Her Excellency Dr Tatiana Valovaya, Director-General, United Nations Office at Geneva (UNOG), Switzerland

Universities and academic institutions are not only centers of learning but also hubs of innovation, research, and community engagement. They play a pivotal role in equipping the next generation with the knowledge and skills needed to achieve sustainable development.

In the post Covid-19 global pandemic, all higher education (HE) institutions across the world confront new realities rapidly manifesting themselves in a diversely complex and fast-changing world. Business as usual will not suffice. HE institutions need to be expansively re-focused in order to become more sensitive and responsive to its mission of developing graduates who, in addition to conventional graduate training, are also able to help their countries achieve the United Nations Agenda 2030 and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

As knowledge production sites, the HE institutions’ engagement in national economic growth and the broader development agenda in its country is nothing new. Ever since the beginning of modern science, knowledge has been sought from the university and today, more than ever before in human history, the wealth or poverty of nations depends on the quality of HE. Revolutionary breakthroughs in the knowledge economy are leading to remarkable changes in the way forward-looking nations capacitate their graduates.

According to UNESCO, universities are not just for teaching purposes, but also contribute through research in Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) and in the social and human sciences, to the advance of knowledge, to the creation of new knowledge, to cultural development and fulfilment, to the solving of the problems with which the society is faced, to SD.

Whilst there has been a tremendous growth in size, the expansion of HE in all parts of the world, serious evaluation must be undertaken of the quality of teaching, research and development (R&D) and how universities are meeting the emergent development needs. What is evident in most DCs is a stupendous replication of traditional disciplinary-based techniques of knowledge production. These have, nevertheless, increased the richness of knowledge about the universe we live in but without apparently translating or transforming the catchment societal environments in terms of measurable productive capacities.

There are also grave concerns that HE in most countries is becoming increasingly obsolete which, in part, is why development programmes are stultified even from the outset. There are also serious issues regarding the under-performance in research – state of academic research is less-than-satisfactory in many universities in DCs. Therefore, universities, particularly in DCs, must confront the ‘new realities’ evident in the environments in which they operate.

Many scholars and policy makers have called for a transformative innovation agenda which embraces radical change for new synthesis and approaches for transforming universities’ role in achieving the SDGs in their countries.

The World Association for Sustainable Development’s (WASD) (watch 20th Anniversary video here) is delighted to have been working very closely with various United Nations Agencies such as UNESCO, UNDP, WHO and most specifically with the Joint Inspection Unit of the United Nations system (JIU). Both JIU and WASD are inspired by the conviction that the Agenda 2030 provide the momentum for renewed UN engagement with the public and private sectors (watch video).

In 2018, WASD collaborated with the JIU on the UN project A.435 “Strengthening the Policy Research Uptake in Service of the 2030”, aimed at reviewing the policy research uptake in service of the Agenda 2030. For the first time in its 52 year history, the UN (aided by WASD) officially consulted academics and researchers from all over the world on the policy research uptake in the UN (watch video).

In 2019, WASD also worked very closely with the UN JIU to undertake a UN system-wide review of policies, programmes, and platforms to support learning and enhance the adequacy of training policies in the UN. The report “Policies and platforms in support of learning: towards more coherence, coordination, and convergence” was launched officially on 28 October 2020 at the opening of WASD’s Conference.

These various initiatives and events with the UN have encouraged WASD to launch one of its major global initiative: Sustainable Development Goals Universities Initiative (SDGsUNi).

On Monday 22nd July 2024 at the UN Palis de Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, WASD officially launched SDGsUNi with an opening speech by H. E. Dr Tatiana Valovaya, Director-General, United Nations Office at Geneva (UNOG), Switzerland (watch official launch video here).

The SDGs Saudi Universities Initiative (SDGsKSAUNi) brings together all HEIs, societies (academic/professional) and individuals from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and across the world in a global forum to collaborate and reconnect with the discourse of SD. SDGsKSAUNi will therefore help universities and research institutions in KSA and other countries to play a critical role in enabling KSA and globally to achieve the UN’s Agenda 2030 and its 17 SDGs.

On Monday 23rd January 2024 in Riyadh, KSA, WASD launched the SDGsKSAUNi and the Gulf SDGs Universities Initiative at Al Majmaah University’s conference under the theme “Universities and Sustainable Development Goals 2020: Targets and Practices”. We are delighted to say that the conference agreed to support the SDGsUNi platforms in KSA and the entire Gulf region.

Moreover, WASD presented SDGsUNi platforms at different international conferences and submits to gather feedback and refection from the global education community in order to improve the performance of the platform. These launches attended by several Ambassadors, Cultural Attachés and senior academics from different countries.

Examples include but not limited to:

Playlist

6 Videos