In dit geluidsfragment luister je naar professor John Robinson van de Universiteit van Toronto. Niet alleen in Canada, maar ook in de Verengde Staten en in Europa begeleidde hij universiteiten om het thema duurzaamheid tot in het DNA van hun instelling te brengen. In zijn verhaal valt op hoe hij gelooft in de bijna natuurlijke inventiviteit van docenten en studenten. En die kwaliteiten moet je zichtbaar krijgen in een onderwijsinstelling. Vanaf dan is het nog een kwestie om die duurzame transitie planmatig uit te werken.

Hier hoor je hoe hij duurzaamheid breed definieert, dat situeert binnen een whole institution approach en hoe hij droomt van een nieuw narratief.

Sustainability, as we define it, is pretty broad and it includes both human and environmental wellbeing issues. It includes issues as health and diversity, productivity, happiness, inclusion and so on. That means that almost the whole campus is part of the conversation. Everybody on the campus has a connection to it. All sustainability issues that exist, are crosscutting. The institutional culture of a university needs to recognize the importance of these crosscutting approaches. There is a lot of rhetoric about interdisciplinarity at the university, and a little bit about the transdisciplinarity, but there is still little practice. Independent of people’s intentions, we just build up these institutions, these ways of rewarding work, and these ways of organizing ourselves which is not interdisciplinary. So, again, you have to have a whole institution approach to even think , or to address, that kind of problem. That is what ultimately gives culture change. So it is a reorientation of the role of the university, it’s a recognition of the need to integrate the operational and the academic sustainability. I think it needs a change in the narrative of what we even mean by sustainability. And all of these things have to come together. If sustainability has to come to the core of the identity of the university, which is where I think we should be, my kind of dream is that 10.000 universities realize that aim; helping society with all its diversity in science, engineering, arts,… in rural and urban communities. And working with these communities, as part of this societal shift, that is what we should be doing as a sector. That is what we have to try and create. That is as much as about institutional culture as anything else.

John Robinson richt de aandacht dan ook niet zozeer op verandering van individueel gedrag. De verandering moet voor hem van het systeem komen en deel uitmaken van een proces, zowel op academisch als op operationeel vlak. Walk the Talk, zeg maar.

If you ask what we can do, it is less about individual behavior change, it is more about the quality of the working place. And what can we do about it? Not that individuals have to overthrow their companies and change their culture, but they can be part of a process. Now, when I look around, everybody younger than me, and that’s almost everyone (J.R. laughs), has grown up with this topic of sustainability. And so it is there,it is in the air, there is a latent demand out there, that is really high for this topic. So when you start a process on your workplace, you will find allies, and you can have a quite significant impact. It is about linking the operational side of the university with the academic side. Every university I know, is doing sustainability in both arenas. They are doing energy efficiency programs over here and teaching environmental sustainability science over there. But they are completely disconnected. The two worlds don’t intercept very much in any important way, so these worlds are separate. In order to really get where we need to go: both train the students in very practical sustainability issues, but also walk the talk, which our students are demanding increasingly, we really need to connect these worlds. And what I have discovered in my work: let’s make the whole campus a living lab, where every single operational decision (building buildings, the furniture, the paint, the glazing, landscaping, everything) is all about sustainability. Make that explicit and involve students. You will have an explosion of activity. And often the operational side gets really excited, because they like to work with students. So that is a crucial part of the process. The integration of the operational and academic, you can only do that with a whole system approach.

Een interessante gedachte bij John Robinson is dat hij duurzaamheid linkt aan welbevinden. Als mensen ervaren dat een duurzamere campus ook een aangenamere leefomgeving oplevert, dan neem je meteen veel weerstand tegen verandering weg.

Human wellbeing is as crucial as environmental wellbeing is. We get to do them both simultaneously. To me, the concept of regenerative sustainability is built on the narrative of a) human and environmental sustainability and b) it is about making things better: can we build a building that improves the environmental circumstances, and makes people healthier, happier and more productive, for example. How about industrial systems, transportation systems, about cities? Brussels: improve environmental and human wellbeing simultaneously. Would Brussels be a city where everybody wants to live in? We don’t know the answer to that, because we haven’t focused enough on that positive outcome. This is a golden opportunity for a university. This is an issue that needs a lot of investigation. And it is not to say that everything can be so positive all the time. Sometimes harm reduction is the best you can do, absolutely, but never stop there. Always start with the regenerative and positive dimensions first. And then, if you can’t achieve that, harm reduction is the best you can achieve, that is fine.

