From the Sustainable Development Goals to Engineers’ Sustainability Skills

Climate change, biodiversity loss, resource depletion, air, water, and soil pollution, socioeconomic injustices, geopolitical crises, and so on—all these factors make it clear that we urgently need to transform our society in a fundamental way.

As IPBES so aptly puts it¹ , it is necessary to bring about transformative change—that is, “a fundamental, systemic reorganization of economic, social, and technological factors, including paradigms, objectives, and values.” Thisis therefore not a matter of making small changes here and there.

To achieve this, it is essential to educate all citizens—and in particular the driving forces behind this change, namely the younger generations—so that they are able to: 1) understand the necessity of this change, the associated challenges, and the tools at our disposal; 2) to become active agents of this change, which necessarily involves acquiring specific cross-disciplinary skills in “sustainability.” But what do we mean by sustainability? What are these sustainability skills? Where do they come from? Is there a consensus on them? How can we develop them? What impact(s) will this have on our educational programs? These are some of the questions this conference will seek to address, given that we—engineering students and faculty—will have a major role to play in bringing about this transformative change.

Please note: Registration is free but required.

1. IPBES: Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services ↩︎