EDS Integrated Approach
for Sustainability (EDS-IA): Campus
as a Living Laboratory Experience
Liliana Diaz and André Potvin
Abstract Since 2016, Institut EDS is developing a new integrated approach to
facilitate collaborations between different disciplines and to reinforce the development of practical skills and key competencies needed to solve concrete sustainable
development problems: the EDS-IA. It aims to contribute to the acceleration of the
transition to a closed and cyclic development system, building on the most recent
knowledge mobilization frameworks in the field: the concept of Planetary Boundaries, the concept of Social Floor, the Sustainable Development Goals, Key Competencies in Sustainability and Multilevel Governance. Despite the broad consensus
and the robustness of the scientific knowledge underlying all these frameworks, they
are not sufficiently known beyond their own field of knowledge. In order to facilitate
their diffusion and their appropriation by all the disciplines and actors concerned
with the transition to sustainability, EDS-IA integrates them in a diagram as a tool
that can be adapted to different development challenges in different contexts. During
its first year of implementation (2016–2017), researchers and student members of
the Institute participated in a series of major co-creation activities along with staff
university members, governmental organizations as well as representatives of civil
society. They made a diagnosis of the sustainable status of the campus and imagined
innovating solutions for a “Campus as a living laboratory” through operations, teaching, research, and community services. In the second year (2017–2018), the transfer
of the EDS-IA started through similar workshops with a university partner in Senegal
(UADB). This paper presents the theoretical and methodological frameworks of the
EDS-IA and the results of the first two years during which universities have been
imagined as living laboratories for SDG promotion and implementation.
Keywords Sustainable development · Participatory methods · Partnerships
between academics and society
L. Diaz (B) · A. Potvin (B)
EDS Institute, Université Laval, 2440 Boulevard Hochelaga, G1V0A6 Québec, QC, Canada
e-mail: Liliana.diaz@ihqeds.ulaval.ca
A. Potvin
e-mail: directeur@ihqeds.ulaval.ca
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
W. Leal Filho et al. (eds.), Universities as Living Labs for Sustainable Development,
World Sustainability Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15604-6_18
283
for Sustainability (EDS-IA): Campus
as a Living Laboratory Experience
Liliana Diaz and André Potvin
Abstract Since 2016, Institut EDS is developing a new integrated approach to
facilitate collaborations between different disciplines and to reinforce the development of practical skills and key competencies needed to solve concrete sustainable
development problems: the EDS-IA. It aims to contribute to the acceleration of the
transition to a closed and cyclic development system, building on the most recent
knowledge mobilization frameworks in the field: the concept of Planetary Boundaries, the concept of Social Floor, the Sustainable Development Goals, Key Competencies in Sustainability and Multilevel Governance. Despite the broad consensus
and the robustness of the scientific knowledge underlying all these frameworks, they
are not sufficiently known beyond their own field of knowledge. In order to facilitate
their diffusion and their appropriation by all the disciplines and actors concerned
with the transition to sustainability, EDS-IA integrates them in a diagram as a tool
that can be adapted to different development challenges in different contexts. During
its first year of implementation (2016–2017), researchers and student members of
the Institute participated in a series of major co-creation activities along with staff
university members, governmental organizations as well as representatives of civil
society. They made a diagnosis of the sustainable status of the campus and imagined
innovating solutions for a “Campus as a living laboratory” through operations, teaching, research, and community services. In the second year (2017–2018), the transfer
of the EDS-IA started through similar workshops with a university partner in Senegal
(UADB). This paper presents the theoretical and methodological frameworks of the
EDS-IA and the results of the first two years during which universities have been
imagined as living laboratories for SDG promotion and implementation.
Keywords Sustainable development · Participatory methods · Partnerships
between academics and society
L. Diaz (B) · A. Potvin (B)
EDS Institute, Université Laval, 2440 Boulevard Hochelaga, G1V0A6 Québec, QC, Canada
e-mail: Liliana.diaz@ihqeds.ulaval.ca
A. Potvin
e-mail: directeur@ihqeds.ulaval.ca
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
W. Leal Filho et al. (eds.), Universities as Living Labs for Sustainable Development,
World Sustainability Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15604-6_18
283