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Perspective
 Time for Action: Emerging Technology & Global Solidarity
Arturo Condo*

DOI: https://doi.org/10.69841/igee.2026.012
Published online: June 12, 2026

EARTH University & University Global Coalition (UGC)

*Corresponding author: Arturo Condo, E-mail: presidentsoffice@earth.ac.cr
The Global Engagement & Empowerment Forum on Sustainable Development (GEEF) 2026, hosted by Yonsei University, was successfully held over two days from March 12 to 13, 2026. Addressing global challenges such as climate change, inequality, and humanitarian crises requires stronger international cooperation and collective action than ever before. GEEF 2026 serves as a global platform that moves beyond dialogue toward real action and measurable impact.As part of this year's program, a featured session on "Sustainable Social Resources Bank: Sharing Knowledge, Time, and Technology" examined how universities can systematically mobilize their internal expertise, time, and infrastructure as a force for sustained social contribution. The session brought together faculty researchers and graduate students to explore how institutions can move beyond one-off service events toward a structurally embedded model of community engagement. The following is a translated transcript of the session.
• Received: March 13, 2026   • Revised: June 2, 2026   • Accepted: June 9, 2026

© 2026 by the authors.

Submitted for possible open-access publication under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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No person, no institution, no country can advance the global agenda alone.
Secretary General Guterres reminded us last year in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals Report:
“Despite… important gains, conflicts, climate chaos, geopolitical tensions, and economic shocks continue to obstruct progress at the pace and scale needed to meet the 2030 targets. This year’s Sustainable Development Goals Report finds that only 35% of SDG targets are on track or making moderate progress. Nearly half are moving too slowly, and, alarmingly, 18% are in reserve. We face a global development emergency.” (UN DESA, 2025)
It is because of this development stagnation that gatherings such as GEEF and global networks such as the University Global Coalition (UGC) and the United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI), among others, are more important today than ever.
The University Global Coalition emerged in 2019 from the recognition that universities must contribute meaningfully to the SDGs and move beyond isolated efforts to coordinated and collaborative transformation. UGC brings together a network of 191 global Higher Education Institutions across all regions. The coalition was created with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, a group of university presidents from Europe, Asia, Africa, and North and South America, and UNITAR. The consensus among the founding partners was that “universities not only have the opportunity, but also an obligation, to do whatever is in their power to educate and inspire students to play an active role in addressing the most pressing issues confronting our world today, produce new ideas that can lead to new solutions, and collaborate with other organizations to create awareness, support, and even lead local and global efforts.” (University Global Coalition, 2019)
Similarly, UNAI is “an initiative that engages institutions of higher education with the United Nations in supporting and contributing to the realization of the Organization’s purposes and principles, including the promotion and protection of human rights, access to education, sustainability and conflict resolution” (United Nations Academic Impact, n.d.).Through its network of over 1,800 institutions in over 150 countries, UNAI functions as a global network that connects knowledge with the priorities of humanity.
These university networks were not created for visibility. They were created to align with humanity’s needs, encourage a shared purpose, and execute global collective action.
These platforms remind us that while each university is unique, our responsibility is shared.
Universities occupy a singular position in society:
- We generate knowledge.
- We convene diverse voices.
- We engage with communities.
- And most importantly, we educate the leaders of tomorrow and today.
- We need to create a greater space for youth leadership in our world.
Because of this responsibility, we have something very few institutions have:
The capacity not only to respond to the future, but to shape it.
Together, our impact can be even greater. But to do so, we must begin with introspection, not a superficial alignment with the SDGs or a list of existing initiatives, but a deeper institutional question to guide our work:
What does humanity need from us?
Too often, our planning begins with: “What do we want to do? What research would we like to pursue? What does the market demand from our students and us?”
These are valid questions; however, they are not sufficient on their own. If universities are to be true agents of change, then every university must define, at the level of its mission, its strategy, and its incentives: How its core purpose serves humanity and advances local communities and the global agenda.
This kind of introspection is transformative.
Because when an institution places humanity’s needs at the center of its decision-making, silos disappear, communities become partners, not beneficiaries, and Faculty and students find a shared sense of purpose. Alignment with humanity's needs becomes part of the culture and identity of a university.