Iets wat vaak onderschat wordt is hoeveel aandacht er in onderwijs en in onderzoek naar duurzaamheid gaat. Dat is vaak veel meer dan men denkt. Robinson moedigt aan die mensen samen te brengen, over hun werk te communiceren, en ze verder aan te moedigen. En er zijn veel manieren om studenten te belonen…

Our inventory at the university of Toronto found that 28% of courses have a link to the SDG’s. That is crucial. Now we do multiple inventories. We do about community engaged learning courses that have sustainability content, about inventory of student clubs that have sustainability focus and about inventory of co-curricular activities recognized by the co-curricular record that have sustainability content. All done by the students. We just started the research inventory, which would be an inventory of all publications by faculties that have sustainability content. We plan to do an inventory of research grants. Comparing the people who are teaching and doing research, are that the same people? Are there big or small overlaps? Without that knowledge you don’t know what is going on. You cannot really design some brilliant new thing that is inconsistent with what is going on. It won’t work. These inventories are the indispensable base for what we want to do. So far in my experience, it is not about doing things, it is about enabling people to do things. Giving them support, little parts of money, or workshops that allow them to know each other. Whatever helps them. First identify them, and then enable them. I think you can really get big institutional change following that path. 5000 dollar, just to add sustainable content to the course, is not a lot of money, but enough to buy material software, whatever it might be. And you give that to a wider group of faculties. Our big effort right now at the university is the ‘sustainability pathways’. Creating curricular pathways, so that every student can add sustainability to their program no matter what program you are in. Well, the inventory is essential. We have to have that data. Then we can assemble a kind of set of buckets that says if you take from a second year something of this bucket, and something from the third year of this bucket, you will have this kind of sustainability pathway. It is all depending on the inventory. As a student at our university you can do three different things. You can do a set of co-curricular activities, that has been recognized something to do with sustainability. If you do a certain number of those, you will get a designation ‘sustainability citizen’, and that shows up on your curricular record. The second level is that you can achieve a certificate in sustainability. Each faculty will have its own certificate program. If you do that, you will get ‘sustainability scholar’ on your transcript. And the third level, the highest level is ‘sustainability leader’, and that is if you do both, the ‘scholar’ and the ‘citizen’, the co-curricular and the curricular, and something else which we haven’t defined yet, but it will be probably a capstone course with community engaged learning content. If you do that, you become a ‘sustainability leader’.

Natuurlijk zijn er middelen nodig, je moet dingen mogelijk kunnen maken. Maar het draait voor John Robinson toch vooral om engagement, engagement van studenten en mensen die er een mandaat voor krijgen.

I was able to go to the president, saying “Look at all the stuff we have done, but now to implement we need resources. I need two full time staff, and some money for students.” He gave it to us. Now we have a little bit of resources. Not that much as I had at University of British Columbia, but that is fine. Because I discovered the power of a committee. The key is : on the committee I have 4 senior staff: on the curriculum side, on the research site, on the plant operation and on campus planning. I have 7 faculties involved, two students. It is all there. I feel we have quite a bit of impact, considering that we had zero budget for two years, and now a quite tiny budget. But I think you do not need necessarily a ton of resources, you need committed people, who are willing to put work in to figure out what needs to change. And then you need a latent community out there that you can mobilize. The students are crucial. Mobilize them. The university actually pays a lot of attention to the strong demand coming from the students.

Tenslotte nog een inspirerende reflectie over het belang van engagement in leer- en veranderingsprocessen. En we stellen dan de vraag in welke mate een onderwijsinstelling open staat, voor spontane, onverwachte en frisse, maar niet altijd gemakkelijke acties en interventies van studenten.

It is possible to engage students in ways they are not usually involved, and they can do fantastic work. That is a good news story. It is really interesting that these opportunities exist. So I think we can multiply the engagement with students. We can harvest this incredible energy and their intelligence. We can engage students very deeply in the process, partly because we owe it to them. They are demanding being trained in it. They really want to do this. And then I have a more personal reason: the students in general are more engaged to society and a little more radical than we are as faculty. We can go out and be an expert, that is an important role to play, but if you really want to get partners interested and engaged, involve students. It is a win-win situation: what they want is what they need in terms of training and it is important for us to give it to them. And it is more engaging with them as partners.

Je hoorde een interview met professor John Robinson n.a.v. een lezing over Duurzaamheid en een Whole Institution Approach voor de Commissie Duurzaam Hoger Onderwijs in Brussel, oktober 2019.