Dr. Karatzoglou Benjamin
University of Macedonia
Introduction
 The Brundtland Commission Report emphasized the
importance of cooperation among the various stakeholders
at the regional, national and global level as a precondition
toward a sustainable future
 Agenda 21, released at the Rio Summit, addressed the
potential of the scientific and the technological community
to make an effective contribution to the decision making
processes concerning environment and development and
stressed the role of academia in such an effort
 The last decade Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have
been considered by the society significant contributors to
the promotion of sustainability and a respective role has
been assigned to them
The contribution of Universities to sustainable
regional development as recorded in relevant
academic literature.
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The presentation includes:
the role of partnerships and networking in the effort to pursue SD;
the motives, constraints, and conditions which favor or hamper
strong regional engagement for Universities;
good practices applied;
the Regional Centers of Expertise (RCEs) as examples of
innovative institutional networking mechanisms.
an overview of the literature on education for sustainable
development (ESD)
a discussion and critical analysis of the scope, strengths and
weaknesses of the case-study type articles that flourish in the
literature, regarding their potential to enhance the usefulness of
the literature for future interested parties
Universities and regional sustainable
development
 Universities are expected to add value to a region by
offering:
 a range of tangible identified benefits such as population
growth, employment opportunities, enhanced local GDP,
housing demand and spin-offs.
 flexible and innovative regional responses and contribution
to the transformation of the area into a ‘learning region’ and
to the growth of local ‘knowledge economy’.
 The value that Universities add on regions closely
correlates with their ‘embeddedness’ in the local society,
economy and activities and their ability to monitor and
respond to internal and external changes by generating and
managing relevant information and knowledge
The literature review discloses that all authors highlight
very similar ways in which Universities can contribute to
regional SD. Most typical suggestions include:
 A change in the Universities’ own management practices,
for instance their involvement in recycling schemes,
energy efficiency initiatives, or the implementation of an
environmental management system (EMS);
 Promotion of tacit skills beyond traditional codified
knowledge development, including integration, synthesis,
critical reasoning, and system-thinking skills, expected to
support students and researchers to cope with the future
multi-disciplinary complex challenges of sustainability
 The assumption of a leading role in coordinating,
promoting, and enhancing the engagement of local
authorities and other societal stakeholders to design and
implement regional sustainability plans by acting as
sources of technical expertise
Barriers to the engagement of
Universities in regional SD initiatives
 Literature abounds with examples of good practices and effective
alliances set between Universities and local actors. Fewer published
articles refer to barriers to change, collaboration failures, incentives
and disincentives for engagement, or suggested performance
indicators.
 Barriers described in the literature typically entail
 organizational factors, such as the lack of incentives, inadequate
financial resources, limited creativity, lack of staff expertise or
awareness, shortage of time for members of the faculty because of
other more urgent priorities.
 Lack of institutional drive and commitment. The low appreciation of
outreach activities within academia limits the interest of faculty
members to engage in multi-disciplinary RSI work that does not
pertain to their immediate research interests and thus does not deliver
scientific credit.
 Perceived irrelevance by students and lack of market for students
 Barriers result in a situation where potentials to cooperate with other
local actors are not fully realized and may result in difficulties to reach
an agreement, long times to achieve a goal, unsatisfactory
performance, and internal conflicts between the partnering actors.
Networking and RCEs
 The need for networking becomes indispensable in any case
where a relatively large number of small actors aim at a
target which cannot be attained in isolation
 The parameters that define the complexity of the network
structure relate to the number of actors in the system at each
level, their diversity, and the density and intensity of
interactions among the group members
 The plethora of categorization criteria and their potential
combinations confirms the uniqueness of any network and
indicates that the optimization of its operations must be
internally designed at an ad hoc basis
 The establishment of RCEs that will align the interests and
the potentials of the regional actors, coordinate their efforts,
and develop capacity for managing pending issues was
developed as a critical enabling approach for collaborative
self governance
Study methodology
 The study has mostly focused on descriptive ESD projects covering
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formal, informal, and non-formal learning using a selection of over 100
European and North American publications in English.
It has included activities benefiting any of the three pillars of SD with
the emphasis on interdisciplinarity.
Articles emphasizing education management, highly technical, or
econometric studies on the impact of higher education and academic
research on regional performance have been omitted
The Scholar Google network was employed to secure that the articles
used were peer-reviewed and published in academic journals.
