During USR month of October, The University of Manchester has published a comprehensive report which highlights how it is to tackle the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
In April 2021, the University was ranked first from over 1,200 universities across 98 different countries in the 2021 Times Higher Education Impact tables, based on its performance against towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The University has also been the UK’s top performing university for three consecutive years in 2019, 2020 and 2021 on the measure.
The UN’s 17 SDGs are the world’s call to action on the most pressing challenges and opportunities facing humanity and the natural world. The pledge is an acknowledgement by the university of the obligation on universities are expected to play in creating and sharing knowledge to address the challenges set out in Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Dr Julian Skyrme, Director of Social Responsibility at The University of Manchester explains: “As one of the world’s leading research institutions and the UK’s first university to have social responsibility as a core goal, we’re tackling the SDGs in four inter-related ways: through our research, our learning and students, our public engagement activity and our operations.
“We’ve championed sustainable development through actions in the University’s strategic plan, through regional, national and global partnerships and our commitment to transparent reporting in publications like our 2019 SDG Report, and now our new 2021/22 SDG Report. ”
The report is aimed at a wide range of local, national and international audiences across the public, private, NGO, policy and education sectors. University leaders hope it will stimulate further ideas, actions and collaboration opportunities so to encourage more action in tackling the world’s SDGs by 2030.
