Earth, Food and Energy: which contribution universities can provide for sustainable development?

Pursuing Sustainable Development Goals as a path towards integral development requires agent to take a holistic perspective, movimng from mapping the policy space to effectively sustaining the processes of development, building on human dignity and agency, and valorising grass-roots initiatives – especially of the most peripheral people. Universities, albeit at a smaller scale with respect to international community, face a similar choice in their daily activities of research and teaching: “reality versus ideas”, “space versus time”. Scientific research, technology development, and even the transmission of knowledge can run the risk of becoming self-referential activities driven by logics of power and prestige, suspicious of innovative thinking, and ultimately leading to consolidation of technocratic ideologies.