The very small number of references (<10) to the available articles
deterred the use of the citation index as an impact indicator to support
the choice of the most influential cases
Massive presentations of case studies were found in special thematic
journal issues and in selected Compendiums and Best Practice
Guidebooks, published by international organizations
Study methodology
 The main elements inspected involved the actors, stakeholders and
beneficiaries engaged in the initiative; the background of the problems
confronted; innovation and good practices applied; key output and
value-added; and the explanatory variables for successes or failures
 Two main branches of studies are distinguishable in the widely varied
sustainability literature:
 Empirical and descriptive studies of specific approaches, strategies,
initiatives and actions taken by certain HEIs, operating independently
or within a network /RCE. This branch contains the vast majority of
articles and includes presentations of the development,
implementation and assessment of individual programs by Universities
worldwide as well as suggested ‘best-practices’ and performance
indicators. The literature review of such articles demonstrates lack of
cohesion and of a solid theoretical underpinning in addition to a
certain degree of repetition and overlap
 Prescriptive studies suggesting that Universities play a more prominent
role in the pursuit of sustainability and providing direction on the
optimal policy processes, implementation and evaluation for transition
to the new role.
An overview of the literature on the role
of Universities in Learning for SD
 Thirty papers from over 25 countries were short-listed and
presented in this overview ranging from local to
international projects, and covering a variety of ESD
initiatives on all three types of education. These initiatives
were undertaken by individual Universities as well as by
Universities-partners to regional networks or heading local
RCEs.
 The great majority of papers published on this topic are in
the form of case-studies. Good examples abound and show
some general patterns of ways by which academics and
multiple regional stakeholders can collaborate effectively
and efficiently.
Recorded best practices in ESD
A wide array of good practices in implementing ESD has been recorded
in the literature. A non-exhaustive list of such practices comprises:
 Infusion of E S D in the University curriculum
 Use of computer simulation programs for team problem solving and critical
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thinking
Work in partnership with parents, children, and local volunteers to develop
an ESD curriculum customized to address local problems
Launch of master's and PhD degree program to educate people on SD
Campus renovation through a variety of initiatives that range from the use
of energy-saving appliances and the implementation of water recycling reuse systems to the creation of artificial wetlands, multi-layer plantations
for carbon dioxide reduction, organic farms and eco-ponds.
SD research projects and journal publication to disseminate and validate the
faculty's work experience and research and to network internationally
Development of ESD Teacher training programs
Community awareness raising
Capacity-building for professionals and entrepreneurs
Development of regional, national, and international networks for exchange
of best practices and information
Best practices in ESD
 The literature overview allows the development of a depository
of ‘good practices for ESD’. Yet, the term ‘best practices’ in ESD
presupposes the existence of benchmarks or of a commonly
approved scale which can be used as a yardstick to allow rating
against preset criteria and comparative performance
measurement. Currently, neither of these premises holds true.
 Therefore, we consider certain practices outstanding because:
 (i) they are pushing at the boundaries of the subjects, straying into
interdisciplinary / transdisciplinary areas in order to enact
sustainability; and
 (ii) they entail practical and innovative ways to tackle local
environmental and societal issues
 Actually the ‘best practice’ for a region is any practice that
reinforces an effective and efficient delivery of sustainability in
the area. A best practice is only applicable to particular condition
or circumstance and may have to be modified, adapted or evolve
as the conditions that shape it change.
Findings from the literature review
 The great majority of the articles celebrate success stories,
focusing on the practices implemented by the participating
institutions.
 Limited efforts to correlate the activities chosen with
certain characteristics of the University and the region
such as the size, nature, type of faculties, kind of SD
problems or degree of 'embeddedness' in the area.
 Meta-analysis of multiple case studies is the only tool
which can disclose shared trends, patterns and heuristics,
and correlate them to their contexts.
 Imperative need for a stricter conceptual and research
methodology framework and for specification of the
metrics (indicators) used to evaluate and measure the
success of the initiative
Conclusions
 Universities have enthusiastically engaged in
improving local sustainability
 They cope effectively and sustainably with the dynamic
nature of the SD concept by changing their teaching
paradigm, by developing social competencies,
communication skills, and community relations, and
by deepening their involvement in local and regional
initiatives
 However, there is a notable dichotomy of tensions
when they publish their results
Conclusions
 If the purpose of the ESD publications is to address the internal need for
contextual relevance and approval, the description of past efforts and
institutional practices has been sufficient to inspire and encourage
future peer action
 But if the emphasis lies on sharing these experiences to contribute to
the improvement of institutional practices elsewhere, the emphasis
should go to transferability and abstraction. In this case, the
instrumentation of case-study research, the documentation of the
process, and the standardization of the published findings is an
inescapable condition to improve comparability and allow the easier
implementation of the findings to a new context with or without further
adaptation
 An emancipatory approach with no prescriptive guidelines, if applied,
will increase the levels of freedom with which the reader will reap new
ideas, suggestions, implications and aspirations from past experiences
and will secure the capacity of the collaborative learning process to
benefit both the actors already involved in the process and those
external parties that may be interested in distilling precious knowledge
out of it.