From Sustainable Development Goals to engineering sustainability skills

Climate change, erosion of biodiversity, depletion of resources, air, water and soil pollution, socio-economic injustices, geopolitical crises, etc. all point to the urgent need to transform our society.

As IPBES rightly writes¹ it is necessary to achieve transformative change, i.e. " a fundamental, systemic reorganization of economic, social and technological factors, including paradigms, objectives and values". So it's not a question of small changes here and there.

To achieve this, it is essential to train all citizens, and in particular the driving forces behind this change, i.e. the new generations, so that they are in a position to: 1) understand the need for this change, the associated challenges, and the levers of action available to us; 2) be capable of becoming players in it, which necessarily requires the acquisition of certain cross-disciplinary skills specific to "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 they have on our training courses? These are just some of the questions this conference will seek to answer, in the knowledge that we, student engineers and teachers, will have a major role to play in bringing about this transformative change.

Please note: Registration is free but compulsory.

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