17- Partnerships for the goals
Here are the actions that UdeM and its community are doing for inter-campus collaboration, community partnerships and participation in public policy recognizing our university's commitment to build partnerships in sustainable projects.
Inter-Campus Collaboration
The name of the national or international sustainability network(s):
The Université de Montréal has signed the declaration of Talloires in 2011.
''Composed in 1990 at an international conference in Talloires, France, this is the first official statement made by university administrators of a commitment to environmental sustainability in higher education. The Talloires Declaration (TD) is a ten-point action plan for incorporating sustainability and environmental literacy in teaching, research, operations and outreach at colleges and universities. It has been signed by over 350 university presidents and chancellors in over 40 countries.''
Source - Talloires Declaration Website : https://www.ulsf.org/96-2/#Canada
The International Organization of La Francophonie brings together some 80 states and governments, members, and observers.
The Francophonie consists of the 33 countries and nations that have French as an official language or experiencing a significant practice of the French language. In a broader sense, the Francophonie is a cultural reality that unites all those who experience or express some belonging to the French language and Francophone cultures.
The Université de Montréal is part of the Association of Universities (IAU), which is itself part of the International Francophone Organization
''For over two decades now, the AIU, supported by the Working Group ESDD (on sustainability issues), develops projects, takes part in international and regional initiatives and regularly organizes events to promote and facilitate the integration of sustainable development in higher education policy and practice.''
Source: http://www.iau-hesd.net/universities/347-university-montreal.html
1- U7+
''The U7+ Alliance is an international alliance of university presidents who engage both in discussion and in concrete action by making commitments that universities may take to address the most pressing global challenges in a multilateral context. It is the very first alliance of university presidents aimed at structuring and advancing their role as global actors across the multilateral agenda.
2- PRINCIPLE 3
We recognize that our universities have a major role to play in addressing the environmental issues and challenges to sustainability such as climate change, biodiversity and energy transition. This should include leading by example on our own campuses.''
Source: https://www.u7alliance.org/commitments/
3- Nature Positive Pledge
The universities that sign the Nature Positive Pledge recognize that institutions of higher education and research have a vital role to play in the fight to halt biodiversity loss and restore ecosystems. By joining the movement, the Universite de Montreal is acknowledging it's responsibility to address the biodiversity crisis and is committing to be part of the solution.
https://www.naturepositiveuniversities.net/
RESEARCH GROUP
1- SDG 3
The Quebec Population Health Research Network brings together researchers working in population health around six strategic clusters. Their efforts aim to identify, understand and act on the social determinants of health to guide public health interventions and inform public policy in order to contribute to improving the health of populations.
2- World Health
Global health can be considered as the health of populations on a transnational scale. Much of the focus of global health research has recently been readjusted to meet the 17 sustainable development goals of by the year 2030 with the ultimate goal of reducing poverty and improving access to health care for disadvantaged populations around the world.
https://recherche.umontreal.ca/nos-chercheurs/repertoire-des-unites-de-recherche/unite/is/ur13904/
3- SDG 11
Ivanhoe Cambridge Observatory of Urban and Real Estate Development
The Ivanhoe Cambridge Observatory's mission is to promote applied research in the political, economic and environmental fields of urban and real estate development. He is interested in both developed and emerging countries and places his thinking in the sustainable development paradigm.
The Observatory is in line with the adoption and implementation of the global agendas: Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, COP 21 and the New Urban Agenda. The Observatory, in collaboration with researchers affiliated with partner universities in the South and international organizations, develops action research and pilot projects for sustainable, safe, healthy and inclusive cities in the South, while respecting their own paradigms and aspirations.
https://recherche.umontreal.ca/nos-chercheurs/repertoire-des-unites-de-recherche/unite/is/ur13606/
The name of the regional, state/provincial or local sustainability network(s):
RUQDD: Network of the Sustainability Advisors of all major universities in Quebec. It holds regular meetings for the exchange of advices and information.
ECPAR: Collaborative Space for Sustainable Procurement Practices (Sustainable procurement).
Description of the conference(s) and presentation(s):
During the 89th ACFAS congress in May 2022, several professors and employees of the Université de Montréal as well as other Quebec universities organized a thematic day on the theme of integrating the challenges of sustainable development into courses and academic curricula.
Sustainability resource center or awards program and submission(s):
2020 Winner at the Gala event of the Montreal Environnent Regional Council (Conseil régional de l'environnement de Montréal) in the category: Public body.
