VU has made a strategic commitment to protecting Country and addressing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at every opportunity.
The 17 SDGs align with VU’s strong tradition of social justice and our moral purpose of transforming the lives of students and communities. We are holding ourselves accountable for protecting Country and contributing to the SDGs through our teaching, our research, our campus operations and through our partnerships.
In March 2020, VU became a signatory to the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) Higher Education Commitment, made by 18 universities in the Australia, New Zealand and Pacific region.
This commitment recognises that universities have a vital role to play in addressing these critical global challenges and achieving the SDGs and their 169 targets by 2030. In signing up to this commitment we acknowledge:
‘Universities have a responsibility through their teaching to equip the next generation of leaders, innovators and thinkers to understand the global challenges facing the world and the role they can play in rising to meet these challenges. Through their research and training of research leaders, universities are at the forefront of finding sustainable social, economic, environmental and technical solutions to global problems. Finally, through their own operations, universities can pioneer innovation and can set an example to other sectors and businesses.’
Through this commitment, Victoria University has agreed to:
This joint pact means the universities are committed to strategic and operational action in support of the SDGs within their activities.
Victoria University is committed to protecting Country and holding planetary health at the centre of our identity and moral purpose.
We are part of the rapidly growing global planetary health community, which recognises the intersect between the health of people and the planet – and the impact of human behaviour upon the natural world.
Planetary health practitioners are focused on finding solutions to the complex challenges impacting our planet and the health of people, country, environment and communities.
VU is taking a place-based approach, emphasising the importance of context in finding sustainable solutions through working with local communities and addressing local conditions – and sharing globally.
There are three particularly important foundational ‘places’ or contexts in our work: our role as the university of the west of Melbourne; our place on Aboriginal Country; and our responsibilities as a global citizen. Each context guides our thinking and our priorities.
We are building a community that is committed and contributing to place-based planetary health through research, learning and teaching, and through the way we work and engage with our communities and each other.
We are proudly a member of the Planetary Health Alliance, a consortium of over 200 universities, non-governmental organisations, research institutes, and government entities from around the world committed to understanding and addressing global environmental change and its health impacts.
