Sustainability Reporting
Sustainability Reporting
Sustainability reports are increasingly being used by universities to report both on their contribution to sustainable development and on their own sustainable university development. They are a suitable means of communicating the assumption of social responsibility and explaining how the challenges of sustainable development are being tackled by the university. Both nationally and internationally, a trend is emerging that is prompting universities to report on their sustainability activities and publicise their offerings.
Organisationally, sustainability reporting is anchored at the university's Centre for Environmental and Sustainability Research (COAST). The project was led by Prof. Dr. Bernd Siebenhüner.
Course of sustainability reporting at the University of Oldenburg
The University of Oldenburg was one of the first German universities to set out on this path and published a sustainability profile as early as 2007. The guidelines of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI Standards) and the university-specific Sustainability Code of the German Council for Sustainable Development formed the basis for the preparation and determination of the report content.
The sustainability reports and their publication (incl. link):
- 1st Sustainability Report (reporting period 2005-2012; published in December 2013)
- 2nd Sustainability Report (reporting period 2013-2016; published in December 2017)
- 3rd Sustainability Report (reporting period 2017-2019; publication May 2021)
- 4th Sustainability Report (reporting period 2020-2022, publication April 2025)
The new report, from 2024, presents the UNISIMS (University Sustainability Indicator Monitoring System), a system that is being developed specifically for universities. The standard is still in the development phase, led by Prof. Dr. Remmer Sassen (TU Dresden) and funded by the German Federal Environmental Foundation. The University of Oldenburg was involved as a pioneer university in the pilot application of the first indicator sets.
Practical Project: Sustainability Reporting at the University of Oldenburg
In the winter semester 2023/24, the practical seminar ‘Sustainability Reporting’ was offered at the University of Oldenburg, in which around 24 students from the Master's Cluster Environment and Sustainability took part. They gained practical insights into the sustainability reporting process and gained valuable experience for their future careers. The students were actively involved in designing the report, collecting qualitative and quantitative data and drafting the text. The software tool ID-Report, which was developed by UOL graduates and kindly provided by the company abat, was used for data preparation and report creation.
