01 From words to actions

The Sustainability Progress Report always causes mixed feelings: we present highlights and our achievements, while we also acknowledge that there are still many obstacles and challenges on our way to a just and sustainable world. Is the glass half full, or rather half empty? Do we make enough progress, or is it going too slowly? In this report, we try to strike the balance between being proud of our achievements and acknowledging the challenge of the changes that still lie ahead. The reader may judge to which side the balance tips. We simply do our best to make change happen and engage the members of our community to join us in our transformation journey.

Responding to internal and external pressure, the Executive Board published the Climate and Ecological Emergency declaration in February 2023, which upgraded EUR’s sustainability ambitions. Several pledges have already materialised in 2023, others are still to be planned.

The 12 EUR Sustainability Dialogues organised in 2023 and 2024, with over 550 students and employees engaging in a collective effort to generate input for the coming Strategy 2025–2030, were important in ensuring that sustainability will remain one of the top priorities. We discussed controversial topics such as cooperation with the fossil fuel industry and the deep transformation of our teaching and research programmes. We asked our community: how will we challenge the linear, profit-driven economic models we have been teaching? Will our teaching and research contribute to a just and sustainable socio-economic system in which values like community and commonality are prioritised?

The outcomes of the dialogues are currently being assessed by the Executive Board and the deans to determine how these will become part of our sustainability strategy in the coming years.

Another remarkable outcome in 2023 was the publication of the results of the first version of the Industry Engagement Monitor that maps EUR’s relationship with companies. The first results indicate that we have few direct relationships with the fossil fuel industry, but also that our ‘green’ portfolio is rather small. The monitor will be improved further into a robust measurement tool. 

Strategic progress has been made on operational topics such as food, commuting and procurement – a clear sign that sustainability is increasingly important when we make day-to-day decisions and that EUR is offering incentives to facilitate sustainable choices.

We kindly invite you to read for yourself and see how sustainability takes shape at EUR.

The concept of sustainability is used in a broad sense, according to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations. EUR is working hard to make these goals an integral part of our core business: teaching and research, as well as part of our operations. Extensive information on how our research and teaching relate to the SDGs can be found in our SDG mapper.

Figure 1.1 Top 5 SDGs to which our research, education and operations relate the most.