2030 on sustainable development with its associated Sustainable Development Goads (SDGs).
In this project, the partner institutions take on so-called sponsorships and co-sponsorships for the SDGs. A sponsorship means that the institution coordinates and compiles all knowledge and activities throughout Austria on the respective SDG. Participation describes the content-related collaboration on a specific SDG. Through these intensive collaborations and professional engagement with the SDGs, all contributions are collected, critically examined and coordinated with each other in order to work on the development of an options paper in the period 2019-2021. This is intended to support the Austrian government in implementing the Sustainable Development Goals.
The UniNEtZ project has the following objectives:
- Developing a systemic view of the SDGs and a coordinated catalog of options on how Austria can implement the SDGs.
- Addressing the SDGs in research, teaching, continuing education, responsible science and university management at universities
- Creating added value through cooperation and recombination of knowledge.
- Interdisciplinary networking within and across universities
- Interaction with stakeholders from politics, administration, business and civil society.
- Attempt to interact with “the other 50%” (system losers).
- Building competence for the issues raised by the SDGs among teachers/researchers and students
- Establishment of a coordination office for the WGs and an explicit contact point for stakeholders at universities.
Our group is involved in activities related to SDG 15 – Life on Land, especially related to indicator assessment for the different sub-targets but also in other activities surrounding science-policy interaction and public outreach.
A first report (Optionenbericht) on including 150 options for sustainable development in Austria is already available from the first project phase.