The Darlington Ecological Corridor, proposed in 2014 by the Université de Montréal's Sustainable Development Unit, is a natural infrastructure project whose right-of-way is mostly located in the Côte-des-Neiges-Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough. The entire route proposes a green link between the Université de Montréal mountain campus, the Mil campus and the Hippodrome de Montréal. Today, the initiative goes beyond the idea of greening and biodiversity: active transportation, food security, stormwater management and citizen engagement are some of the components that are now attached to it. From the beginning, the Borough recognized the importance of intervening in this sector in partnership with the institutional actor. A dialogue was initiated and a sharing of competencies quickly developed between the two. Thus, little by little, specific interventions in the urban fabric took place while integrating each year more stakeholders and, consequently, more points of view. Connecting green spaces and opening them up obviously comes with its share of challenges. These challenges then become cases of applied study for UdeM students from various disciplines who then propose possible solutions, thus transforming academic work into concrete achievements.
Description of the board or committee appointment(s):
Alexandre Beaudoin, Biodiversity Advisor at the Université de Montréal, has been named Governor of Mount Royal, a group of individuals who have distinguished themselves through their commitment to safeguarding the protected site of Mount Royal.
Mentoring relationship and activities:
The Unité du développement durable de l'Université de Montréal collaborated in 2020 with the filing of the TELUQ STARS file, more specifically regarding the methodology used in the analysis of the course inventory for the AC1 credit.
Community Partnerships
The institution’s formal community partnership to advance sustainability:
The Darlington Ecological Corridor Project is one of the flagship projects of the Sustainable Development Unit. Indeed, this project links both the maintenance of biodiversity, sustainable development and the teaching mission of the University. The goal is to create an ecological corridor (through greening, urban agriculture, stormwater management, and other ecological interventions) to link the Mount Royal's campus to the new Science Complex, the Mil Campus, to the abandoned racecourse grounds. This corridor should allow native Mount Royal flora and fauna to disperse throughout the island of Montreal, while improving the quality of life of citizens. The sustainable development unit is teaming up with the Côte-des-Neiges-Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough and residents to complete the various stages of the project. This includes, among other things, the establishment of urban gardens, the demineralization of a section of streets near the mountain and the planting of trees.
The project through time
The Darlington Ecological Corridor is a project that focuses on the ecological connectivity of green spaces in urban areas. The fallout is primarily to facilitate the movement of wildlife in the urban fabric, but many co-benefits are attached. Among them, the project promotes greater citizen empowerment, provides food, develops habitats for bees and, as a result, offers a pollination service, offers ecological alternatives to rainwater management and becomes an interesting playground for both UdeM students and the local community.
In 2014, the Université de Montréal, through the Sustainable Development Unit, the Biodiversity Advisor and a trainee in landscape architecture, proposed a project to connect green spaces linking its two campuses and crossing neighborhoods. Boundary. First proposed as a project of ecological connectivity between the green spaces of the environment, this project quickly integrated the social sphere.
In fact, in 2015, a dialogue workshop, organized by the Sustainable Development Unit and a student in human geography, took place with organizations working on the environment, conservation and development, as well as some citizens who took part in discussions about main deliverables of a project of this size for the community. This workshop was held at the summit of Mount Royal, a natural site where the University has its main campus. Also in 2015, a second student completed his internship in food sociology to better understand the profile of the surrounding community and their relationship to food. The main findings of this study still guide our various interventions. In partnership with the local borough, we have set up 40 giant jars to encourage citizens to garden and quietly develop links with the most committed people.
In 2016, a fourth student completes an internship with us. After the landscape architecture, geography and sociology, it is now the turn of a student in sustainable development with studies in biology that comes to help us develop new ideas and create our second consultation workshop, targeting mainly citizens. These reflections allow us to identify a priority intervention zone and leads us to develop relationships with the urban garden community. This is how the UdeM gardening group comes to lend a large composter for a year to weave the first links and allow them to develop a special project on in situ composting. A first direct material contribution from UdeM to the community. Until then, the Darlington project office acted as a facilitator between the community, the university and the borough. That same season, Sustainable Development Unit secured first external funding from the TD Bank Friends of the Environment Foundation. This money is directly reinvested in the community by inaugurating a nourishing forest in a rather moribund sector. The planting takes place with a group of young people whose summer job is to bring concrete solutions to the city in environmental matters, the Green Patrol. The project thus made it possible both to provide a place for young people to learn about tree planting, to green a sector while socially opening up the local community.
The Sustainable Development Unit gets for the season 2017, a second funding for a project of development of flowery meadows to provide habitat for bees. This project will take place in the field of our new partners, the community gardens. The maintenance of this site always takes place in the summer of 2019. During the same summer, we target a sub-community more specifically, realizing that a project of too great scale did not call the citizens. We have a first party in a park with food offered to start the discussion with the community and collect the specific needs of the community. This approach, the report of which is given to the local decision-makers, has made it possible to target certain projects and will have resulted in the creation of a dog park. We have repeated this model of celebratory consultation since then.
