Dear All,
After three years of extensive discussions and careful planning, the University Board decided on 18th September to establish the University of Oslo’s new Centre for Global Sustainability.
The Sustainable Health Unit (SUSTAINIT) will, through its employees, be one of the permanent environments associated with the centre.
In addition to SUSTAINIT, the Centre for Development and the Environment (SUM) and the three strategic initiatives (UiO: Life Science, UiO: Democracy, and UiO: Energy and Environment) will also be part of the centre. Each in a slightly different way.
At SUSTAINIT, we look forward to contributing our work on sustainable health in this new and dynamic arena for interdisciplinary research, education, and knowledge exchange.
Why Do We Need a Global Sustainability Centre?
Interdisciplinary knowledge is the key to addressing the climate crisis. Knowledge about the foundations of life for humans and other species must be understood in relation to each other – and to the cultural and institutional frameworks that frame their existence. This necessitates a global perspective: Sustainable transition fundamentally involves a shift away from overconsumption in high-income countries and overproduction through global value chains that exploit people in poor countries, destroy the environment, and undermine the economic and governance conditions for well-functioning societies globally.
The climate crisis is not distributed fairly. In 2023, the Earth experienced the warmest three-month period ever recorded, and the potential health consequences are particularly significant for people in low-income countries.
In addition to the increased risk of malnutrition, climate change leads to an increase in food-borne, water-borne, and vector-borne diseases. According to GAVI, up to 8.4 billion people could be at risk of diseases like dengue fever and malaria by the end of the century if emissions continue to rise at current levels. From a health perspective, sustainable transition is therefore closely linked with global health and pandemic preparedness, which are SUSTAINIT’s primary focus areas.
With the new centre, SUSTAINIT will have the opportunity to address these challenges in collaboration with experts on other aspects of the transition, such as biodiversity, democracy, culture, and governance institutions. The new centre will also be uniquely positioned for cross-sector collaboration, ensuring that knowledge development happens in interaction with the various stakeholders involved in the transition.
What is the Centre for Global Sustainability?
The new centre is directly under the university board and will have a flexible organisation to accommodate both permanent and temporary academic environments and various forms of affiliation.
According to the proposal to the University Board, the centre has the following objectives:
- Strengthen interdisciplinary research on sustainability at a high international level.
- Strengthen education and lifelong learning on global sustainability across disciplines.
- Create an attractive arena for knowledge sharing and dissemination within global sustainability.
- Develop inclusive collaborative forums for students, researchers, and external partners.
- Increase access to external funding for research and education.
- Provide a flexible structure and organisation that accommodates both permanent and temporary research environments in line with the centre's purpose.
The academic organisation is based on flexible thematic areas, which will be developed by the academic environments to be included in the centre.
The Centre for Global Sustainability will become operational, and the centre director is expected to take office before summer 2025.
In the long term, the environments included in the centre will be co-located in the "Sustainability House" – the name for the current pharmacy building at Blindern.
A temporary steering committee has been established with the responsibility to lead the development of thematic areas and organisation until the centre director is appointed.
What Will Be SUSTAINIT’s Role?
While SUM and the three strategic initiatives will be aligned under the Centre's director, SUSTAINIT will have a different affiliation. SUSTAINIT and its underlying units will remain an autonomous entity at the Institute of Health and Society (HELSAM) and the Faculty of Medicine.
Employees at SUSTAINIT will collaborate in the thematic areas of the centre but will retain their appointments and reporting lines within their own faculty. When the Sustainability House is ready, SUSTAINIT employees will move into the new building and be co-located with the other environments in the Centre for Global Sustainability.
We hope and believe that the Centre for Global Sustainability will become an innovative meeting place for research, knowledge sharing, and collaboration with external partners where SUSTAINIT can further develop its project portfolio and contribute to realising its vision of promoting critical thinking and interdisciplinary models for sustainable health research and education.