Supporting research and innovation that promotes change

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As a major multidisciplinary research university, the University of Bordeaux has a particular responsibility with respect to the contemporary environmental and social challenges that we face: to promote responsible research that demonstrates awareness of environmental issues and ensures respect for those who produce this research, that helps to bring about change, provides an understanding of current and future social transformations, and guides these transformations.

Photo : The research laboratories on the Bordeaux campus are overflowing with ideas and innovative technologies that the University of Bordeaux helps to transfer to the socio-economic world © Gautier Dufau
The research laboratories on the Bordeaux campus are overflowing with ideas and innovative technologies that the University of Bordeaux helps to transfer to the socio-economic world © Gautier Dufau

Improving the environmental and social trajectories associated with research activities 

Improving the environmental and social trajectories associated with research activities 
At the forefront of documenting global changes and alerting others to them, research staff have also begun a process of reflecting on their own practices and duties with regard to the challenges of transition: How can we reduce the greenhouse gas emissions linked to the energy consumption of buildings and equipment, purchases of large pieces of equipment or consumables, and work and travel in the field? How can we reduce the quantities of laboratory waste that are produced and natural resources that are consumed?

The university wants to help reduce the environmental impact of its research activities whilst also ensuring that its research communities benefit from an open, inclusive working environment that respects the principle of gender equality.

By proposing a Labs in Transition Charter, to be signed together with the on-site higher education and research establishments and research bodies, the university aims to support and provide the tools needed for the transition initiatives put forward by its research units.

  • 45%

    of research organisations

    have signed the charter

Objectives

  • All research organisations carry out their own assessments and implement action plans to promote transitions

Actions 

  • Helping research organisations to carry out their assessments (social and environmental via the greenhouse gas footprint)
  • Support for the organisations’ action plans and the implementation thereof

The Labs in Transition Charter (in French)

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What can I do as a teaching staff member?

  • Initiate the process within my laboratory or contribute to it if it is already in progress
  • Become a transitions adviser

Innovation and research programmes to promote transitions

Objective

Mobilising multidisciplinary scientific communities around the major challenges associated with transitions, together with its partners and actors in civil society, in order to help document the pressure exerted by human activities in the context of global change and to describe the conditions needed to make transition socially, economically, culturally and politically feasible.