REBUKE TO SAPPORO SUSTAINABILITY DECLARATION
Next Turin’s G8 University Summit, which is due to take place from the 17 to the 19 of May, 2009, will be host by Turin’s Politecnico. The main subjects discussed pertain to Sustainability and Development. Two Athenaeums for every Country belonging to the group of the G8 (fifty Athenaeums) together with some Universities of the developing Countries will take part in the Summit, whose last occurrence took place last summer in Sapporo, Japan (http://g8u-summit.jp/english/index.html), just a few days before the G8 meeting of the heads of state. That conference - in which Italy has been represented by CRUI organization (the body of the chancellors), Turin’s Politecnico, and University of Florence - discussed the role and the contribution of the Universities to the economic development and to the global environmental sustainability. During the final stage of the summit, the participants signed the Sapporo Sustainability Declaration (SSD), a declaration addressed to the member of G8 who would meet the following days. This declaration represents an official recognition of the role of the University in the challenging field of environment, and has been written as a stimulus for the Heads of State’s works concerning a new Post-Kyoto Protocol.

In analysing this document, we have outlined some controversial elements concerning the concept of environmental Sustainability and the role of the University in the path towards a sustainable society.

1. First of all, the name: “G8 University Summit”. We cannot accept the idea that the usual gathering of chiefs (most popular Universities’ chiefs, this time) claims to possess the answer to the environmental problems of the World. Our fright is that reunion possibly represents a golden opportunity to ratify the existence of a set of “major league” Universities which are surely going to be privileged partners within the G8 summit at the time of raising funds.

2. The Universities’ part in the project towards the sustainability is just aiming at economic growth. In fact, the SSD mentions neither our Planet’s physical threshold, nor the growth’s environmental damages, nor the social inequality concerning the access to the resources. Should we therefore infer that they still believe in the development - and growth as its direct consequence - as a heal-all?!

3. Reappears, ever green, the old faith in technological solutions for environmental problems. We firmly distrust in the blind faith in miraculous technologic solutions doomed to be exploited by the market laws.

4. The objective of the University Summit, as far as the developing Countries are concerned, doesn’t point to the spread of the sustainability culture and of a sensitivity towards the environmental issue. Its purpose, instead, as the SSD reports, consists in training some decision-makers equipped with the “right” scientific and technological knowledge concerning the solution of global environmental problems. Awful.