Sustainable Development Goals
We're working to build a more equitable and sustainable world.
The United Nation’s (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) layout a framework of environmental, social and economic imperatives to ensure peaceful and sustainable futures for all nations.
Our progress toward the SDGs
We're proud to be one of the top universities in the world for accelerating the pace of environmental and social change.
All campuses are powered by 100% renewables, the University is helping Australian businesses implement net zero technologies, advising governments on climate change, bushfires, and pioneering green technologies, like a novel way to turn plastic waste into an asset.
The University of Sydney is strategically aligned with the SDGs through our Sustainability Strategy and as signatories to the UN Global Compact. The University is a member of the Board of Future Earth and is also part of the UN General Council Initiative Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) that, through collaboration and partnership, aims to develop and implement solutions through education, research and policy analysis.
We are building a generation of students who will learn personal, social and professional skills that contribute to the development of a sustainable future.
University of Sydney Vice-Chancellor and President, Professor Mark Scott
SDG 1 is focused on eradicating extreme poverty for all people everywhere.
- Our 2032 Strategy promises to more than double scholarship support for under-represented domestic students.
- Our researchers are tackling modern slavery with research into supply chains, working to understand economic inequlity and the policies needed to address it.
- Our researchers are also looking at how infrastructure and technology can lift marginalised communities out of poverty as well as universal basic income.
SDG 4 aims to ensure inclusive and equitable education and promote lifelong learning.
- We're proud to be ranked #1 in the world for the impact of our education.
- Our education and social work researchers are working with government and industry partners to inform policy and school curriculum, including education pathways for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples that are strengths-based and culturally responsive, and community-led research.
- We have a range of scholarship programs for students from under respresented backgrounds, including the Sydney Scholars India Equity Scholarship which supports exceptional students residing in the slum communities of Delhi, in collaboration with Indian charity, the Asha Community Health and Development Society (Asha).
SDG 7 aims to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy.
- University of Sydney researcher, Professor Kondo Francois Aguey-Zinsou is one of the world’s thought-leaders on hydrogen, focussed on refining and extending hydrogen-based technologies. Aguey-Zinsou's goal is to produce zero-carbon energy for everyone.
- Sydney Environment Institute hosted a Critical Minerals Symposium in September 2023 to gather together scholars working on critical minerals mining for discussion around the transition to renewable energy from Australia and overseas.
- University of Sydney's Professor Anita Ho-Baillie has joined forces with Sydney-based renewable technology company, SunDrive, to commercialise perovskite-silicon cells which are set to drastically improve the efficiency of solar cell technology.
SDG 10 aims to reduce inequality within and among countries.
- Diversity and inclusion is one of the core values of the University. The Vice-Chancellor published a message highlighting the need to call out racism and reminding staff and students about the range of services and support mechanisms offers to celebrate and support cultural diversity in the University community. In particular, the University has a range of programs and scholarships for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
- Our researchers are working on policy to improve the health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, call out gendered discrimination in the workplace, and quantify socio-economic impacts of COVID-19.
SDG 13 takes urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.
- In August 2020, we launched our Climate Action Statement, adding our voice to a growing body of institutions calling for urgent action on climate change. The statement, which highlights our commitment to ambitious new targets, was launched alongside our first whole-of University Sustainability Strategy to guide action across our core business and progress systemic change.
- Our researchers are developing disaster-resilient solutions in the Philippines and a device that removes carbon from the air and are working with Google to help people access health tips to deal with extreme heat. We are also looking at how the Australian fossil fuel sector has sought to maintain its political dominance in the face of growing social critique.
SDG 16 promotes peaceful and inclusive societies, provides justice for all inclusive institutions.
- The United Nations appointed Professor Ben Saul from the Sydney Law School as Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-terrorism from 1 November 2023. Professor Saul's appointment will focus on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism. Special Rapporteur is the title given to independent experts who are called upon by the UN to report or advise on human rights.
- Sydney Policy Lab's Australia Cares project, enabled the Lab to draw on thinking from care communities, researchers and policy makers, to make recommendations to government on the national strategy for the care and support economy.
- The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences has a Department of Peace and Conflict Studies that is dedicated to education and research that promotes peace with justice.
SDG 2 is about creating a world free of hunger for all.
- Our researchers are working with Google Earth to develop the world’s first real-time monitoring platform for rice fields globally. Rice is the staple crop for more than half the world’s population, hence careful monitoring of how much rice has been planted and how much harvest can be achieved is crucial to achieving global food and water security.
- Our researchers have also outlined seven steps we can take in Australia to tackle world hunger and have advised the UN on leveraging robots and AI help address the world's food security issues.
- Our on-campus foodhub provides students with basic necessities (like bread and milk) while they complete their studies at the University of Sydney.
SDG 5 aims to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
- As part of the University’s aim to promote gender equity in education we have gained the Bronze Award in the Athena SWAN accreditation, This also forms part of our commitment to the Science in Australia Gender Equity (SAGE) initiative.