In 2018, a student of urban planning, supervised by the team of the UDD comes to contribute to the project by proposing new areas of intervention, while proposing a linkage of the project with other boroughs (Ville Mont-Royal and Ville Outremont). The Borough of Côte-des-Neiges - Notre-Dame-de-Grâce offers funding starting this summer to hire a horticulturist, a community animator, two students in urban planning (respectively specialized in active transportation and management of rainwater), a project manager in social mobilization and a project coordinator. This funding was renewed in the summer of 2019.
In summer 2019, a student in socio-ecology and sustainable development develops a program of integration of citizens through a calendar of activities (gardening, BBQ, children's party, permaculture workshops, etc.). The benefits exceed expectations. Citizens are contacting us and want to join the Darlington team on a volunteer basis in order to develop new project areas and new activities (green alleys, cleaning chores, citizen workshops, in situ composting). In addition, we started a first development with a hospital center (CIUSSS). It is a first project carried out by the team of sustainable development of the health system on the territory. This is a new and important partner.
Also, as recommended by the communication students, in the 2018-2019 school year, we started workshops in local elementary schools with the aim of creating a new generation of young farmers to maintain the gardens and raise students' awareness related to urban ecology issues.
In addition to these partnerships with local organizations, residents, the University, the boroughs and elementary schools, UdeM has developed a partnership with École Polytechnique. In the fall of 2017 and 2018, the CIV-4940 course for graduating students in civil engineering offers students the opportunity to develop an integrated approach to stormwater management in the corridor to address an infrastructure problem while providing a water supply for local biodiversity. The best works are then selected by the professor and are given to the sustainable development office of the borough to stimulate reflections on the next steps to develop. This successful project will become a continuing education workshop offered by École Polytechnique in the form of a MOOC. The latter is offered in English and all Canadian engineers. This makes it possible to integrate new notions of urban ecology into an engineering curriculum.
Also, since 2015, each year a professor from a different discipline has taken over the project concept in order to make it a session project. We were able to work with students in urban planning, architecture, landscape architecture, communication and sustainable development. We hope to integrate students of geography and biological sciences in the short term.
2022 - FIRM Project
This project consists of developing plots of land on public, institutional and private rights-of-way. Its main objective is to allow the community to come together to exchange around ecological and food planning. This programming, motivated by urban health milestones, will aim to empower the community in terms of food while providing interfaces for cultural mediation interfaces.
https://durable.umontreal.ca/biodiversite/milieux-de-vie/projet-darlington/
https://unpointcinq.ca/article-blogue/corridor-darlington-montreal/
https://ici.radio-canada.ca/recit-numerique/4151/environnement-vert-darlington-ecologie-sommet-terre
The institution’s formal community partnership to advance sustainability (2nd partnership):
The Extension is a support centre in pedagogy and health, and is affiliated with the Université de Montréal. Its objective is to support the development of children in difficulty and to help their families by providing them with educational services and accessible health care.
The extension is made up of an interdisciplinary team, including teaching (orthopedagogy) and health professionals (optometry and dentistry). Together, they work to ensure comprehensive follow-up and complete intervention with children and their families.
This model offers several added values that make the learning of each individual highly significant:
Collaboration between children and student trainees
Interrelation between student trainees from different disciplines
Complementarity of care and services
Extension advances research and knowledge related to community services and care.
3 priorities for action :
- Accessible services and care
- An innovative training facility for students
- A place to advance research
http://www.extension.umontreal.ca/
The institution’s formal community partnership to advance sustainability (3nd partnership):
The starting point
Accelerating climate change, massive loss of biodiversity, depletion of natural resources: the question is no longer whether we are heading towards a profoundly different society, but whether this transition will be entirely undergone, or at least partially chosen.
From an ideal to be achieved, sustainable development has become for many a profound source of anxiety about our ability to actually get there. This growing sense of urgency contrasts sharply with the apparent inertia of our societies and the attitude of denial adopted by a considerable part of the population as well as decision makers.
In this context, and even more so today, the role of experts as well as that of citizens is called upon to change, with a more pronounced need to collectively regain leverage over our future. Both the promotion and the critical approach of ideal models of sustainability are no longer enough: we also need to better know and debate the possible transition pathways, formidable or desirable, that humanity will take to ensure its survival.
Energy, food, health, production and consumption modes, economic and cultural models: together, we must rethink everything.
