Sustainable Development Goals

The university provides assistance to ease the financial burden on students. Thus, support is mainly offered on three levels: Students can apply for the Deutschlandstipendium, which guarantees financial support of €300 per month. In addition, the Studierendenwerk Tübingen-Hohenheim offers a contact point on the subject of BAföG. Here, students can get help with questions and the application process. With the semester ticket, students can travel at reduced rates on the naldo public transport system.

The comprehensive university sports program is open to all students and employees and provides exercise, stress relief and variety in everyday life. The Psycho-Social Counseling Center for Employees of the University of Tübingen and the Psychotherapeutic Counseling Center for Students provide a framework for obtaining professional support in the event of psychological stress and other problems. To promote health in the workplace, employees can participate in the break express.

Since healthy nutrition also plays a role in maintaining health and well-being, universities, or rather the many university cafeterias and refectories, play a major role in implementing SDG 3. The "Mensa Vital" program puts healthy and regional products on the menu as much as possible and often offers vegan alternatives. The "Sustainable Mensa" initiative has also set up a round table for all stakeholders involved in sustainable development issues in the university's refectories and cafeterias.

The university hospitals are a strong pillar of medical research and public health. With the new clusters of excellence in medicine approved in 2018, medical research is making an important contribution to achieving sub-goal 3.3, which aims to be able to end epidemics and other infectious diseases

In addition, there are also less obvious contributions of the university to SDG 3 such as occupational safety measures, the possibility to borrow massage equipment or the "exercise snack".

The University of Tübingen has an Equal Opportunities Officer and an Equal Opportunities Office. The office offers advice and information on the topic of gender equality in studies and science. The Equal Opportunity Officer advocates within the university for the concerns of all university members in the area of gender equality.

In addition, the Center for Gender and Diversity Research (ZGD) is located at the University of Tübingen. This interdisciplinary and cross-faculty research center is dedicated to the dialogue between humanities, social, cultural and natural sciences in the field of gender and diversity research.

Many SDGs overlap in their objectives. For example, SDG 5 naturally includes goals that can also be assigned to SDG 10 "Reduce inequalities." These include efforts to introduce gender-sensitive language, an understanding of diversity, and equal opportunities on a larger scale.

In order to reduce the university's energy consumption, building operations in the central university buildings will be reduced between Christmas and epiphany: Heating and ventilation systems are shut down during this time. Since 01.01.2015, the university has been using 100% green electricity. Thanks to the targeted analyses of the energy consumption of the ventilation systems in the server rooms of a central university building by the energy manager and the resulting actions, it was possible to reduce the energy consumption there by 8%.

The ninth SDG includes a range of goals grouped under the buzzwords of industry, innovation, and infrastructure. In fact, many issues can fall under these buzzwords. Infrastructure can thus mean, on the one hand, the increased development of transport routes in order to promote the economy; on the other hand, considerations for sustainable means of transport or environmentally friendly construction measures are also important.

At the University of Tübingen, students and employees are encouraged to use public transport by introducing the "Job Ticket BW" for employees, or the student ID card, which allows students* to travel free of charge on all means of transport on weekends and after 7 pm during the week.

Since May 2013, all university employees have also been free to use company pedelecs. The electrically assisted bikes are intended to facilitate travel between the Uni Berg and Uni Tal buildings and to encourage students to swap bus or car travel for the use of bicycles. In addition, members of the university can charge their pedelecs free of charge at the university's charging stations.

In order for industry, or innovation in general, to be more responsive to sustainable development, mechanisms that enable (young) people to implement their ideas for a more sustainable world in the first place are helpful. The Competence Center for Sustainable Development Tübingen makes the so-called Innovation Fund available to all students. Students can apply for funding of up to €500 for their project ideas on sustainable development, and between 2013 and 2017 alone, 43 projects were funded that addressed sustainable development in teaching, research and operations.

With the Excellence Initiative 2012, the integration of Industry-on-Campus professorships started at the University of Tübingen. The professorships are located at the interface between industry and basic research and are therefore special because companies do not set up and operate an entire research facility at a university. Instead, scientists from industry are to be integrated into university research processes. However, it is important to ensure that these projects do not stand in the way of other development goals, such as SDG 16 (peace), by disregarding the University of Tübingen's civil clause, for example. Another innovation within the Excellence Initiative is the business coordination of the University of Tübingen. The aim is to supervise cooperation projects with business enterprises in order to inform researchers about the potential economic exploitability of their research results. Even if this platform does not benefit sustainable development per se, there are still theoretical opportunities for researchers to increase the transfer between research and business and, if necessary, to put their heart's desire for "sustainable development" into practice in their field of research. Ultimately, however, the impetus for specifically sustainable development ideas still lies with the researchers.

