The 2026 Sustainability Week has many events planned: what do you expect to be the highlights?
Between March 16–20, Sustainability Week 2026 brings together a dynamic programme of academic debate, experiential learning, and community engagement designed to speak to a wide range of interests across the Institute. Among the highlights are three panels on decolonising sustainability, emotions and sustainability, and custodianship of wildlife and biodiversity, which challenge participants to reconsider dominant narratives and examine the complex Global North–South dynamics that shape our environmental realities. Complementing these discussions, we will screen the 2025 film Trop Chaud, which follows the courageous Swiss KlimaSeniorinnen who sued their government before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) for climate inaction, followed by a discussion with the movement’s president, Ms. Anne Mahrer. The week also features a visit to a local permaculture farm, a kitchen battle, and a Women in the Green Economy Fair showcasing entrepreneurial stories from the Global South. These events are a glimpse into the full programme available on our website, where participants will have the chance to engage with partners including Festival du Film Vert, CIEL, Institute faculty, activists, and alumni working in sustainability.
How will this year’s Sustainability Week stand out from past editions?
While maintaining continuity with previous editions, this year’s team has put together programming that links individual engagement with systemic transformation, connecting personal will to act with larger-than-individual processes and dynamics that shape environmental justice and politics. We are bringing together voices from around the world to foster critical dialogue that can capture the environmental challenges facing our world. Alongside using multiple lenses in approaching sustainability, we wanted to make hands-on sustainable practices and local engagement accessible to the Institute community. Sustainability is entangled with myriad sociopolitical processes, and we’ve chosen some of the most unique and diverse ones to spark community dialogue.
Can you tell us some more about the discussions that you hope to have with students and the overall Institute community on sustainability?
We hope to engage the Institute community in discussions that locate sustainability as a deeply interconnected challenge, from corporate greenwashing, inequitable policies, and power asymmetries to their interaction with local practices, emotional drivers, and individual choices. Given the vastness of the challenge, alongside an excellent range of panels and roundtables, our activities center interactive, grounded experiences such as community gardening workshop, clothing repair, career panel, cooking challenge, and many more. We hope to offer everyone a fitting opportunity to connect their personal commitment to sustainability with larger frameworks of collaboration, justice, and systems transformation, recognizing that meaningful change emerges from the intersection of individual action and collective effort.
What is the number one thing members of the Institute community can do on a personal level to make their everyday lives more sustainable?
On a personal level, members of the Institute community can act with intention; reducing, reusing, and recycling where possible, supporting local environmental initiatives, and making mindful consumption choices everyday. But beyond individual habits, sustainability should also shape how we think. Bringing climate and environmental perspectives into our knowledge paradigms enriches our academic conversations and strengthens the collective impact of our professional trajectories.