Three year’s after opening, the University of Aberdeen’s Rocking Horse Nursery received further recognition at the recent Environmental Association for Universities & Colleges (EAUC) Scotland conference in Glasgow (16 October). It was selected as one of six ‘decade highlights’ at an event to showcase ten years of sustainability progress across the sector.
Alongside projects celebrating everything from behaviour change to whole institutional strategies, the Nursery was recognised in the ‘Campus Development & Utilities’ category. Fraser Lovie, Policy Adviser in Estates & Facilities presented a Pecha Kucha talk on the Nursery project at the event and commented that “the Nursery’s combination of being both a highly innovative building and having strong human and partnership stories helped illustrate a range of the conference’s main themes”.
Of the ongoing sustainability challenges facing the Scottish sector, Fraser also said:
“In the past decade, sustainability has been transformed from a niche Estates activity to a whole institution priority reflected in Scottish Funding Council outcome agreements and through the introduction of statutory climate change reporting. This will be further reinforced by the imminent introduction of a Times Higher league table that will rank institutions according to their progress towards tackling the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.
“While celebrating success and exemplar projects, the conference noted that the sobering report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) meant that sustained operational and academic effort is still required if the complex sustainability challenges we face are to be overcome.”