The two-year project is funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers, which has also approved it as an official Nordic follow-up project to the Rio+20 commitment.
Rio+20 was the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, held in June 2012 in Brazil. Aalto University has also endorsed the Rio+20 commitment and pledged to incorporate sustainable development as part of all university operations.
Aalto University established together with other Nordic universities the Nordic Sustainable Campus Network (NSCN) in 2012. These universities are all actively involved also in rolling out the Rio+20 Implementation in the Nordic Higher Education Institutes project. The NSCN arranges seminars and workshops, and the 2014 seminar, on the subject of Rio+20, will be held in Lappeenranta, Finland, 20-21 May 2014.
Partners in the Rio+20 Implementation in the Nordic Higher Education Institutes project are Aalto University and Lappeenranta University of Technology from Finland, the KTH Royal Institute of Technology and the University of Gothenburg from Sweden, the University of Copenhagen from Denmark, the University of Oslo from Norway, and the University of Iceland.
Other key cooperative partners include the Nordic Association of University Administrators (NUAS), the various Nordic environment and education ministries, and national networks, such as RCE-Espoo and Sustainable Development Forum of Finland (‘Keke’).