ISLAMABAD: The Higher Education Commission Chairman Prof Dr Tariq Banuri on Tuesday urged that universities to prepare their students for challenges like climate change, water and energy scarcity, food insecurity, and waste accumulation.

While addressing at National Workshop on GreenMetric Ranking he said that universities must ensure that sustainability was fully incorporated in their teaching and research as well as campus operations.

The GreenMetric World University Ranking is an initiative of Universitas Indonesia, and has been adopted in several Asian universities.

The current year’s ranking is focused on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

According to a spokesperson of HEC, the purpose of the National Workshop was to sensitise representatives of the Higher Education Institutes of Pakistan to emerging environmental challenges and introduce them to the GreenMetric Ranking.

Representatives of over 90 universities, including Vice Chancellors, Rectors, Registrars, and faculty members attended the event.

The ranking results are compiled on the basis of a number of sustainability indicators, including infrastructure (15pc), energy consumption (21pc), waste generation (18pc), water consumption (10pc), transport use (18pc), and educational programs (18pc).

University representatives presented their major sustainability initiatives. In his welcome note, the HEC Executive Director, Dr Arshad Ali observed that Pakistan was facing acute water scarcity, which would intensify in the coming years.

He said that the HEC senior management had a consensus on the need to sensitise university leaders to the emerging threats.

“There is no better platform than universities to start this campaign, as by focusing on universities we can sensitise youth,” he underlined.

Universitas Indonesia initiated a world university ranking in 2010, later known as UI GreenMetric World University Rankings, to measure campus sustainability efforts.

Published in Dawn, July 11th, 2018