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Consequently, sustainable development
has become the center of
thoughts and actions on every scale,
including global, regional, and local,
with various approaches to drive the
idea into implementations. As stated
by Bettencourt and Kaur (2011), “the
concept of sustainable development
… now pervades the agendas of governments
and corporations as well as
the mission of education and research
programs worldwide” (p. 19540).
The first declaration that drew attention
towards the importance of
education in fostering environmental
protection and conservation was
the declaration of the United Nations
Conference on The Human Environment,
known as the Stockholm Declaration
(Lozano et al., 2015) in 1972.
This declaration has been signed by
several universities around the world
voluntarily, which is an indication of
their commitments toward sustainability
(Wright, 2002; Filho, 2011;
Tilbury, 2012). Brundiers et al. (2010)
stated that the Stockholm Declaration
has pointed to sustainability matters
of HEIs in general, but it also created a
basis for subsequent detailed declarations
regarding sustainability in HEIs.
Following the Stockholm Declaration,
the Belgrade Charter (1976) was also
influential in pointing out the development
of environmental education
internationally. In the following year,
the Tbilisi Declaration (1977) introduced
five notions of environmental
education goal to become the basis
for the development of global environmental
education, including consciousness,
knowledge, attitude, skills,
and engagement (Zhang, 2006). The
Tbilisi Declaration’s main focus was
solely on sustainability in education,
and it was not an outcome of a university
sector conference.
Nevertheless, it gave momentum
to later sustainability in HEIs’ declarations
(Calder & Clugston, 2003;
Wright, 2004), which emerged more
than a decade later in the early 90s
(Wright, 2004). In the following part,
early declarations that addressed sustainable
development in HEIs and
were outcomes of conferences held
solely by the university sector are
highlighted. They have profoundly
influenced the emergence of further
events and declarations on the crucial
role of HEIs in sustainable development
so far.
The Talloires Declaration (1990),
which focuses on environmental degradation,
natural resource depletion,
pollution, and threats facing biodiversity
and human survival, presents
a ten-point action plan to incorporate
sustainability and environmental
literacy into teaching, research,
operations, and outreach of HEIs.
Moreover, it emphasizes the need for
transdisciplinarity and sustainable development
implementation throughout
all campus practices (Lozano et al.,
2013). The Halifax Declaration (1991)
has similar targets and contents to
the Talloires Declaration; it presents a
comprehensive action plan that determines
short- and long-term goals at
each local, regional, and global scale.
Moreover, it underlines HEIs responsibilities
related to raising awareness
of environmental degradation, unsustainable
environmental practices,
and impacts of poverty on sustainable
development by focusing on the curricula,
operations, and outreach. The
Kyoto declaration (1993) emphasizes
the definition of sustainable development
presented in the Brundtland
Report and targets to urge universities
for sustainable utilization of resources,
encourage people to prevent practices
against sustainability, persuade
academics to integrate sustainability
subject in research and teachings, promote
universities to apply sustainable
development throughout campus operations,
strengthen cooperation with
the community, and urge interdisciplinary
networks of environmental
experts from a local to a global scale.
The Swansea declaration (1993) is
an outcome of a conference with the
theme of People and the Environment
- Preserving the Balance, held by the
Association of Commonwealth Universities
(ACU), which took steps to
gather people affiliated with the universities
to share their own experiences
and actions regarding changing the
status of their universities to sustainable.
The declaration’s scope and focus
are similar to the Kyoto declaration
and address the curricula, research,
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