The 2022 Sustainability Report of the Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna represents a profound change - in structure, contents, and method of preparation - with respect to the decades-old Social Report format.
The new Sustainability Report is intended to be a tool permitting direct involvement in the strategies and results of our university on the part of students, lecturers, technical-administrative staff and the local community. In this new form, the document allows us to understand how the Alma Mater has simultaneously generated economic, social and environmental value for its community and for the area in which it operates.
The Sustainability Report first of all reconstructs the University's strategies and choices in terms of sustainability governance; it then documents the economic value attracted, distributed and retained by the University of Bologna, in five sections representing the five areas into which the 2022-2027 Strategic Plan is organised.
In particular, the Education and Student Community section illustrates the services offered and the actions carried out for the benefit of the student community, including an ever-increasing commitment to ensuring the highest quality of our educational offerings; the Research section describes our scientific contribution at the national and international levels, with particular attention to the NRRP, Italy’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan; the People section illustrates our human resources policies, reporting their impact on new ways of organising work and measures ensuring organisational well-being; finally, the Society section illustrates the impact of our activities on the local community, with a particular focus on libraries and museums and on the promotion of health and sports. In addition to these four sections, the Environment section reports on the University's energy policies, accompanied by an environmental impact assessment.
The content of this first Sustainability Report is the result of innovative stakeholder engagement methods, with a particular focus on instructors, students and technical and administrative staff, who, together with university governance, constructed the structure and content of the document, in an ongoing constructive dialogue that lays the essential foundations for all concrete sustainability actions.
Furthermore, the 2022 Sustainability Report follows the most authoritative international guidelines, the GRI or Global Reporting Initiative Standards (GRI, 2021); for the first time, it incorporates the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the UN Agenda 2030, with a view to achieving full harmony between actions and impacts, in pursuit of the goal of sustainability.
I wish to thank the colleagues and students who accompanied us along the path of reflection that gave rise to the content and ideas in this document. Thank you to the entire Alma Mater Studiorum, which I am prouder and prouder to represent every day: the pages that follow reflect not only all the effort put into the year 2022, but all our commitment to the future.
Giovanni Molari, Rector
Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna