The participants of the Sustainability University Assembly at VU Amsterdam have agreed a package of proposals to help make their university sustainable. Together, these proposals form the Sustainability Agreement. On Friday, 20 June, it was decided and adopted in a voting session, then presented to the Executive Board of VU Amsterdam.
The Sustainability Agreement is the outcome of a two-month deliberative dialogue process bringing together some 130 students and staff members of VU Amsterdam in a series of meetings. Step-by-step, the Assembly worked its way from its initial ideas and priorities to a set of 13 comprehensive proposals. At their final meeting, the University Convention on 20 June, participants presented these proposals and then voted which (elements) of those proposals would be adopted into their Sustainability Agreement. The resulting Agreement was then handed to Executive Board representative Marcel Nollen, who expressed his admiration and gratitude for the Assembly’s work and results.
The great majority of ‘decision points’ – elements of proposals that participants voted on – were adopted. Four decision points were rejected and will therefore not be part of the Agreement. More than once, decision points were adopted or rejected by just one vote: it was clear that the voting session was a serious step in the collective decision-making process and by no means an approval parade. A total of 53 adopted decision points – from all 13 proposals – will now together form the Assembly’s Sustainability Agreement.
Presenting proposals
Since their inception at the 15 April Summit, the Assembly’s Working Groups had been developing proposals for a sustainable VU Amsterdam. Today, the time had come to present their final exploits to their fellow participants. Each Working Group had a 12-minute slot to explain why the Assembly should adopt its proposal. The first half of the slot was for presenting the proposal, the second half for answering clarification questions. The questions were coming from an especially established panel consisting of students and staff members of VU Amsterdam, along with people from outside the VU community.
In all, the participants – and the many audience members who attended the Convention – received 13 presentations, each one adding a distinct flavour to the mix of proposals for a sustainable university. Some Working Groups emphasised the need for VU Amsterdam to bring down its carbon emissions, with others specifying steps to collect, measure and share data about the university’s sustainability performance. Several proposals included suggestions for how the entire VU Amsterdam community could or should be part of the effort: from boosting awareness to collaborating online to forming a new decision-making committee. Working Groups saw scope for a different engagement with the outside world too, such as sharing ideas and resources with partner organisations, and moving to a sustainable bank.
The voting session
Once the Assembly had seen all 13 presentations – as well as breaks for lunch and coffee, of course – they began their voting session. Everyone who had participated in the first Assembly meeting was eligible to vote. Sixty of these participants were in the room, so they made up the electorate. The session was overseen by a presidium chaired by former VU Amsterdam Dean Frank van der Duijn Schouten. The Assembly quickly agreed the formalities so they could begin voting on the Working Groups’ decision points. Voting was done electronically: participants could cast their votes using their own phones.
To refresh memories, a one-minute video prepared by each Working Group was shown before their decision points were brought to a vote. So, after watching the Working Group 1 video, decision point 1.1 was projected on the screen and the vote was opened. This decision point – about creating a ‘Green Path‘ for awareness raising – was supported by a great majority of those voting, thus adopted. The Working Group swiftly withdrew its remaining decision points, explaining they were only a ‘back-up’ should their initial decision point fail to collect enough votes.
For quite a while, each and every decision point was adopted by the Assembly, although occasionally with the slimmest of margins. It wasn’t until the participants got to a vote about Working Group 9’s Sustainability Committee, that they objected to some of the decision points. While the Assembly supported having a Committee to keep the university to its sustainability responsibilities, they balked at suggestions that the Committee should be formed through lottery, and that it should be given its own resources. Later, Working Groups 10 and 11 also saw their proposals incurring minor damage, as each had one of its decision points rejected.
By the end of the vote, 53 of the 57 decision points that the Assembly had voted on, had been adopted. The Assembly confirmed that this collection of decision points would make up their Sustainability Agreement, and with a firm tap of the hammer, the presidium chair made their decision official. The Sustainability Agreement for VU Amsterdam had come into being!
From Agreement to action
When the Assembly was announced, the Executive Board of VU Amsterdam stated an intention to take the outcomes seriously. Their Letter of Intent spells out that they will seek to implement the Assembly’s proposals. If and when they cannot comply with any (parts of) proposals, they are committing to clearly explaining why.
Board representative Marcel Nollen was present at the University Convention to receive the freshly adopted Sustainability Agreement from a delegation of Assembly participants (photo above). He commended the Assembly for their work and expressed an ambition for VU Amsterdam to return to the top spot as the Netherlands’ most sustainable higher education institution.
The proposals in the Sustainability Agreement may well offer a path to achieving this aim. But as with all strategies and agreements, they won’t realise themselves. This is why the Assembly established a group to actively oversee its own legacy: the Monitoring & Sounding Board Group.
An impressive 18 of the participants immediately volunteered to be part of this group, that will act as ‘delegates’ of the Assembly with a clear mandate: overseeing and encouraging the realisation of the Sustainabity Agreement. For that, they will organise themselves and then enter into dialogue with all sorts of stakeholders within VU Amsterdam (and beyond, potentially) – clarifying the aims and intentions of the Assembly. The Monitoring & Sounding Board Group will have an initial meeting with G1000.nu facilitators in early July.
From then on, VU Amsterdam should start seeing new developments aimed at making the university sustainable. Students and staff members across the organisation will recognise some of these developments as the eventual outcomes of inspired conversations they were part of in the spring of 2025.