03 Researching Sustainability

Sustainability research at EUR is a collective effort by researchers from every faculty and discipline. The studies and projects run by these academics cover a wide variety of subjects relating to sustainability, ranging from more sustainable forms of production and consumption to the perception of global warming and the sustainability of various sectors, all of which play a part in helping us achieve our strategic goals.

In this chapter, we present an overview of our sustainability research initiatives, accompanied by notable highlights from 2021 and plans for 2022.

Before delving into the highlights, we present an overview of all graduate schools, research institutes and centers involved in sustainability research at EUR.

It’s impossible to discuss sustainability research at EUR without mentioning the Erasmus Initiatives. These are four ambitious transdisciplinary plans that align the academic efforts and interests of the faculties and illustrate the interaction between science and society, theory and practice. You can read more about the individual initiatives by clicking on the markers in the image.

You will not have failed to notice that the challenges facing society are not only becoming increasingly complex and multidimensional, but also appear to be manifesting themselves with greater frequency. We can report that the university has been responding in kind, as evidenced by the growth in interfaculty collaboration and inter- and transdisciplinary research at EUR.

One such collaboration has been our involvement in efforts to deepen, translate and connect knowledge and practice on just sustainability transitions. An event series on the subject was launched as part of a collaborative venture between DRIFT, Vital Cities & Citizens (VCC) and Global Social Challenges, the latter two being among the Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences’ (ESSB) four strategic pillars. Shaped around questions to do with sustainability-related action and action research, the five-part event series concluded this February.

Before summer, the Erasmus Research Centre for Media, Communication and Culture at ESHCC launched a new research cluster: Sustainable Transitions in Culture and Societies (STiCS). The cluster brings together researchers investigating the urgent sustainable transitions required in tackling some of humanities most complex environmental and societal challenges, and doing so from cultural, sociological, economic, media or communication-related perspectives. STiCS organizes regular seminars to discuss sustainable research and initiatives at the university.

Last November, the Vital Cities and Citizens initiative hosted a successful international workshop with researchers from over twenty countries. Participants were given feedback and tools to further develop their research papers for publication in a special issue of the scientific journal Cities. The workshop was also the first step towards creating a community of researchers around the topic of vital cities.

Again in 2021, three lecturers from the Erasmus School of Law (ESL) and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) – Madeleine Merkx (professor of indirect taxes, ESL), Martijn Schippers (assistant professor, ESL) and John Gruson (lecturer, ESE) – joined forces to set up a research project on the subject of sustainability and indirect taxes. Students studying tax law or fiscal economics researched six different tax themes relating to sustainability and indirect taxes, the results of which were presented at a mini symposium in August.

Also joining forces were a group of researchers from the Rotterdam School of Management (RSM) and the Erasmus School of Law (ESL), who got together to create the Erasmus Research Platform for Sustainable Business & Human Rights. The platform provides a space for conducting and fostering interdisciplinary research on business and regulatory strategies that contribute to sustainable development and corporate respect for human rights. In 2021, the group published a special issue of the Erasmus Law Review dedicated to “Responsible business conduct in global value chains”, in which they evaluated developments in various fields of Dutch law in light of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the OECD Guidelines and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. The publication was informed by the results of a workshop on sustainable trade and development in the Dutch legal and policy framework, which took place at the Erasmus School of Law in 2018 and was organized in collaboration with researchers from Oslo University’s SMART Horizon2020 project.

Erasmus University also joined a 25 million euro EU-funded project aimed at improving the sustainability of ports in the European Union. Since October 2021, the Erasmus Centre for Data Analytics (ECDA) and the Erasmus Centre for Urban Port and Transport Economics (Erasmus UPT) have had a prominent and leading role in several parts of the project that are grouped under the title sMArt Green Ports as Integrated Efficient multimodal hubs. In total, 45 organizations are collaborating in an international alliance devoted to a Horizon2020 project under the Green Deal Call to boost the green and digital transition. The project is led by the Port of Rotterdam and runs from 2021 until 2026.

Back in 2018, the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) invested 5 million euros in research aimed at addressing issues of poverty, inequality, diversity, responsible labour and innovations. In June 2021, the researchers involved in ESE’s Sustainability Development Goals project (2018-2023) – comprising ten research initiatives – shared their progress with an online audience of more than 60 colleagues. As argued by Jan-Peter Balkenende, professor at EUR and former prime minister, economists can contribute to the achievement of the UN’s SDGs through measurement and action. This is precisely the goal of ESE’s SDG project, whose research findings will be presented in 2023.

The year also saw the departments of Public Administration and Sociology at the Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences (ESSB) share their findings from the Bridge Project (2017-2020). The research had been commissioned by De Verre Bergen foundation to assess the functioning and outcome of Stichting Nieuw Thuis Rotterdam (SNTR), a social integration programme involving 200 refugee families who moved to Rotterdam after 2015. The families were provided housing, participation in intensive language courses, social support and career guidance, and the results revealed that social counselling was successful in helping refugees overcome bureaucratic and practical obstacles and aided their career development. They also showed that the language courses were instrumental in helping some participants become proficient in Dutch, but that others had struggled to keep up with the courses and combine attendance with work.

Interested in sustainable finance? EUR researchers involved in the subject often publish working papers on the subject on the Erasmus Platform for Sustainable Value Creation. Five such papers were published in 2021, covering a variety of issues from the impact of finance on biodiversity, the lack of human rights data in global supply chains and the impact of climate-aware investors to the investigation of models for long-term value creation and the sustainability wage gap.

A diverse group of development experts affiliated with the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) has been researching the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on global poverty and on the progress in development achieved over the last few decades, and documenting the additional challenges faced by low-income countries due to COVID-19. Their findings are set to appear in COVID-19 and International Development, which will receive its book launch at an InSightS LIVE event in March 2022. This is the first publication of its kind to address the implications of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic for international development from the perspective of social science. In the book, the authors address topics such as poverty/inequality, health, education, migration, informal employment, (de)globalization, the extractive sector, climate change and the global financial system, so keep the publication date in mind if any of this is of interest to you.

In February 2022, the LDE Centre for Sustainability kicked-off the 2021/22 edition of Interdisciplinary Thesis Labs, the annual sustainability challenge of the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Universities. Participating students work on a six-month challenge set by an external organization while writing individual masters dissertations. This year’s labs are running on the subjects of Sustainable Hospitals (in collaboration with Medical Delta), Sustainable Horticulture (in collaboration with the World Horti Center), Circular Aviation (in collaboration with the Nederlands Lucht- en Ruimtevaartcentrum), and Circular Building Materials and (re)Manufacturing Hub (in collaboration with Provincie Zuid-Holland, Gemeente Leiden, Gemeente Alphen aan den Rijn, the Economic Development Board Alphen and Koninklijke Bouwend Nederland).