An indivisible set of sustainability goals : SDGs in research and education at UGent

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are increasingly being used as an overarching framework to embed sustainability thinking into the operations of governments and other organisations. These global goals contain 17 main objectives with 2030 as their time horizon. Although the SDGs carry a certain potential for change, in practice we notice numerous pitfalls that make this instrument seem to serve mainly the status quo. Therefore, it is essential that we, as UGent, try to position ourselves in this debate from a critical, yet constructive perspective. Before outlining how we, as a university, can deal with the SDGs, we will, for a good understanding of our proposal, first dwell on the basic components of sustainable development and on some broad sustainability perspectives. This contribution attempts to lay the foundations for a UGent vision. We conclude with some general tips for researchers and teachers who want to use the SDGs in their research or teaching