BEIJING: China’s Tsinghua University hosted the University Sustainable Development Forum and launched its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Report on Thursday night in Beijing.
“The fundamental function of a university is to cultivate talents. Without talents, there is no foundation for achieving SDGs,” Wu Hongbo, China’s Special Representative for European Affairs, and former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, said on the forum. Zhu Xufeng, Executive Director of the Institute for SDGs of Tsinghua University, told the Global Times that colleges and universities could promote sustainable development in the process of campus construction, through personnel training, scientific research, social services, cultural inheritance, innovation and international exchanges, and cooperation to achieve the SDGs. At the same time, constructing a green campus will improve the sustainable development of the university with a more comprehensive development concept. Since the promulgation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and China’s National Plan for the Implementation of the 2030 Agenda, Tsinghua University has actively responded to the call of the country and the United Nations and worked hard to promote the realization of the SDGs on campus, at home and abroad, Zhu said.
According to Tsinghua’s SDGs Action Report, in 2020 the university opened 2,317 SDGs courses, held 20,665 SDGs student activities and organized 408 SDGs social training programs, with a total of 55,557 participants. It has carried out 9,253 SDGs research projects, obtained 10,059 national and foreign patents, and released a total of 49,289 pieces of SDGs news to the public. In terms of talent cultivation for SDGs, Tsinghua University and the University of Geneva jointly set up a dual master’s degree program in English on Public Policy for Sustainable Development. The first MPP-SDG double master’s graduates will receive their degree in 2021.
– The Daily Mail-Global Times News exchange item