According to UNESCO, in 2025, the number of students in higher education institutions reached a record high of 264 million worldwide, an increase of 25 million since 2020 (UNESCO, 2025).
It’s within our responsibility as Higher Education Institutions to prepare these students as leaders, but leadership does not emerge automatically from theoretical excellence or critical thinking.
In order for university education to be truly transformational in preparing young leaders to address the most pressing challenges of our times, we must ask ourselves important questions:
1. What in the design of our programs truly prepares our students to lead?
2. Are we cultivating ethics and a sense of responsibility in our students? If not, how could we?
3. Are we giving them a systemic understanding of global challenges? If not, how should we?
4. Are we providing them with real hands-on experiences that require them to work across disciplines, cultures, and communities? If not, how might we?
Leadership is not about knowing; leadership is about acting, it is about mobilizing others, it is about creating change in complex environments.
In order to prepare and empower change agents who can advance the SDGs, leadership development must be intentional, experiential, and deeply connected to real-world challenges. This is one of the most powerful contributions universities can make to the global agenda.
And yet, even the most committed university cannot achieve this alone. Global challenges are interconnected and systemic. Therefore, our responses must be interconnected and integrate a systems approach as well.
Partnership is not an option. It is a necessity.
For partnerships to generate real impact, we must move beyond traditional models, exchanges, and memoranda of understanding. The world and its youth need action-oriented collaboration.
We need collaboration that allows us to design programs together, conduct joint research aligned with the SDGs, create shared learning experiences for our students, and co-develop solutions with communities and international organizations.
This is the spirit that gave birth to initiatives such as the SDG-focused consortia within the UGC, and the joint leadership of global platforms like the UNAI SDG Hubs, where university partners collaborate to create meaningful and impactful initiatives for the advancement of sustainable development through discussion from different regional perspectives and professional backgrounds.
These experiences have shown us something important: deep collaboration takes time, it requires trust, and it requires a shared vision. When it happens, the impact is exponential. In a world facing urgent and complex challenges, exponential impact is exactly what we need.
Each university must undertake its own process of reflection and transformation unique to its own context and circumstances, defining how its mission, academic programs, and incentives align with humanity’s needs.
All of us must work together, more intentionally, more creatively, and more boldly than ever before. The SDGs will not be achieved through isolated excellence; they will be achieved through a connected global purpose. Let this Global Engagement and Empowerment Forum be more than a space for dialogue. Let it be a moment of commitment.
A commitment to place humanity’s agenda at the heart of our institutions, to intentionally prepare the next generation of ethical and action-oriented leaders, to dismantle the barriers that prevent deep collaboration, and to build coalitions that match the scale of the challenges we face.
This commitment will ensure that universities go beyond simply contributing to sustainable development and become one of the most powerful forces driving it.
The future of the SDGs will not be written in declarations alone; it will be written in our strategies, in our classrooms, in our partnerships, and in the lives of the students we graduate.
Through the University Global Coalition, we are attempting to lead by example, to ‘walk the talk’ by advancing deep, action-oriented collaboration models that can help define that shared future.
As part of this, we are honored to be partnering with President Yoon and his team at Yonsei University as Vice Chairs of UGC, and we look forward to engaging in many new UGC collaborations with institutions in the coming months and years.
Let us move forward together, not as individual institutions, but as a global community of purpose.
About EARTH University:
EARTH is a global university based in Costa Rica that prepares and empowers young leaders to ethically and sustainably transform food systems, protect and enhance the livelihoods of food producers, and regenerate the planet. Its unique program offers students the opportunity to learn about agricultural sciences, food systems, ethical entrepreneurship, and social and environmental challenges through experiential student-centered learning, and by living together with peers from all over the world. For more information, please see: www.earth.ac.cr. EARTH University President Arturo Condo is honored to serve as current Chair of University Global Coalition and Co-Chair of the SDG2 Hub of United Nations Academic Impact.
About University Global Coalition:
Since 2020, EARTH is a co-founding member of the University Global Coalition (UGC), a global platform of universities and other higher education organizations committed to working together and in partnership with the United Nations (through UNITAR), SDSN, and other relevant organizations, in support of the Sustainable Development Goals both locally and globally through our education, research, and service missions. For more information please see: https://universityglobalcoalition.org/.

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