Sep 15, 2023
Education is the key: TUD provides impulses at UN summit on sustainable development goals
When the world got together in New York for the SDG Summit of the United Nations to discuss the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda, scientists from Dresden also had active role. At the SDG Action Weekend, which accompanied the summit, they contributed their expertise, especially on the fourth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) “Quality Education.”
Dr. André Lindner, Head and International Affairs Advisor of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering of TU Dresden, organized an official side event as part of the Action Weekend in New York alongside the United Nations University. On September 16, experts spoke about the pivotal significance of higher education in the field of environmental management to achieve sustainable development, especially in the Global South. On the one hand, the consequences of the climate crisis are particularly serious, and on the other hand, developing and emerging countries have a young population and great potential.
In his keynote speech, André Lindner went into detail the contribution that TU Dresden is making in this area alongside its cooperation partners. The Centre for International Postgraduate Studies of Environmental Management (CIPSEM) has been around since 1977 and has since trained around 2,700 people from 145 countries to become environmental management experts. Many of them are now influential representatives of their countries, including at the UN.
Another successful model is the Global Water and Climate Adaptation Centre – Aachen, Bangkok, Chennai, Dresden (ABCD-Centre) under the leadership of TUD. Paying close attention to water, adapting to global climate change is the focus here - including a planned joint Master’s degree program, research partnerships and transfer activities.
Representatives of the United Nations University - Institute for Integrated Management of Material Fluxes and of Resources (UNU-Flores), who are close partners of TU Dresden, especially of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, also contributed. Prof. Daniel Karthe introduced the joint PhD Program “Resource Nexus for Sustainability Transformations” (NEXtra). It is aimed at doctoral students from the Global South who, after graduation, will be able to promote sustainable change in their home countries.
Here is the full program and more detailed information: https://tu-dresden.de/bu/internationales/un-sdg-action-weekend
About the 17 SDGs: https://sdgs.un.org/goals
The SDGs at TUD: https://tu-dresden.de/tu-dresden/nachhaltigkeit/sdg
