The Aurora Sustainability Group has identified the SDG Accord, an initiative of the Global Alliance, as a light-touch way for Aurora members to show their commitment to the SDGs and report on their work regarding the SDGs.
The SDG Accord is administered by the Environmental Association for Universities & Colleges [EAUC] and endorsed by the UN’s HE Sustainability Initiative.
The SDG Accord invites institutions to sign up (at the most senior level) to a series of commitments around the SDGs and, as part of those commitments, to compile a light touch report. Those reports are aggregated annually across the global HE/FE sector and presented to the UN. They demonstrate the scale of the impact of tertiary education against the SDGs. As of May 2019, over 110 institutions from 80+ countries had officially signed. The Board acknowledges that Aurora institutions are all at different places in their SDG journey.
We believe that signing the SDG Accord provides a clear, unambiguous baseline commitment that we should all be able to support. Therefore, we invite you to sign the Accord as a shared, collective and demonstrable public commitment to the SDGs. Meanwhile, as a sign of support, we have become an Endorsing Partner Network. The University of Aberdeen, the University of East Anglia, the University of Naples Federico II, the University of Rovira i Virgili, University of Innsbruck and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam have all signed the Accord.
Simultaneously, the Aurora Student Council has requested the Aurora Board that the member universities of the Aurora Universities Network declare a climate emergency.
