25 September is the National Sustainability Day. Ciências ULisboa marks this date with a range of initiatives and projects that reflect the faculty’s commitment to sustainability.
Ciências marks National Sustainability Day with two moments of reflection and action
Lídia Belourico
Sustainability•25 September, 2026
One of the key moments is the International Sustainability Seminar, which brings together specialists from Portugal and Brazil to discuss topics such as biodiversity and climate challenges. The initiative aims to promote knowledge sharing and dialogue between different scientific fields around some of the major challenges shaping the present and future of the planet.
But sustainability at Ciências ULisboa goes beyond research and scientific debate. The Faculty is also part of the Municipal Platform for the Sustainable Development Goals (Local SDGs), an initiative that makes it possible to monitor, at a local scale, the contribution of different entities to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations.
“For Ciências ULisboa, joining the ODSlocal Platform represents, above all, the decision to become part of a collective agenda for transformation. The 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals remain extraordinarily relevant, even though they have lost strength and centrality within the international geopolitical context of recent years, marked by the reinforcement of more isolationist agendas and less oriented towards cooperation. In this context, reaffirming the commitment to the SDGs is also a manifesto and a public statement of the importance of cooperation, science and collective action in building more sustainable societies,” explains David Avelar, coordinator and project manager at 2Adapt, a climate‑adaptation technology start‑up responsible for the design and development of ODSlocal.
"For Ciências ULisboa, joining the ODSlocal Platform represents, above all, the decision to become part of a collective agenda for transformation."
On the platform, Ciências ULisboa stands out for the number of indicators associated with its activity, being the institution with the highest number of indicators. This result helps to make more visible the diversity of areas in which the Faculty contributes to the Sustainable Development Goals. “At present, the Ciências ULisboa Living Lab for Sustainability includes 113 indicators, which make it possible to monitor the Faculty’s contribution to 46 of the 119 targets associated with the 17 SDGs,” explains David Avelar.
The indicator system seeks to reflect a cross‑cutting vision of sustainability, covering areas such as education, health and well‑being, innovation, biodiversity, resource management, and different dimensions of scientific and pedagogical activity.
“At present, the Ciências ULisboa Living Lab for Sustainability includes 113 indicators, which make it possible to monitor the Faculty’s contribution to 46 of the 119 targets associated with the 17 SDGs.”
This commitment is also reflected in the Ciências ULisboa Sustainability Report, launched in March this year. The document brings together information on the Faculty’s performance in this area and serves as a tool to understand, monitor and communicate the different dimensions of sustainability within the institution.
Across research, teaching, management and community engagement, Ciências ULisboa seeks to give concrete expression to the principles of sustainability, reinforcing the role of science and knowledge in addressing environmental and social challenges.