Towards the Sustainable University.

Abstract

All universities have the capacity to embrace, embed or ignore sustainable development. Looking across the sector and reflecting on the past seven years and my own institutional experiences, the key finding is that change for campus and curriculum-based sustainability is clearly possible but unpredictable. For many years my own institution (University of Bradford) struggled to make progress in a number of key aspects of `campus greening¿ including recycling, green build, energy management, green travel, fair trade etc. It employed its first environmental manager as recently as 2003. Up until 2007, education for sustainable development (ESD) was largely found in one small academic department. Now, as this paper describes, it is a central feature of the learning and teaching strategy for the university and an overall institutional objective.