Creating tomorrow: sustainable studies, life, and research
Our mission is "creating tomorrow" - for a better and sustainable future. As a sustainable university, we are committed to the goals of the United Nations and have voluntarily joined the UN Global Compact. In practice, this means that over the past ten years we have established aspects of sustainable management in all areas of teaching and research. As tomorrow's experts and managers, our graduates are ideally trained to establish sustainability in companies and to manage them responsibly. We are already doing this today and have become a carbon-neutral school - for more sustainability and a better tomorrow.
What does sustainability mean and why is it important?
The concept of sustainability has been around for a long time. It originated in forestry in the 1700s and meant that only so many trees should be cut down in a forest so that the forest would be preserved in the long term. Resources should be conserved in order to use them economically in the long term. In the 1980s, the idea of "sustainable development" became established in the definition of sustainability. It is based on three fundamental principles that are still valid today. The most discussed is environmental protection: pressing problems are CO2 emissions, pollution of the oceans and water, species extinction, poisoning of soils, and climate change. The second important principle is social development: employees should be treated fairly and ethically and all people should have opportunities for learning and development. The third fundamental principle is economic development: a company should be profitable and make its profits sustainably, i.e. not at any price and not at the expense of the environment or employees.
In its 2030 Agenda, the United Nations concretised these three basic principles and defined the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Among other things, it is about fighting poverty and hunger, education, justice, peace, decent work, economic growth, and climate protection.
Globalisation shows that problems such as environmental pollution and dwindling natural resources affect us all. If we do not change our way of thinking and living, we will destroy ecosystems, exacerbate inequality between rich and poor and deprive future generations of the basis of their livelihoods. That is why sustainable development is existentially important.
