Planning Sustainability in Higher Education: Three Case Studies

Abstract

Sustainable development is a key principle of national and international policies, which has been strongly promoted by the European Union since 2015. Communication, education, the awareness of the importance of accelerating the transition from a linear economy to a circular one and of raising environmental awareness play a key role in the achievement of sustainable development goals (SDGs). To achieve the goals on a large scale, it is necessary to start from a local scale. In this sense, universities must experiment best practices and make them available to the society. In the last years, many universities have adopted environmental sustainability plans in order to implement green policies and develop a roadmap towards the achievement of the SDGs, while sharing best practices with university communities and society. This paper presents the case of two Italian universities and a Russian one. Specifically, the paper presents the contents of the current environmental sustainability plans of the Italian universities, discussing the reasons for the choice of the environmental sustainability goals and the expected results following the implementation of the related actions. A comparison between the approaches adopted in the sustainability plans of the two Italian universities will be presented in details. In addition, the paper analyses the potential implementation of a sustainability plan in the Russian university. The paper will discuss also potential criticalities in the achievement of the goals. © 2021 WITPress. All rights reserved.