GASU

Graphical Assessment of Sustainability

In many higher education institutions there has been strong progress in incorporating sustainability into their systems (including curricula, research, operations, and outreach).

The Graphical Assessment of Sustainability in Universities (GASU) 2010 has been designed to provide an analysis of current sustainability efforts in the university with respect to: profile; economic dimension; environmental dimension; and social dimension, based on the GRI G3 Sustainability Guidelines. These are complemented with two additional dimensions: Educational dimension and Interlinking issues and dimensions.

GASU results are presented in eleven charts: a General chart (which presents the performance of economic, environmental, social and educational dimensions); Profile; Economic dimension; Environmental dimension; five for the Social dimension (overall, labour practices and decent work, human rights, society, and product responsibility); Educational dimension; and Inter-linked issues and dimensions.

GASU can help universities on their road towards sustainability by making recommendations as to where the university should effect the changes needed to make its system more sustainability orientated, and thus be better aligned with the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. GASU can also facilitate comparisons of the university’s efforts and achievements towards sustainability in different years, as well as benchmarking against other universities.

The previous version of GASU (2007) has been used to analyse 12 universities that published GRI sustainability reports in 2009. Current plans include using GASU 2010 to analyse more recent university sustainability reports and to help universities that have not yet published sustainability reports to develop them in a more holistic way than current GRI reports.