Transition Pathways
Faced with the unprecedented ecological crisis facing humanity, the Université de Montreal and Space for Life have joined forces to propose Transition Pathways, a major project to engage the academic community, alongside other vital forces in society, in the necessary debate on the transition in Quebec.
Since 2019 and for the next few years, Transition Pathways (Chemins de transition) will mobilize the knowledge of several disciplines, and multiple actors, to collectively identify the paths that have the potential to lead Quebec society on a more desirable trajectory.
This work is structured around three major challenges:
- How to feed more and more humans in health without depleting the earth's resources, in a context of climate change?
- How to make the digital transition and the ecological transition converge?
- How to live in Quebec in a sober and resilient way in a context of ecological transition?
https://www.cheminsdetransition.org
Participation in Public Policy
Institution engages in public policy advocacy for sustainability at the municipal/local level:
The Université de Montréal is an active and permanent member of the Table de concertation du Mont-Royal, under the aegis of the Ville de Montréal
The Table brings together several stakeholders concerned with the future of Mount Royal, including representatives from the institutional, association, governmental and municipal sectors. The members of the Table, headed by a president, meet several times a year and their objective is to establish a consensus on accessibility, protection and enhancement of the territory and to implement actions aimed at the harmonious management and development of Mount Royal.
Within the Mount Royal consensus-building table, the Université de Montréal is a member of the Planning and Consultation Committee (COAC) of .
In recent years, it has initiated the establishment of the Mount Royal Community of Practice, in which 10 major institutions located on the mountain participate. Its mandate is to improve the management of protected areas (for example, by implementing differentiated management of spaces) as well as the integration of best practices in terms of biodiversity on the grounds of institutions.
The Mount Royal Community of Practice also allows for the collective identification and resolution of issues concerning this heritage site. Recently, it proposed and influenced the conversion of the former Royal Victoria Hospital parking lot to a woodlot, adding to the protected natural area.
https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/montreal-to-expand-mount-royal-park-remove-some-visitor-parking
Institution engages in public policy advocacy for sustainability at the state/provincial/regional level:
The University of Montreal was actively involved in the creation of the National Strategy for the Purchase of Quebec Food: For Local Food in Public Institutions in 2021-2022.
The strategy
The Quebec Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAPAQ) has mandated the Centre of Expertise of the Quebec Institute of Tourism and Hospitality (ITHQ) to accompany government institutions wishing to increase their percentage of local food purchases. This major project, which will be spread out over three years, is aimed primarily at establishments in the health network and educational institutions.
Institution engages in public policy advocacy for sustainability at the international level:
International collaboration and research
Universite de Montreal, through international collaboration and research, reviews comparative approaches and develops international best practice on tackling the SDGs. For example, the TOPICS project is a collaboration between our university's International Health Unit and the Research Institute for Development that involves citizens in Benin, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burkina Faso in improving their healthcare system by making it better adapted to their needs.
Also, the Quebec Population Health Research Network includes a research group on global health headed by Prof. Lisa Merry, a professor at our university's Faculty of Nursing. The group's research on global health is adjusted to fit with the 17 SDGs and its members include researchers from around the world.
Co-organized by the International Health Unit (USI), the RENARD Team, the Institute of Research for Development (IRD), the Research Center for Human Reproduction and Demography (CERRHUD), the National Network of NGOs for Women's Development (RENADEF), and Action-gouvernance-interaction-strengthening (AGIR-SD), a deliberative workshop was held on February 16 and 17, 2021 The event brought together teams from the Technologies Participation citoyenne en santé (TOPICs) project in Benin, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and Burkina Faso to share the project's mid-term results and lessons learned. The event was attended by experts from the various organizations involved in the project, as well as representatives from the Ministries of Health in Benin, the DRC, and Burkina Faso.
https://usi.umontreal.ca/nouvelles-et-infolettre/nouvelles/nouvelle/news/detail/News/technologies-democratie-et-sante-les-resultats-du-projet-topics-a-mi-parcours/
NGOs
Also, the University collaborates with NGOs. For example, in connection with SDG3 on health, the TOPICS project is acollaboration between our university'sInternational Health Unit and many NGOs, suchas the Centre de Recherche en Reproduction Humaine et en Démographie and the Réseau National des ONG pour le Developpement de la Femme. The project involves citizens in Benin, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burkina Faso in improving their healthcare system by making it better adapted to their needs.
Our university'sInternational Health Unit is also involved, withthe Centre for International Studies andCooperation, in the Yellen project, a project onreproductive health in Mali.
https://www.santepop.qc.ca/en/groupings/global-health