Education for sustainable development

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) sits at the heart of UWE Bristol’s institutional strategy and teaching and learning framework.

Strategic context

UWE Bristol is committed to ensuring that its graduates are ready and able to realise their full potential; well equipped to make a positive contribution to society and their chosen field of work or further study; and primed to play their part in developing a sustainable global society and knowledge economy.

Strategy 2030 and action plans

Our Strategy 2030 sets out our commitment to produce graduates who are responsible global citizens and provides a framework for our education for sustainable development work. In particular, there are commitments to:

• be a catalyst for social change
• actively pursue research beacons including health and wellbeing and sustainability by design, enabled by creative and digital technologies
• embed enterprise across the whole curriculum, ensuring our graduates have the attributes and attitudes to address local and global challenges
• work across traditional disciplinary and organisational boundaries to create innovative solutions
• be recognised for making a wider contribution to the wellbeing of people, places and the planet and for innovations that shape the health and sustainability of future communities.

Strategy 2030 sets out specific areas for action in UWE Bristol’s sustainable development work. UWE Bristol's Climate Action and Sustainability Strategy expands upon the commitments made in Strategy 2030, including further detail on our ESD ambitions.

We produce an annual ESD Action Plan which specifies the ways our ambitions will be pursued over the coming year, while the annual ESD Report provides details and evaluation of our achievements. The most recent ESD Action Plan can be found under Sustainability Documents. Reporting and evaluation are overseen by the Sustainability Board and the Learning, Teaching and Students Experience Committee.

Frameworks and guidance

Our Enhancement Framework for Academic Programmes and Practice covers the design, development, approval and review of programmes and teaching, learning and assessment practices. This Framework’s design principles incorporate being inclusive and global and enabling Graduate Attributes.

Our Graduate Attribute Framework ensures that our students develop a sense of global responsibility and a future-facing outlook during their time at UWE Bristol.

Our ESD work spans across all stages of curriculum design and delivery and is firmly embedded in our graduate attribute activities. An ESD Design Note for all staff supports implementation of our principles and frameworks. This document is guided by the QAA-HEA ESD Guidance and by UNESCO ESD work.

United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals

UWE Bristol's Strategy 2030 pledges our commitment to work to address the urgency of the challenges presented by the current climate and ecological emergencies and to strive to fulfil our role in the achievement of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Since 2015, we have been working with SDGs as a lens through which to guide our curriculum development.

Staff resource and partnerships

Our staff

UWE Bristol's Pro Vice-Chancellor and Head of College Arts, Technology and Environment (CATE) currently Professor Elena Marco, is the University's most senior role with explicit responsibility for sustainability. This role sits within the Vice Chancellor's Executive and this level of seniority demonstrates the University's commitment to ensuring that sustainability is core to our decision-making processes.

We have a dedicated Professor of Education for Sustainable Development, one of only three in the country, specifically to progress our engagement with ESD. This post holder is responsible for coordinating UWE Bristol's cross institutional Knowledge Exchange for Sustainability Education (KESE) which has representation from every academic school in the University. The role is also responsible for UWE Bristol's engagement with the UN Principles of Responsible Management Education. Contact Professor Georgina Gough at georgina.gough@uwe.ac.uk for further information.

KESE reps (ESD leads) are allocated an average if 35 hours per year to support ESD activity in their school while opportunities to attend ESD meetings, events and training are offered to all staff. In 2018, the KESE group were awarded a Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence (CATE) by Advance HE.

Supporting staff in education for sustainable development

Our Knowledge Exchange for Sustainability Education (KESE) group consists of ESD leads from every school in the institution. The meetings and events run by this group create spaces for dialogue, collaboration and participation around ESD.

We provide training, upskilling and capacity building in ESD through new starter induction, our climate education course, bespoke events, coverage in our PG Professional Development programme.

Over many years we have developed case studies, templates and examples of practice to support staff to embed the principles of ESD into the teaching and learning practice. These examples support our Responsible Futures audits. We were reaccredited to Responsible Futures in 2025.

In 2024-25, our institutional whole curriculum change programme, UWE Programmes, included a requirement for staff to ensure that all programmes of study include engagement with the UN SDGs deliver against relevant professional and benchmark statement sustainability standards, issues and competences. 

Monitoring the uptake of staff training and development for ESD with resources for continual improvement is viewed as a priority, led by our Professor of Education for Sustainable Development. This is done through the annual ESD reviews and SDG mapping work. In relation to CPD, we also have internal staff guidance (intranet only) and run multiple staff development events per year (see examples in ESD reports).

In support of our Living Lab work, UWE Bristol's Sustainability and Energy Teams develop and coordinate practical and academic events and activities for staff and students. Campus-based research projects, such as post-occupancy evaluation of our Passivhaus student accommodation and investigations into water, waste and energy behaviour by students, ensure partnership between academics and the Sustainability Services Team. The projects are supported through paid internships in the Sustainability and Energy teams and through PhD funding.

Partnership with The Students' Union at UWE

Our ESD work is also conducted in close partnership with The Students' Union at UWE and departmental student sustainability reps. See The Students' Union at UWE (SU) for details of the SU's sustainability commitments and actions. Our partnership with The Students' Union at UWE has been accredited to Responsible Futures (an ESD initiative of SOS-UK, the sustainability charity of the National Union of Students) since 2016 and most recently for the fifth time in May 2025.

We have been awarded national Responsible Futures Host Partnerships status record three times. In 2024-25, we led a Student Sustainability Symposium in partnership with SOS-UK which brought together 100 students from four continents to share actions and experiences of ESD. Our commitment to Responsible Futures is made and progress is overseen by the Sustainability Executive Committee.

External partnerships, commitments and initiatives

UWE Bristol is certified to the Environmental Management Standard ISO14001:2015 and is a signatory of the Talloires declaration, the United Nations' Higher Education Sustainability Initiative and the SDG Accord and the Concordat for the Environmental Sustainability of Research and Innovation Practice; is a member of the EAUC Alliance; the Bristol Climate and Nature Partnership and the Bristol SDG Alliance.

The University is an institutional member of the UK and Ireland Chapter of Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME) and is a co-host of the South West of England and South Wales Local Network for PRME. We report biannually through our Sharing Information on Progress (SIP) reports and our ESD reports.

We regularly offer the opportunity to staff and students to take part in the UNESCO supported Sustainability Literacy Test. Climate Education, Carbon Literacy training and Climate Fresk workshops are further components of our staff and student development offer.

UWE Bristol staff take part in the annual SDG Teach In, an annual campaign to put the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the heart of of education across all disciplines. This annual campaign calls upon educators to include the SDGs and other related topics within their teaching, learning and assessment and beyond. In 2025, UWE Bristol placed eighth for the highest number of educators who pledged as part of the campaign.