(Press-News.org) In 2018, Pompeu Fabra University launched its Planetary Wellbeing initiative, a long-term institutional strategy spurred by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and based on the Planetary Health project promoted by the Rockefeller Foundation and The Lancet.
Fifteen academics and public officials, led by the three directors of the initiative, Josep Maria Antó, scientific director of ISGlobal; Josep Lluís Martí, UPF vice-rector for innovation projects, and Jaume Casals, UPF rector, are the authors of an academic article published in the journal Sustainabilty, in which they present the Planetary Wellbeing initiative.
Josep Lluís Martí: "The article is a presentation to the world of the Planetary Wellbeing initiative and an ambitious commitment by UPF to invite other universities and research centres to collaborate in this strategic agenda for the future".
The article involves the participation of several proponents of the initiative from different departments of the University, as well as research institutions in France, the United Kingdom and the United States, including two prestigious international researchers: Howard Frumkin, one of the world's leading experts in Planetary Health, and Marc Fleurbaey, one of the most renowned international economists in the field of wellbeing and climate change.
We live in a time of pressing planetary challenges, many of which threaten catastrophic change to the natural environment and require massive and novel coordinated scientific and societal efforts on an unprecedented scale. In this context, UPF understands that Universities and other academic institutions have the opportunity and responsibility to assume a leading role in an era when the destiny of the planet is precisely in the hands of human beings.
Josep Lluís Martí, UPF vice-rector for innovation projects and co-author, explains that the article is the first 'concept paper' drafted in the framework of the University's Planetary Wellbeing initiative: "This paper seeks to explain what we might understand by Planetary Wellbeing, why it was decided to extend the original term of Planetary Health to the field of wellbeing, and why universities and research centres should undertake a commitment to the UN's SDG in its three main areas of activity: teaching, research and knowledge transfer".
The article describes how UPF is responding to these challenges, and thus it provides an example of how higher education institutions might meet their responsibility in confronting those challenges through conceptualization of the underlying sustainable aim of the transformation required in the existing institution.
But the article goes further as it is an invitation for others to join in to work towards this shared goal. According to Josep Lluís Martí, publishing in Sustainability, one of the top international scientific journals in this field, "represents a presentation to the world of the Planetary Wellbeing initiative and an ambitious commitment by UPF to invite other universities and research centres to collaborate in this strategic agenda for the future".
How does the University understand the concept of Planetary Wellbeing and what implications does it have?
The Planetary Wellbeing initiative defines this concept as "the highest attainable standard of wellbeing for human and non-human beings and their social and natural systems". Developing the potential of these new concepts involves substantial theoretical and empirical effort in many different fields, all of them interrelated by the crosscutting challenges of global complexity, interdisciplinarity, and urgency. "Close collaboration of science, humanities, and culture is more desperately needed now than ever before in the history of humankind", the authors assert.
"Close collaboration of science, humanities and culture is more desperately needed now than ever before in the history of humankind".
Josep Lluís Martí is of the opinion that "the concept of planetary wellbeing, as we understand it at UPF, provides a particularly fruitful framework in which to develop this threefold commitment to the SDG in the areas of research, teaching and knowledge transfer, and its own research agenda aimed at finding solutions for the major urgent, complex planet-wide challenges that humanity faces today, such as climate change, the pandemic and sustainability".
The article examines how the Planetary Wellbeing initiative applies the three challenges that need to be addressed in order to succeed: conceptual, knowledge and implementation and governance. The conceptual challenges refer to the rules, that is, to set a regulative ideal for all humanity and for the planet; the knowledge ones, to the opportunity for new research to stimulate connections between different scientific disciplines on issues relevant to the future of the planet; and those of implementation and governance, to the various actions needed to address, for example, climate change, and will be decisive for the future of humanity.
What actions has UPF got underway?
The article reviews the various transformative educational initiatives implemented and planned by the University, which in 2019 made a "Declaration of Climate Emergency" as part of its institutional sustainability strategy, which has contributed to an initial assessment of its carbon footprint and establishing several specific ambitious goals to reduce this footprint.
An annual plenary meeting, an annual call for internal research seed funding, the organization of several annual conferences and international research meetings, the design of new courses and specific, interdisciplinary programmes on Planetary Wellbeing, such as a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), a master's degree (jointly with the UOC and ISGlobal), and a minor; the awarding of a prize for the best master's degree thesis and for the best doctoral thesis on Planetary Wellbeing, and the organization of public talks and dialogues, are some of the actions that UPF has initiated.
Universities have a central role not only in developing much needed research on the complex issues concerning Planetary Wellbeing but also in teaching and promoting the view that a new kind of science and approach to such issues is needed", the authors conclude.
INFORMATION:
Reference article: Antó, J.M, Martí, J.L., Casals, J., Bou-Habib, P., Casal, P., Fleurbaey, M., Frumkin, H., Jiménez Morales, M., Jordana, J., Lancelotti, C., Llavador, H., Mélon, L., Solé, R., Subirada, F. and Williams, A. (March 2021). "The Planetary Wellbeing Initiative: Pursuing the Sustainable Development Goals in Higher Education". Sustainabilty
https://doi.org/10.3390/su13063372
Cancer is one of the top causes of death worldwide. The cancer burden is related not only to genetic predisposition, but also to environmental pollution and socioeconomic factors such as lifestyle. Consequently, the burden of this disease is not uniform across all countries. In fact, the public health of China, a country known for the rapid change in its development status in the last few decades, has undergone a paradigm shift with respect to cancer incidence and mortality.
