Covid-19 and the SDGs

As part of its wide-ranging response to the pandemic, the University of Sussex has run two very successful  programmes over the last two years funded through the Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF). This Fund supports work with non-academic partners to address their challenges and opportunities presented by the Covid-19 pandemic and to support economic and social recovery. Building on these successes, and expanding on the scope, the University opened a further Internal HEIF programme to work with our non-academic partners to drive economic and social recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic in a way that also tackles climate change across the region and beyond.

The internal call for project proposals for HEIF funding was co-sponsored by the Sussex Sustainability Research Programme (SSRP) and was aimed at addressing the critical challenges of Covid-19 recovery (both economic and social) and climate change in an integrated way. 

Explore the following sustainability-related projects which were successful in the latest internal HEIF call and have received funding until July 2022:

• ‘CarbonMap Initiative for sustainable land management’ (Lokendra Karki, Science Policy Research Unit)
• ‘Supporting social, environmental and economic sustainability in the Costa Rican coffee industry’ (Dr Evan Killick, School of Global Studies) 
• ‘Creating with uncertainty: Covid recovery to educate for sustainable futures’ (Dr Perpetua Kirby, School of Education and Social Work)
• ‘Sustainable livelihoods, carbon storage, and biodiversity conservation through forest vanilla production’ (Prof Fiona Mathews, School of Life Sciences) 
• ‘Ecoforensic: a new ecological knowledge exchange organisation empowering communities to protect Nature’ (Dr Mika Peck, School of Life Sciences) 
• ‘Development of API and visualisation tools to discover post-Covid changes in energy consumption in UK households’ (Dr Justyna Robinson, School of Media, Arts and Humanities) 
• ‘Critical National Infrastructure resilience against pandemics and climate change’ (Dr Spyros Skarvelis-Kazakos, School of Engineering and Informatics)
• ‘Improving food security and protecting rainforest biodiversity and carbon stocks in indigenous communities recovering from Covid-19 in Papua New Guinea’ (Prof Alan Stewart, School of Life Sciences)
• ‘Developing an ecosystem of business networks to support SMEs transition to the circular economy’ (Dr Shova Thapa Karki, University of Sussex Business School) 
  
  

Further information about the above-mentioned projects funded through the Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) and run in partnership with the Sussex Sustainability Research Programme (SSRP) can be explored on the SSRP project spotlight webpages.  In addition to the above-mentioned sustainability-related projects, other innovative projects were also approved by the HEIF fund and will be listed here soon.

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