"Strengthen existing initiatives"

Sabine Schlacke © WWU - Benedikt Weischer "Sustainability? is the term given to a global concept which seeks to unite environmental protection, social justice and economic prosperity to the benefit of present and future generations. The United Nations and its member countries have been pursuing this principle for over 30 years and in 2015 they agreed on a groundbreaking, but non-binding, concretization of 17 Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Universities in Germany can also gear their research, teaching, knowledge transfer and everyday operations to these Sustainability Goals. Up to now, universities have not been obliged to adopt sustainability goals or concepts. Any such obligation would, in any case, have to take adequate account of Germany's constitutionally guaranteed freedom of research and teaching, notwithstanding the fact that universities also have the obligation to protect basic natural resources for present and future generations, in line with the German constitution, or Basic Law, and to observe the government's climate protection goals. In the view of the German Advisory Council on Global Change, universities are central players in the great transformation required to achieve sustainability. "The? sustainable university does not - yet - exist.