General

17 goals, 17 teams: how UTM organises its SDG work

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The University of Tunis El Manar (UTM) brings together 15 higher education and research establishments, made up of faculties, schools and institutes, and 102 research laboratories. To work on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) across all of them, UTM organises its activity in 17 teams, one for each goal. Each team is led by professor ambassadors, who bring together the faculties, schools, institutes and laboratories working for that goal.

The ambassadors programme

Each goal has its own ambassadors, its own online page and its own report. The approach is not new to 2026: UTM’s earlier SDG report pages, published in 2022, were each headed by a named ambassador for the goal. The line-up can change, so the current ambassadors are listed on the SDG ambassadors page rather than in this article.

Global sustainability and impact monitoring

The goal teams each look at one SDG. UTM’s global sustainability and impact monitoring follows the goals as a whole, and it is led by Prof. Hanene Boussi. It is presented first on the ambassadors page, ahead of the 17 goal teams.

The institutional framework

UTM’s strategy page describes “a continuous, iterative and inclusive approach” to implementing the 17 SDGs, following detailed indicators to check that sustainability and social responsibility requirements are met. It lists a sustainability committee, a mediation committee and an ethics committee. UTM’s missions page also lists, among its specific missions, giving UTM a sustainable development strategy. A message from UTM’s president on the university website commits UTM to governance based on SDG indicators and results-based management, and to a university social responsibility charter.

UTM’s sustainability pages list 12 policies, among them equality, equity, inclusion and diversity, climate change, food waste, a smoke-free campus, sustainable purchasing and accessibility. They also list earlier SDG reports, a carbon emissions page and a carbon reduction action plan, which is summarised in UTM’s carbon neutrality roadmap.

Students and networks

Students take part through clubs. UTM’s student sustainability clubs page lists 15 example clubs and describes tree planting, waste sorting and energy-saving initiatives. UTM’s net-zero page lists memberships of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), the International Universities Climate Alliance and the Higher Education Sustainability Initiative (HESI).

One team, one report

Each team’s year is documented in a report for its goal, and a general report covers all of them. THE’s Sustainability Impact Ratings methodology has a matching indicator, 17.3, which asks whether a university publishes progress on each of the 17 SDGs. The method is explained in How the THE Sustainability Impact Ratings 2026 work.

Choose a goal to read its team’s report online. All 18 PDF files are available from the reports page.

Sources