Sustainability for the Common Good, Peace, and Justice According to the Principles of Global Bioethics

The concept of sustainability—“being sustainable”—is at the center of every discussion, from the social to the political, from environmental to economic, and from educational to mobility. Sustainability in the environmental and economic sciences is that condition of development that can ensure that the needs of the present generation are met without compromising the ability of future generations to realize their own. It is important to consider that we live in a globalized and multicultural world that provides fertile ground for the promotion of universal rights, preservation of the common good, peace, and justice. In this context, bioethical research, ever since it began to proliferate in the 1970s and turn the spotlight on the process of biotechnology advancement and its annexed challenges, plays a crucial role in establishing best practices for digitalized higher education, values, and principles useful for the safeguarding of human dignity, solidarity and health, common to all the earth's inhabitants. The UNESCO Chair in Bioethics and Human Rights and the Italian UNESCO Chairs Network have joined forces to respond to the increasingly pressing global demand to deliver projects and actions based on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals listed by the United Nations for the Agenda 2030. Through the “Dialogues of the UNESCO Chairs: A Laboratory of Ideas for the World to Come” project, the network carried out a series of meetings on the topics of each chair giving origin to the “Declaration of the Italian UNESCO Chairs for Sustainability” presented at the Dubai Expo, at the Ministry of Italian Education in Rome, and the UNESCO World Higher Education Conference in Barcelona.