To better understand the cancer burden of the country, a team of researchers from Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College reviewed the data of GLOBOCAN 2020, an online database of cancer incidence and mortality compiled by the International Agency for Research ...
Researchers at the Laboratory of Cluster Catalysis at St Petersburg University have synthesised polymers from biomass. What makes them different is that they can be easily recycled.
Today, our life is simply unthinkable without polymers. Plastics, fibres, films, paint and lacquer coating - they are all polymers. We use them both in our everyday life and in industry. Yet the goods made from polymers, e.g. bottles, bags, or disposable tableware, are used just once or for a short period of time before they are thrown away. Due to the chemical compounds that they may release during recycling, they pose a real threat to our environment.
There ...
Study: "Students Enrolled in Late-Start-Time Districts Report Higher Academic Achievement and Sleeping More"
Authors: Julio Caesar (Bloomington Public Schools), Rik Lamm (University of Minnesota), Michael C. Rodriguez (University of Minnesota), David J. Heistad (Bloomington Public Schools)
This study will be presented today at the AERA 2021 Annual Meeting.
Session: Organizational Effects Examining Academic Achievement and Student Support
Date/Time: Saturday, April 10, 2:30 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. ET
Main Finding:
Later school start times are linked ...
Study: "Exploring the Association Between Student-College Match and Student Outcomes Over Time"
Author: Amanda M. Cook (Northwestern University)
This study will be presented today at the AERA 2021 Virtual Annual Meeting.
Session: Nuances and Challenges to Traditional Notions of College Success
Date/Time: Saturday, April 10, 10:40 a.m. - 12:10 p.m. ET
Main Findings:
Over the past 20 years, bachelor's degree completion rates for students who overmatch (i.e., attend colleges that may appear too academically selective for them) have improved substantially. Over the same time period, bachelor's degree completion rates for students who undermatch (i.e., attend colleges that appear too academically unselective ...
Study: "Characterizing Remote Instruction Provided by Elementary School Teachers during School Closures due to COVID-19"
Authors: Michael Hebert (University of Nebraska-Lincoln), J. Marc Goodrich (University of Nebraska-Lincoln), Jessica M. Namkung (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
This study will be presented today at the AERA 2021 Virtual Annual Meeting.
Session: Technology Supports and Experiences During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Date/Time: Saturday, April 10, 10:40 a.m. - 11:40 a.m. ET
Main Findings:
While teachers in spring 2020 felt that 60 percent of their students were prepared for the next grade level, in ...
Study: "Do Students in Gifted Programs Perform Better? Linking Gifted Program Participants to Achievement and Nonachievement Outcomes"
Authors: Christopher Redding (University of Florida), Jason A. Grissom (Vanderbilt University)
This study will be presented today at the AERA 2021 Virtual Annual Meeting.
Session: On the Road to Equity: Studies of the Impact and Influences of Education Policy
Date/Time: Saturday, April 10, 2:30 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. ET
Main Findings:
Participating in elementary school gifted programs is associated with reading and math achievement for the average student, ...
There are many questions surrounding the elementary particle neutrino, in particular regarding its mass. Physicists are also interested in whether besides the "classic" neutrinos there are variants such as the so-called sterile neutrinos. The KATRIN experiment has now succeeded in strongly narrowing the search for these elusive particles. The publication appeared recently in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Strictly speaking, the neutrino is not a singleparticle but rather comprises several species: the electron neutrino, the muon neutrino, and the tau neutrino. These particles are constantly transforming ...
A team of researchers from the Max Planck Institutes of Developmental Biology in Tübingen and the Max Planck Computing and Data Facility in Garching develops new search capabilities that will allow to compare the biochemical makeup of different species from across the tree of life. Its combination of accuracy and speed is hitherto unrivalled.
Humans share many sequences of nucleotides that make up our genes with other species - with pigs in particular, but also with mice and even bananas. Accordingly, some proteins in our bodies - strings of amino acids assembled according to the blueprint of the genes - can also be the same as (or similar to) some proteins in other species. These similarities might sometimes indicate that two species ...
A team of scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen and the University of Bayreuth have created a novel tool that provides a real-time visualization of the growth-regulating hormone auxin in living plant cells. This new biosensor enables them to observe spatial and temporal redistribution dynamics of the plant hormone, for example in conjunction with changing environmental conditions.
Auxin plays a central role in plant life. The hormone regulates various processes, from embryonic development to the formation of roots and the directional growth in response to light and gravity. Auxin binds to specific receptors in the nucleus of a cell, leading to an activation of signaling cascades that ...
Study: "The Infrastructure of Social Control: A Multi-Level Counterfactual Analysis of Surveillance, Punishment, Achievement, and Persistence"
Authors: Odis Johnson (Johns Hopkins University), Jason F. Jabbari (Washington University in St. Louis)
This study will be presented today at the AERA 2021 Virtual Annual Meeting.
Session: The School-to-Prison and Prison-to-School Pipelines: Studies of the Nexus of Schooling and the Justice System
Date/Time: Sunday, April 11, 10:40 a.m. - 12:10 p.m. ET
Main Findings:
After controlling for levels of school social disorder and student misbehavior, students attending ...
