Foreword
In 2018, Times Higher Education embarked on a new venture: an attempt to understand the universities around the world that were contributing to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The SDGs are a broad set of principles that were agreed in 2015 as a roadmap for avoiding the worst of the onrushing climate catastrophe. It will come as no surprise that the governments of the world have failed to deliver on their commitments, and that current international trends make success in delivering them less likely.
Despite this, higher education offers a beacon of hope. The interrelated missions of education, research, community outreach and responsible stewardship of resources that are familiar to all in the sector can be uniquely applied across all of the 17 SDGs.
Above and beyond this I was, and still am, convinced that there were universities with great stories to tell around sustainability that were not receiving the recognition they deserved. I also had no reason to believe that the universities that were brilliant as research universities would necessarily be the ones that were great at implementing the SDGs.
But being a data scientist I had to wait to see what the data would tell us. And I can tell you that it was a nervous wait – one of the hidden secrets of ranking universities is that you have to be confident that you can justify what the results tell you.
So when the first edition of the Impact Rankings came out I was delighted that The University of Auckland came top. Two years later I was more than happy when The University of Manchester came top. Both these institutions were ones I knew well. It was comforting that I could relate my direct experience to what the data was telling me.
But when Western Sydney University came top in 2022 I was nervous. Who were they? Were they any good? Was there a problem (beyond the usual) with my methodology?
The answer was that they are very, very good. And they really live the spirit of the Sustainable Development Goals. From platypus conservation to working with native bees for crop pollination, from addressing accessibility to reducing their carbon footprint, across all 17 SDGs, I was lucky enough to get to visit and was inspired and impressed. Western Sydney University earned their place as the number one university in the world for delivering on the SDGs in 2022, a feat they repeated in 2023 and then in 2024.
And that brings us onto this glimpse into the work that is taking place at Western Sydney. The articles in this book should do what all good research does. They should engage us, they should inspire us, they should even infuriate us!
The SDGs are not designed to be a soporific to convince us that everything is going to be OK. They are a call to arms, a call to contention for the betterment of humanity.
Within these pages you will find stories (and I mean that in the deeply human sense that we have used to circulate knowledge from the earliest of times) about the world, about challenges we need to face, and about the hope that we can make a difference.
Duncan Ross
THE (Times Higher Education), United Kingdom
22 January 2025