Towards sustainability at Ashoka University

Universities, through various stakeholders, are ideally positioned to experiment, evaluate, educate, and develop strategic plans to bring about the necessary changes in implementing sustainability initiatives – both in mindsets as well as on the ground.

As sustainability assessment gained the attention of several university policymakers and planners, instruments for measuring institutional sustainability performance are becoming essential. Although efforts have been made to develop various tools to assess university campuses’ sustainability, most of them have focused on the institutions in Western countries. An applicable instrument for Indian universities to measure and compare their sustainability performance remains missing.

This project will attempt to develop an indicator framework of such kind to fill the gap. Also, we want to build a university sustainability office/governance model, which will act as a node from where all sustainability-related activities (operations, teaching, research etc.) will be coordinated.

The overarching goal of this project is to establish Ashoka University as a role model in incorporating sustainability values across all aspects of the campus that includes but not limited to, planning, construction, governance, operations, research, education and public outreach.