The UIC Barcelona Cross-Disciplinary Sustainability Workshop is an annual event open to the whole university community, exploring issues related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by bringing together multiple disciplines. This year’s event, led by the University's Office for Cooperation and Sustainable Development, gathered together a total of 219 students and 42 evaluators.

The Workshop held on the Barcelona Campus on 25 November was titled “Water for a Sustainable World” and focused on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 6, 13 and 17, with a view to exploring the relationship between water and climate change. Opening talk The day to raise awareness about sustainable water use kicked off at 10 a.m. with a round table of experts titled “Problems and solutions surrounding sustainable water use. The cases of Israel and Spain”, held in the Aula Magna lecture theatre.

The session was moderated by Dr Carmen Mendoza, assistant director of UIC Barcelona School of Architecture. Ramo Shpiner, Israeli expert from Kinneret College and Dr Sandra Puig from the Ministry for Ecological Transition of Spain, also attended the event. In his speech, Shpiner explained the serious problem of water scarcity that overpopulated countries such as India and Pakistan are already facing, and pointed out that all forecasts indicate that the scale of the problem will be much greater in the future and will affect many more countries. “We need to generate alternative water sources, and Israel could be a good example for the world to follow”, he said. The expert went on to explain how Israel has already incorporated water-saving policies into government curricula and public campaigns, which has led to a reduction in domestic water consumption of more than 20% since 2010.

Sandra Puig outlined some of the strategies central government is working on to combat water scarcity and the pollution and destruction of aquatic ecosystems across Spain. “Water is a fragile ecosystem and as such requires sustainable management, given that most of our terrestrial species and ecosystems depend on it. But aquatic ecosystems also play a fundamental social role due to their recreational, landscape, cultural and sporting benefits", she said.

At the end of the talk, students participating in degree programmes such as the Bachelor’s Degree in Humanities; Business Administration and Management (ADE); Primary Education; Communication, and Advertising and Public Relations, as well as students of the University Master's Degree in Management & Operations, filled the Barcelona Campus with research projects they have been working on for the past two months in preparation for the Cross-Disciplinary Sustainability Workshop. Small groups of students from different subjects have carried out research to solve or improve specific problems related to water.

This year, the students submitted a total of 55 projects, held 10 workshops and exhibited 45 scientific posters related to this year’s theme. Between six and ten expert sustainability evaluators have looked at the work by each group of students, applying the same evaluation criteria in each case. The marks from these projects form part of the various subjects that participated, and the winning students will be those with the best results in the practical workshop or scientific poster category.

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