The Wiley Handbook of Sustainability in Higher Education Learning and Teaching

The University of Michigan's President, Mary Sue Coleman, emphasizes the crucial role of an environmental focus in adopting sustainability concepts in the university operations and thus acknowledges the urgency of addressing environmental sustainability:

The pressing challenge of environmental sustainability is a huge global concern… From teaching and research, to hand on engagement, we are going to leverage our many strengths to make significant contributions to an urgent and extraordinarily complex problem.

(University of Michigan News, 2009)

A question may arise as to why ESD is urgent. The answer is that the urgency is felt so greatly because of the increasing number of global issues and the incapacity of former and current generations in managing these complex issues. Sustainability is not a destination, rather it is an ever‐continuing state of events that needs to be maintained at the pace of social transformation. The reason why ESD, like other sustainability goals, has failed in its implementation is due to a number of barriers that impede this ongoing sustainability journey.

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Zoe Robinson, Rebecca Laycock Pedersen, and Sarah Briggs

There is increasing acknowledgment of the responsibility of universities in contributing to a more sustainable future, and our role as educators in ensuring our students have the agency to enact change (Robinson 2019). The responsibility of universities goes beyond the traditional estates‐based environmental management focus toward a more holistic understanding of the ways in which universities can contribute to sustainability, through their engagement and outreach with local communities, their research activities, as well as their educational mission. Education can be a thread which weaves these areas of responsibility together.

These potential contributions to sustainability by universities cross the breadth of interconnected and interdependent environmental, social and economic issues that embody our understanding of “sustainability” (Gibson 2006; Purvis et al. 2019). The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), ratified in 2015, comprise 17 goals and 169 targets and, although not without criticism (Adelman 2018; Liverman 2018), might represent the best blueprint we have for a more sustainable future. These models of interconnected issues highlight that sustainability challenges are complex “wicked problems” which can be time‐consuming and difficult to address due to involving multiple stakeholders, dimensions and conflicting needs (Ackoff 1974; Waddock 2013) and therefore need holistic and systemic approaches.