- The University has a Gender Equality in Working Life Research Initiative led by Professor Rae Cooper. The initiative's research outputs identify the building blocks needed to achieve gender equality in the workplace.
- Leading academic, Professor Marian Baird, from the University of Sydney's Business School has been recognised two years running in the Gender Equality Top 100 list of the world's most influential people in gender policy.
SDG 8 promotes sustainable economic growth, productive employment and decent work.
- As part of its duty to provide decent work and pay conditions for its staff, the University has an Enterprise Agreement in place that provides the University and its staff the freedom to bargain for better wages, greater flexibility, and working conditions to suit their individual needs.
- Our researchers are studying how stronger union rights can mean more productive, sustainable workplaces, the impact of population growth on the economy and the need for regulation in emerging labour markets.
- We also have several units of study on economic development, including one that explores the processes and social dynamics underpinning economic development.
SDG 11 aims to make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.
- We're proud to be rated as among world's most sustainable campuses. Our sustainability targets include
- Net zero emissions by 2030
- Zero waste to landfill by 2030
- The Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning co-hosts the annual Festival of Urbanism.
- Our researchers are working with international partners to create more sustainable cities and explore Australia's housing crisis, with research showing building more won't make houses affordable.
SDG 14 aims to conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources.
- Research into the history of the Great Barrier Reef at our research station at One Tree Island is helping us understand how the Reef will cope with anthropogenic climate change. A research team are engaged in a project to unlock the secrets of the reef by analysing historic cores of corals drilled from the reef.
- Sydney geoscientist, Dr Mitchell Gibbs, is drawing on traditional practices and Indigenous knowledge in a research project to restore oyster reefs and change ways of thinking within Western science.
- Our researchers have also developed an Australian omega-3 supplement made from environmental bacteria, which creates a sustainable source of functional omega-3s whilst alleviating the need to overfish.
SDG 17 is focused on revitalising the global partnership for sustainable development.
- We're proud to work with industry and government partners, including Microsoft, Adobe, Qantas and GE to find business solutions and contribute to a better world.
- Our 2032 Strategy calls out partnerships as a key pillar to realising our goals of ensuring our world-class research and teaching transforms lives.
- We proudly hosted the 2023 Times Education World Academic Summit, with delegates attending from higher education institutions from 46 countries. The theme was collaborating for greatness in a multidisciplinary world, which aligns with the University’s focus on partnerships, multidisciplinarity, diversity, equity and the future of teaching and learning.
- Our Ignition Grants and SDG program support researchers from the University of Sydney and its strategic partners to facilitate collaborative projects between universities that will develop multidisciplinary research to create societal impact with a strong focus on SDGs. Since 2016 the Ignition program has funded 432 projects with $7.7 million in grants. The SDG program will provide up to $1.2 million.
SDG 3 focuses on promoting well-being for all at all ages.
- We have dozens of research centres focused on improving health and wellbeing, including two large multidisciplinary inaitives, the Brain and Mind Centre and the Charles Perkins Centre, which looks at obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
- The Sydney Biomedical Accelerator will also be a nation-leading biomedical precinct to fast track research and patient care in New South Wales.
- Our researchers are also supporting better health outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
SDG 6 focuses on ensuring access to water and sanitation for all.
- From effective water treatment to waste transformation, our engineering researchers are developing innovative solutions to clean water and sanitation.
- Our researchers are also using electricity to clean up toxic water, protecting clean drinking water for rural Australia and cleaning the water of Sydney Harbour and estuaries all over the world with oysters.
- We're also evaluating alternative sustainable sanitation technologies for East Africa and the Pacific in order to improve both human and environmental health.
SDG 9 works to promote sustainable industrialisation and foster innovation.
- We're proud to be #1 in Australia for bringing innovations to market.
- We have 650+ active invention and copyright disclosures and 45+ active spin out companies.
- Our innovation and enterprise ecosystem provides funding, mentoring and incubator programs to students, staff and alumni to transform ideas into market solutions that create value and contribute to the common good.
- We have a new robotics hub to automate infrastructure management, and our engineering academics are also leveraging agricultural robots to safeguard global food security.
SDG 12 works to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.
- Our researchers led an experiment to succesfully biodegrade polypropylene, a hard to recycle plastic, using two strains of fungi.
- We have also developed new methods to recycle carbon and glass fibre composites waste. The annual accumulation of this waste from aircraft and wind turbine industries alone is projected to reach 840,300 tonnes by 2050, if suitable recycling methods are not adopted.
- Our researchers have developed a biological growing process that uses mushrooms to turn organic waste into compostable products as a low-cost, sustainable solution to plastics.
SDG 15 looks at sustainably managing forests and halting biodiversity loss.
- The University has a focus on protecting and improving the biodiversity on our sites and is developing a Biodiversity Management Plan.
- Our museums have the oldest natural history collection in Australia, showcasing a range of historical zoological specimens.
- Our researchers co-authored a landmark State of the Environment Report, commissioned by the Australian government, which found Australia now has more foreign plant species than native and the number of listed threatened species rose 8% since 2016.