UCL President & Provost highlights need to address the UN SDGs at Global Forum

The event brought together UN officials and university presidents from different continents to examine how universities could support the 2030 Agenda and to help achieve the Agenda’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals through advancing scientific collaboration, creating greener campuses and educating the next generation.

Dr Spence stressed the need to champion international, inter-institutional and cross-disciplinary solutions to challenges at local, national and global levels.

He said: “By doing this, we hope we will not only make UCL a more attractive place to study and work, and make our graduates more attractive to employers, but also help us clearly demonstrate and communicate how we and our local and global partners are coming together to make a difference to people’s lives.”

In his speech, Dr Spence also highlighted that UCL cannot address global problems and deliver true impact on its own. He said: “We can only achieve this by, firstly, listening to others who may know more than us, and, more broadly, by providing opportunities for more and deeper local and global partnerships, with other universities, governments, policymakers, industries and local communities, not just around the world, but also those close to our campus.”

The forum was hosted by Zhejiang University (ZJU), China, with which UCL has worked in partnership for several years. In 2019, former UCL President & Provost Professor Michael Arthur led a visit to ZJU, and the deans of the four UCL faculties in which UCL had the strongest links renewed an institutional-level Memorandum of Understanding.

Earlier this year, UCL and ZJU awarded eight projects up to £10,000 each through a joint funding call for the development of collaborative research and education initiatives.

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• Dr Michael Spence AC

Links

• Watch Dr Spence’s speech (58:35)
• UCL SDG Initiative
• UCL–Zhejiang joint funding call
• UCL in East Asia