Samenvatting

This dissertation explores the role of higher education institutions (HEIs) regarding sustainability.
Firstly, it defines key terms, namely sustainability and green strategy. To further investigate what green strategies are, a few examples of sustainable strategies will be given. Subsequently, a timeline of the events regarding the evolution of ESD is presented, together with a few challenges HEIs might face when implementing sustainable actions on campus.

The research question was answered through qualitative research, including but not limited to the literature review, desk research, and mainly interviews. Most subjects interviewed were staff members from the green office of higher education institutions both inside and outside the European Union. To select the most sustainable universities a detailed criteria table containing 16 criteria was used to assess them. Additionally, an overview of the four most sustainable universities is presented.

Ultimately, this dissertation aims to provide a guideline created based on contemporary successful sustainable strategies implemented at present by the four highest-ranked universities on sustainable performance, being University of Cork (IR), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (NL), University of Victoria (CA), and University of Tasmania (AU).

This dissertation is limited because of the minimal options to communicate with the HEIs worldwide (email) due to COVID-19. Therefore, the assessment of a few universities was made based solely on the information found on the institutions’ website/reports, rather than having the criteria table filed out by a staff member from the green office, which was the standard procedure.
Lastly, based on the findings, this dissertation presents a 5-steps guideline, as the answer to the central question: ‘‘What are the critical success factors for higher education institutions when implementing a green strategy?’’, divided as follows: 1. Establish a Green Office, 2. Create a Sustainable Action Plan, 3. Execute Sustainable Action Plan, 4. Monitor & Evaluate and finally 5. Report & Inform. When creating an SAP (2), universities are advised to focus on five areas, namely ESD, Commuting, Food, Energy & Waste. Furthermore, for steps 3, 4 & 5 the reader is provided with two ideas of strategies currently implemented by one of the four highest-ranked universities previously mentioned. This not only confirms that the GS works but also allows the reader to further investigate them on the HEIs reports/website.