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This paper aims to review the progress of a sample of (n = 307) signatories in the Higher Education Sustainability Initiative which commits higher education institutions (HEIs) to make smart commitments to achieve one or more of the UN sustainable development goals (SDGs).

A preliminary survey of n = 307 HEIs via online questionnaire and database search was conducted.

Findings reveal a difference between HEI governance, that is “instrumental”, and governance, that is “holistic”, in relation to sustainability.

Implications identified for achieving SDGs in general and for academic–business partnerships, in particular.

Practical implications for enterprise (developing a tool to measure sustainability mindset) and for enterprise education (sharing of best practices from other HEIs).

Improved understanding of the sustainability mindset will inform decisions about approaches to governing and operationalising sustainability in organisations.

The survey is not original but the emphasis on sustainability mindset (compassion, empathy and connectedness to SDGs) is.

As the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been widely adopted since 2015, higher education institutions (HEIs) are experimenting with ways they can be measured, reported and incorporated into all realms of the university. In this process, the challenges of SDG integration into HEIs have become more evident, from lack of resources and sustainability literacy to having multiple disconnected programs that feature the SDGs.

A mixed methods approach using archival materials, literature reviews, interviews and participant observation has been adopted for a case study at a university in the process of adopting the SDGs in multiple areas.

The University of South Florida began with efforts to incorporate SDGs at the undergraduate level, such as the Global Citizens Project that brands both events and courses with SDGs. Institutional changes coupled with the launch of the Times Higher Education University Impact Rankings provided more opportunities to have broader conversations about SDGs in all areas of campus.

New mindsets and innovative thinking (ABIS, 2017; Moon, 2013, 2014, 2015; Moon, Walmsley, & Apostolopoulos, 2018) are needed to deliver on everything from good health and well-being to affordable and clean energy. This chapter reviews the latest trends globally to tackling pressing social and environmental problems (2016–2018), focuses on a sample of 100 projects, mapped against the UN SDGs and evaluated on their ‘innovation’ and scalability and selects 25 projects related to ‘circular economy’ solutions for a more in-depth consideration. The projects cover a range of applications including Buildings, Food, Energy, Transportation, Resources and Education. The key research question is: what strategic policy support is needed for enterprise & entrepreneurship education to develop the necessary multi collaborative and cross disciplinary mindsets and skills that such projects require? Reference is made to global risks and sustainability solutions, skills needed for the green economy and implications for enterprise development and entrepreneurship education. Findings reveal the need for new measures of eco and social mindset that will support the development of the creative and innovative solutions necessary for tackling the UN SDGs.

The world is shaped by an education system that reinforces unsustainable thinking and practice. Efforts to transform our societies must thus prioritise the education of educators – building their understanding of sustainability and their ability to transform curriculum and wider learning opportunities. The purpose of this paper is to focus on university educators and critically review the professional development and policy landscape challenges that influence their effective engagement with Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). The paper is informed by a pan-European collaboration involving 33 countries that identified emerging scholarship and practice in this area and assessed the lessons learned from ESD professional development initiatives. It sets the context for a special issue titled “Professional Development in Higher Education for Sustainable Development” that draws together a collection of articles focusing on professional development of university educators across the world.

This paper provides a critical review of existing practice, international policy frameworks and literature relating to ESD, professional development and higher education. It examines innovative initiatives worldwide that seek to improve the capability of educators in higher education to integrate ESD into academic practice at individual, disciplinary and institutional levels. A rigorous process of selection was applied and overseen by an international expert group. This ensured that the initiatives sought educational change in ESD, and not simply the embedding of content about sustainability into learning opportunities. It also assured that the initiatives had a clear and intentional professional learning process to underpin the engagement of participants with ESD.

ESD has grown in visibility and status worldwide, with a clear increase in activity in higher education. The sector is viewed as a significant force for change in societies, through the education provision it offers to future professionals and leaders in all sectors. However, universities currently lack capacity to integrate ESD effectively into mainstream teaching practices and the training they provide for academic staff or to integrate ESD into their institutional teaching and learning priorities. Many ESD activities remain focused on teaching issues arising in sustainable development research and delivering specialist modules or courses in sustainability. Very few countries and institutions have significant staff development programmes to enhance the ESD competences of university educators and build their academic leadership capabilities for ESD. The contributions to this special issue show the need for greater understanding of the multi-level task of integrating ESD into professional development activities, not just for individual impact in the classroom but to advance institutional change and decisively influence the teaching and learning discourse of higher education.

There are few research studies and documented activities on ESD professional development in higher education available in the literature. This paper attempts to explore what ESD professional development involves and describes its complexity within the higher education sector. The special issue provides a collection of innovative research and practical initiatives that can help those involved in education and learning to develop ESD as a priority for future university innovative pathways.

Education is foundational for creating caring sustainable leaders and organizations. This paper aims to investigate whether historically eminent Lebanese universities are integrating sustainability courses and practices in their curriculum, and to discern whether these universities’ administrators are currently providing, or plan to provide, positive educational experience through addressing sustainability concepts and tools in their respective universities.

The authors based their qualitative study on a multimodal design for explorative and recommendation purposes. The review of literature and online search facilitated setting standards and benchmarking. Face-to-face interviews and observation corroborated the findings and provided insight. The information was systematically ordered to tackle sustainability as a product and as a process on different campuses. All research was subject to ethical clearance from the studied subjects.

Compiling the input from all participants revealed that there is an urgent need to reform universities’ products and processes, in addition to a necessary call for support from governmental entities. The seeds of environmental sustainability are present in varying degrees in universities that have been continuously functional in the service of higher education in Lebanon for a period of 50 years or more.

