Our Plan to Right the Future
York University has long been recognized as an international leader in sustainability-relevant research, teaching, partnerships, and campus practices. By challenging ourselves to deepen this work, and to track and report on our contributions, we reaffirm our longstanding York values of social justice, equity, sustainability, and excellence in all that we do.
York has embedded sustainable principles in every aspect of university life. We plan to right the future and create positive change with our whole-institution approach to sustainability.
Creating a sustainable future starts now and it starts with us.
Are you up for the challenge?
Find your way around our sustainable campuses!
The Glendon and Keele campuses at York University feature a wide array of sustainability features.
Check out the interactive map for more information.
There is no more pressing global priority than the need to embrace a more sustainable way of living. Through our teaching, our research and our own practices, York University has contributed substantially to our understanding of sustainability best practices which are as much about what we do as what we are purposely choosing not to do.
— Rhonda Lenton, President and Vice-Chancellor
A University-Wide Challenge
Our University Academic Plan 2020-2025 (UAP), included a university-wide challenge to elevate York’s contributions to the United Nation’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Latest Sustainability News at York U
- York University experts in water research will lead a delegation on the challenges marginalized communities face with respect to water security.
- Professor Thomas Cooper is working to eliminate fossil fuels through a research collaboration that aims to produce clean, renwable energy through sustainable solar fuel.
- Omiwatari, a documentary following Associate Professor Sapna Sharma as she studies centuries-old weather data in Japan to understand the future of Earth's warming lakes, debuts at an upcoming screening at York.
- As part of its commitment to become one of the most sustainable universities in Canada, York welcomes Mike Layton as its first chief sustainability officer to lead the institution and strengthen its impact in creating a more sustainable and inclusive world.
LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Watch this video to understand York's Land Acknowledgement.
York University acknowledges its presence on the traditional territory of many Indigenous Nations. The area known as Tkaronto has been care taken by the Anishinabek Nation, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Huron-Wendat, and the Métis. It is now home to many Indigenous Peoples. We acknowledge the current treaty holders, the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. This territory is subject of the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement to peaceably share and care for the Great Lakes region.
We also understand that Indigenous peoples around the world have important knowledge about how to live sustainably:
Sophisticated knowledge of the natural world is not confined to science. Human societies all across the globe have developed rich sets of experiences and explanations relating to the environments they live in. These ‘other knowledge systems’ are today often referred to as traditional ecological knowledge or Indigenous or local knowledge. They encompass the sophisticated arrays of information, understandings and interpretations that guide human societies around the globe in their innumerable interactions with the natural milieu. comprehensive research-intensive institution, York University is home to a proud tradition of scholarship and the pursuit of discovery and innovation.