The Global Sustainable Development Congress 2023, hosted by Times Higher Education in partnership with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology on 30 May – 1 June 2023.
The annual congress was initiated as a new platform of activity that can enable university leaders and their communities to forge stronger partnerships with governments, the private sector and civil society. The 2023 edition challenged attendees to think about how higher education can become more radical and act both at a greater pace and a far greater scale to respond to this profound environmental crisis. The agenda was designed to synthesise their ideas and commitment to change into institutional action and global transformation.
This communiqué is the official report and recommendations of 11 core areas of action that we ask universities to initiate or to expand and accelerate over the next twelve months.
These have been produced through the input of more than 1,300 in-person and 250 virtual delegates from 538 organisations – including 267 universities – representing 67 countries. The congress was informed by unique evidence of the work of universities through the THE Impact Rankings 2023 dataset which included 1,705 universities from 112 countries and regions.
We want the calls to action to drive new transformative global activity and alliances between higher education and governments, industry and civil society to respond to the climate crisis and other threats to the sustainable development of our world
