Envi­ron­men­tal liability

Karelia Univer­sity of Applied Sciences oper­ates respon­si­bly promot­ing sustain­able devel­op­ment both as an employer and as a higher educa­tion commu­nity. The aim is to increase the ecolog­i­cal, economic and socio-cultural sustain­abil­ity and well-being at our univer­sity of applied sciences.

We eval­u­ate and develop our activ­i­ties contin­u­ously. We imple­ment an open oper­at­ing culture accord­ing to the prin­ci­ples of open science and research. Promo­tion of sustain­able devel­op­ment is part of our educa­tional supply and an inte­gral part of our RDI activities.

The strat­egy 2030 of Karelia Univer­sity of Applied Sciences: Karelia2030 – Sustain­able Vital­ity empha­sises our envi­ron­men­tal liabil­ity. We are commit­ted to the low-carbon goals of the city of Joensuu and the province of North Karelia. Accord­ing to the strat­egy, our goal is to have a carbon-neutral univer­sity of applied sciences by year 2028. We involve students, staff and coop­er­a­tion part­ners from differ­ent fields in the battle against climate change and promote resource-effec­tive circu­lar economy solutions.

The Finnish Educa­tion Eval­u­a­tion Center (KARVI), which audits the quality manage­ment of higher educa­tion insti­tu­tions, eval­u­ated the quality system of Karelia Univer­sity of Applied Sciences in 2018. The audit is based on Euro­pean quality assur­ance prin­ci­ples and crite­ria. Accord­ing to the audit, the quality assur­ance system of Karelia UAS reached the best, i.e. the advanced level.

At Karelia UAS, envi­ron­men­tal manage­ment is part of the contin­u­ous improve­ment work defined in the quality system. Karelia UAS has previ­ously used the Green Office envi­ron­men­tal system, and our envi­ron­men­tal manage­ment prac­tices and our envi­ron­men­tal programme have been devel­oped based on it. As a contin­u­a­tion to the previ­ous system, Karelia UAS aims to develop and imple­ment an envi­ron­men­tal system that complies with the ISO 14001 stan­dard. Karelia UAS is also involved in the shared UAS coop­er­a­tion of carbon foot­print calcu­la­tion and manage­ment. Further­more, Karelia UAS is commit­ted to the joint sustain­able devel­op­ment programme of univer­si­ties of applied sciences.

Karelia Univer­sity of Applied Sciences is a contrac­tual partner of the North Karelia Bios­phere Reserve and promotes the sustain­able devel­op­ment goals of the UN through a coop­er­a­tion network. The North Karelia Bios­phere Reserve is part of the UNESCO Man and the Bios­phere programme network of research, exper­i­ment and devel­op­ment areas for sustain­able development. �