From Sustainable Development Goals to engineers' sustainability skills

Climate change, biodiversity loss, resource depletion, air, water and soil pollution, socio-economic injustices, geopolitical crises, etc. are all factors that show us that it is more urgent than ever to radically transform our society.

As IPBES rightly points out¹ , transformative change is needed,meaning "a fundamental, systemic reorganization of economic, social, and technological factors, including paradigms, goals, and values."So,we'renot talking about 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 need for this change, the associated challenges, and the levers for action at our disposal; 2) become active participants in this change, which necessarily involves acquiring certain 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 they be developed? What impact(s) will this have on our training? These are some of the questions that this conference will attempt to answer, given that we, as engineering students and teachers, will have/have a major role to play in bringing about this transformative change.

Please note: Registration is free but mandatory.

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