The Centre for Global Change and Sustainability networks between institutes, departments, platforms and initiatives at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU) Vienna, in their research and teaching in the areas of global change and sustainability (e.g. climate change and climate protection, sustainable concepts for ensuring global food security, transportation, waste management, water supply and use).

This work involves networking, cooperation, knowledge exchange and synthesis in research but also in teaching, policy advice and public relations. Furthermore, these cooperative and networking activities of the Centre extend to national and international research institutes and organizations.

Since 2011 Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) was added to the centers’ agenda as a new priority. A current work of the Centre for Global Change and Sustainability in the field of ESD is to support the diffusion of sustainability in the universities’ curricula. Therefore an online database - the Sustainicum Collection - with key resources  to integrate sustainability in existing courses, to develop new courses and to train the teacher was developed in a joint project with two Austrian universities. These resources consist of building blocks, teaching methods, scripts and teaching modules.

The centers’ principles:

• The Centre for Global Change and Sustainability supports the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in realizing its societal responsibility.
• It is a motor and provides impetus for ideas regarding topics of global change and sustainable development.
• The Centre is a place of interdisciplinary, scientific debate and offers a learning environment for complex relationships and innovative ideas.
• As such the Centre contributes toward communicating concepts for the future to society.

Role of BOKU in the project:

• Coordinate the mapping exercise in Austria and complete the template.
• Assist in the development of an online platform of resources as well as get familiarised and review the online tool.
• Contribute to the bi-annual newsletters.
• Provide feedback to the Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) framework.
• Contribute to the dissemination and exploitation of the project outputs, outcomes and future network activities.
• Participate and actively contribute to the discussions generated in regional and annual meetings, seminars and conference.

Operational and financial management:

• The project team will coordinate the above administrative and academic project activities.
• Financial administration will be handled by project team who will liaise internally with the institution’s finance department.