The lack of contextual, comprehensive models, toward which change can be geared, presents a limitation to this work. Another limitation is that this study was restricted to historically prominent universities with the valid assumption that they play a leadership role in higher education. More universities should be investigated to further validate the findings, to complement this project and to allow for generalizability and comparison with initial findings.

More focus is needed to prepare present students and the future community to rely on available resources. The paper outlines the need to change the educational approach in Lebanese universities. It addresses a call to the administrators of all universities to provide the right policies, tools, materials and other resources to help sustainability.

Universities are called to play a major role especially in inspiring and teaching sustainability concepts. It is worth noting that education can be seen as a social good. If education is well served, it can create jobs, generate high revenues and raise standards of living. But serving the education “well” may require disruption of the status quo, which, if done creatively, will lead to novel approaches and solutions that outweigh the disruption itself.

This paper has exposed the status quo of universities vis-à-vis sustainability, but it has also challenged “what is”, and opened up possibilities of what “could be”. Educational projects should be adapted with the participation of the private sector to stimulate innovation, and experience the lived dimension of sustainability. Implementing such a change represents the bridge between current and needed ways of thinking required by the new environment.

There is a growing interest in climate change action in the higher education sector. Higher education institutions (HEIs) play an important role as property owners, employers, education and research hubs as well as leaders of societal transformations. The purpose of this paper was therefore to benchmark how universities globally are addressing climate risks.

An international survey was conducted to benchmark the sector’s organisational planning for climate change and to better understand how the higher education sector contributes to local-level climate adaptation planning processes. The international survey focused especially on the assessment of climate change impacts and adaptation plans.

Based on the responses of 45 HEIs located in six different countries on three continents, the study found that there are still very few tertiary institutions that plan for climate-related risks in a systematic way.

The paper sheds light on the barriers HEIs face in engaging in climate adaptation planning and action. Some of the actions to overcome such hindering factors include integrating climate adaptation in existing risk management and sustainability planning processes, using the internal academic expertise and curriculum to assist the mapping of climate change impacts and collaborating with external actors to guarantee the necessary resources. The higher education sector can act as a leader in building institutional resilience at the local scale.

The University of Michigan (U-M) is planning its course toward carbon neutrality. A key component in U-M carbon accounting is the calculation of carbon sinks via estimation of carbon storage and biosequestration on U-M landholdings. Here, this paper aims to compare multiple remote sensing methods across U-M natural lands and urban campuses to determine the accurate and efficient protocol for land assessment and ecosystem service valuation that other institutions may scale as relevant.

This paper tested three remote sensing methods to determine land use and land cover (LULC), namely, unsupervised classification, supervised classification and supervised classification incorporating delineated wetlands. Using confusion matrices, this paper tested remote sensing approaches to ground-truthed data, the paper obtained via field-based vegetation surveys across a subset of U-M landholdings.

In natural areas, supervised classification incorporating delineated wetlands was the most accurate and efficient approach. In urban settings, maps incorporating institutional knowledge and campus tree surveys better estimated LULC. Using LULC and literature-based carbon data, this paper estimated that U-M lands store 1.37–3.68 million metric tons of carbon and sequester 45,000–86,000 Mt CO₂e/yr, valued at $2.2m–$4.3m annually ($50/metric ton, social cost of carbon).

This paper compared methods to identify an efficient and accurate remote sensing methodology to identify LULC and estimate carbon storage, biosequestration rates and economic values of ecosystem services provided.

This chapter explores sustainable development of leadership strategies as a social framework in higher education to help with defining, implementing, and envisioning a sustainable future. Leaders need to develop a sustainable approach for higher education that involves all stakeholders who benefit from having educated citizens to develop common interests that develop and promote sustainable objectives that focus on shared values. An educationally sustainable approach extends beyond a current leader’s time at the institution to continue stable growth and long-term approaches around making decisions, fostering systemic innovation, developing an engaged workforce, and providing quality services and solutions. Leaders need to link sustainable strategies to the school’s mission, values, and finances to help gain consensus and align the decision-making process. In an effort to develop leaders and programs around educational sustainability, governmental organizations have been established to help develop policies and programs to create a sustainable future. Additionally, professional organizations have formed that allow leaders a chance to connect, grow skills, and lead sustainability initiatives. And, higher education institutions have created offices focused around sustainability on campus and educational programs around sustainability leadership to help develop future leaders that are able to take action based on sustainability values and creating an inclusive and reflective process for decision-making. Sustainable leadership has the power to transform society through reorienting the educational system to help people develop knowledge, skills, values, and behaviors for an ever-changing world.

This paper aims to assist higher education institutions (HEIs) in their decision-making process to define initiatives and foster research projects contributing to sustainable development (SD) and minimizing the deficits found in the municipalities.

A documental analysis was performed to select HEIs and Brazilian regional development indicators. Then, the assessment of the sustainable and institutional performance of Brazilian municipalities that have HEIs consisted of three parts: clustering with an unsupervised machine learning model, ranking with a hybrid multi-criteria decision making method and visualization of sustainability performance with the dashboard.

The critical analysis of institutional and sustainability indicators contributes to a more active role of HEIs in matters of social responsibility, with a more holistic view of the performance and quality of municipal education. Furthermore, this critical analysis creates a scenario where HEIs can develop public policy proposals in partnership with the government to mitigate the main issues identified.

With this study, HEIs will be able to direct their actions to minimize the deficits found in the municipalities, consolidating their social responsibility.

This study proposes a new decision-support tool with a dashboard of indicators so that HEIs can foster research projects with a focus on regional SD.