SDGs propelled our impact from the local to the global

At IMT Atlantique, an elite postgraduate technological university under the authority of the French ministry for industry, we have been active on sustainable development issues for the past 15 years. We were one of the first higher education institutions in France to focus on this work, through our ambition to combine training and research on information technology, the environment and energy.

Being part of Institut Mines-Télécom (IMT), the number one group of engineering and management institutions in France and the highest ranked in the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings, we were also highly involved in the development of its ecological transition road map.

Following the launch of our Agenda 21 in 2008, we have carried out several initiatives on our campuses, including constructing a shared wood boiler, installing beehives, using eco-grazing methods and launching a carpooling scheme, not to mention our teaching programmes and research projects connected to sustainable development. Our students are also very involved through our student clubs.

In 2009, we helped create a certificate for sustainable development and social responsibility for members of the Conférence des Grandes Ecoles, to help the entire university community take into account these issues and make progress in this area. Rather than use an external accreditation process, French higher education institutions opted for a collective dynamic, which to date has involved dozens of institutions.

The certificate has been valuable in helping institutions to initiate a strategy towards addressing sustainable development. However, for the most active universities such as ours, this approach did not enable us to share best practice at the global level and we were beginning to run out of steam. There was a risk that our developments would slow down and our strategy lose meaning.

The THE Impact Rankings were a revelation because in committing to this approach at the end of 2018, we shifted our focus to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which allowed us to go further than the French frame of reference that we had helped build. Strengthened by our contribution on a local scale, we became aware that by reasoning on the scale of the UN’s global challenges, we could considerably broaden our scope of action and further mobilise our internal and external stakeholders.

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This projection on a global scale opened up new horizons and gave visibility to the actions of our students and staff, thus strengthening our work in this area and making it more sustainable. For example, thinking in terms of the SDGs enabled us to highlight our actions in the field of water treatment and biomass recovery, not just in research but also through our internationally recruited training programmes. We were also able to better take into account the role we were playing in addressing SDG 2 (zero hunger) by making agriculture more intelligent, SDG 14 (life below water) by developing ocean monitoring, and SDG 16 (peace, justice and strong institutions) by fighting cybercrime.

Ultimately, participating in the THE Impact Rankings and focusing on the SDGs has opened up new challenges, strengthened our commitments and helped us to think more broadly about how our university can continue to meet the global challenges of the 21st century.

Anne Beauval is vice-president of IMT Atlantique and chair of the Conférence des Grandes Ecoles’ Research Commission.

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