In order to implement their own innovation ideas, students, scientists and employees or alumni of the university can apply for the start-up support "G.UT - Gründen an der Universität Tübingen" (G.UT - Founding at the University of Tübingen) in order to receive funding for a start-up. In addition, mentors and coaches are available to advise the new founders.

SDG 11: Sustainable cities and communitiesSDG 11 aims to ensure that an increasing proportion of the world's population lives in urban areas, i.e. in cities and communities. In order to mitigate negative environmental consequences of global population growth, cities and communities are to be made more sustainable.

From 2016 to 2018, the university-based Energy Lab analyzed the goals and criteria of a sustainable energy supply from an ethical perspective. The participatory project, which was also applied for with the collaboration of the Competence Center for Sustainable Development, investigated how it can be possible to adequately reduce energy consumption on a concrete local level in Tübingen and to increasingly promote renewable energies.

A strong cooperation between the city of Tübingen, the citizens, as well as the university is central in the implementation of this SDG. The work of the Competence Center for Sustainable Development (KNE) and also initiatives of the student representatives in the Advisory Council for Sustainable Development and other university groups start here. Actions such as a clothes swap bazaar, a campus clean-up campaign or regular networking meetings between people committed to sustainability are among the core tasks of the KNE and aim to network, support and motivate committed (young) people to get involved in sustainable development.

Sustainable Development Goal 13 is probably the most intuitive of the 17 goals. Climate protection and adaptation to climatic changes are topics that now concern not only research, but also society at large. At the University of Tübingen, there is a research focus on Climate Change at the Institute for Evolution and Ecology. The research focus addresses questions about the persistence of plant species in times of climate change, questions the impact of droughts and climatic extremes, and addresses the multilateral relationship between biodiversity, climate change, and societal feedback on Social-Ecological Systems (SES).

Between October 2016 and July 2019, the university also ran the Smart Minds for Climate Action campaign. The goal of the campaign was to make climate action more accessible by designing simple energy-saving tips for the workplace to reduce the University's energy consumption. Simple measures include turning off computers, electrical appliances and coffee machines in the office at the end of the workday. This has saved over €40,000.  

Sub-aspects of SDG 9 "Industry, innovation and infrastructure" or SDG 11 "Cities and communities" are also reflected in Goal 15: Make life on land more sustainable. SDG 15 therefore includes efforts to preserve land as a habitat by preventing desertification, land degradation and biodiversity loss. This development goal clearly illustrates how branched and interdependent the SDGs are. For example, considerations of more sustainable living on land would naturally have to take into account infrastructure and urban planning, as well as waste disposal and consumption patterns.

Although the departments of biology and geoecology traditionally deal with topics such as biodiversity, research on ethical-philosophical aspects of the biodiversity concept also takes place at the University of Tübingen. Prof. Dr. Thomas Potthast or Prof. (em.) Dr. Eve-Marie Engels therefore deal with topics such as agriculture and nutrition, bioecology and nature conservation from an ethical point of view.

SDG 17 aims to strengthen means of implementation for the Sustainable Development Goals, as well as to revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development.

The competence center sees one of its central tasks in promoting the strengthening and rebuilding of networks in order to achieve exchange and synergy effects. The competence center is to support all university members in establishing contacts and providing partners or expertise within and outside the university. This is not only ensured within the framework of the sustainability networking days, but also by the fact that the competence center is available as an active contact person, which mediates contacts and thus actively promotes (B)NE - between students and employees locally and through their work also on a regional level.

In addition, there are various formats for international scientific exchange at the University of Tübingen. One example is the Interdisciplinary Centre for Global South Studies. The platform was established with the aim of strengthening the dialogue between researchers, students and doctoral candidates from the Latin American, African, Asia-Pacific and European regions who are exploring new concepts and ideas to address problems of the Global South. The interdisciplinary center has not only introduced an MA "Cultures of the Global South", but also a PhD program in Global South Studies. Furthermore, the network facilitates exchanges with partner universities in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Pacific region.

Another format through which staff and students strengthen their networking among each other are, for example, round tables, such as the Round Table for a More Sustainable Cafeteria, which was initiated by the KNE and the student representatives on the Advisory Board for Sustainable Development. Sporadic activities on different topics, such as upcycling and waste avoidance, enable local actors, such as BUND, local schools and the student body to engage in (practical) exchange.