Sustainability Statement and Action Plan
“We can think about sustainable development - ending the climate crisis, protecting biodiversity, ensuring that every child is in school and everyone has access to healthcare - as an absolutely pragmatic engineering task.”
Professor Jeffrey Sachs - Director, UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Sustainable Development Goals Advocate for the UN Secretary-General
To ensure a safe future for our children, humanity must act now to protect and preserve the Earth’s climate, environment and biodiversity. The overwhelming scientific evidence shows that human-generated carbon dioxide emissions are damaging our climate. Anthropogenic activities, while essential to sustaining modern society, must be balanced with sustaining our ecosystems.
As Australia grapples with worsening bushfires, drought, heatwaves and damage to the Great Barrier Reef, we must commit to addressing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and direct all efforts to creating change.
As engineers, researchers and educators from Monash University, we have a professional, ethical, and moral obligation to act. We will design the technology needed to create profound change in our systems and help the broader community adapt to cleaner, safer alternatives.
Our research will contribute to finding the clean, low-carbon technical solutions needed to reduce pollution, and create sustainable innovations that support and protect the biosphere.
Our partnerships with industry and government will enable our research to be implemented and shared globally. We will teach and empower our students to become solution-finding engineers for planetary health.
We will do so through the following action plan and commitments.
Monash Energy Institute
Net Zero Initiative
Grid Innovation Hub
Woodside Monash Energy Partnership
Through our faculty research themes, we address climate change and environmental sustainability through our continued efforts across:
Australian Research Council Centres of Excellence
ARC Research Hubs
Cooperative Research Centres
Monash Centre for Membrane Innovation
Through our Bachelor of Engineering, Master of Engineering and Master of Professional Engineering programs, we prepare students to address climate change and sustainability through our specialisations in:
We are a signatory to the Global Engineering Dean’s Council 2019 Sustainability Commitment, known as ‘The Santiago Declaration’.
As a signatory, we agree to adhere to its guiding principles:
As a signatory, we commit ourselves to:
Monash University commitment to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
On 8 September 2016, Monash University signed a landmark university commitment to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We agreed to:
Monash Engineering adheres to these commitments made by the University.
Read through our latest news highlighting our research efforts to address sustainability and the environment.