Since the United Nations (UN) approved the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development in 2015, higher education institutions have increasingly demonstrated their commitment by supporting several initiatives. Although a great deal of progress has been made, there is still a lack of integrative approaches to truly implement Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in higher education. This paper presents a practical case that illustrates how to design and articulate SDGs within an institutional setting adopting a holistic approach: EHUagenda 2030 plan of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). It is based on empirical inquiry into global and holistic sustainable transformation and a real experience to move towards a verifiable and pragmatic contribution to sustainability. This plan describes the contribution to 12 of the 17 SDGs, along with three sectorial plans (Equality Campus, Inclusion Campus and Planet Campus), as well as the refocus of the UPV/EHU’s Educational Model and the panel of sustainable development indicators, which addresses the technical aspects of monitoring the SDGs. The methodology (mapping; mainstreaming; diagnosis and definition and, finally, estimation) is systematic and replicable in other universities yet to embark upon this integration. This case study makes a contribution towards the understanding of the complexity of the changes in Higher Education and the ways to approach it.

The search for a balance between nature conservation and sustainable development remains a scientific and spatial planning challenge. In social-ecological systems based on traditional rural activities and associated with protected areas, this balance is particularly complex. Quantifying the economic impact of land use changes on ecosystem services can be useful to advise policy makers and improving social-ecological sustainability. In this study, we evaluated the land use changes in a time series and estimated the monetary value of the ecosystem services of the Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve (Biscay, Spain). In addition, we linked the monetary and biophysical values of land uses in each zoning units of the reserve, in order to identify the spatial adjustment between both assessments. Results showed that land use changes have clearly homogenized the landscape without substantially affecting its economic value. The methodological approach allowed detection that the reserve zoning was performed based more on its biophysical values than on economic ones. Thus, evident divergences between the biophysical and economic assessments were found. The core area was the one that had the highest coincidences (medium values) between both ecosystem services assessments, which highlights its importance not only in biophysical terms, is also economical. The procedure followed proved to be a useful tool to social-ecological planning and design of specific conservation strategies for the sustainable development of the area.

This paper presents a practical case illustrating how the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda have been designed and articulated in the context of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). Even though there is a widespread formal adherence of universities to the SDGs, there is a lack of solid commitment to go beyond the compartmentalization of their implementation and to contribute to a holistic approach. The EHUagenda 2030 is a roadmap to move towards an integrated, verifiable and pragmatic contribution to this international agenda. It describes the UPV/EHU's contribution to 12 of the 17 SDGs, with the addition of its own commitment to linguistic and cultural diversity (SDG 17 + 1), along with the three sectoral plans: the Equality Campus, the Inclusion Campus and the Planet Campus. It also describes the refocus of its education model IKD i3; i3 is ikaskuntza x ikerketa x iraunkortasuna, Basque for learning x research x sustainability. Additionally, it includes the UPV/EHU’s Panel of Sustainable Development Indicators, which addresses the technical aspects of monitoring the implementation of the SDGs. The systematic methodology used in this process (mapping; mainstreaming; diagnosis and definition and, finally, estimation) and presented in this paper could be replicated in other universities yet to embark on this integration. The steps and findings presented here can also be applied to other organizations and help the integration process.