CIFAL Philippines: Building Sustainability Leaders Across the Nation

One of the flagship initiatives of 2025 was the UP-Sustainability Caravan, a system-wide training programme that brought together faculty, staff, and institutional leaders from all eight UP constituent universities. The Caravan culminated in the UP Strategic Conference on Sustainable Development in November 2025 and served as a platform to gather insights that will shape the UP-System’s roadmap toward sustainable development.

The tour began at UP Manila, conducted via Zoom with the theme "Transforming the Future through Synergetic Sustainability." Around 60 participants engaged in workshops that surfaced the urgent need for stronger coordination, sustainability focal points across campuses, and tangible community impact beyond global rankings. At UP Diliman, held on 11 September 2025, discussions centred on embedding the SDGs across the university's core functions, with participants identifying key challenges: resource constraints, documentation gaps, and fragmented initiatives.

UP Baguio's session on 17 September 2025, hosted at Balay Internasyonal Function Hall, focused on integrating the SDGs into indigenous knowledge, research, and community extension. Experts from Saint Louis University and Ifugao State University emphasized interdisciplinary approaches and the importance of localizing the SDGs. Meanwhile, the UP Los Baños and UP Open University stop highlighted UPLB's benchmark role in sustainable agriculture and UPOU's digital learning innovations, stressing the need for clear sustainability metrics and stronger evaluation mechanisms.

Later legs of the Caravan visited UP Cebu where discussions centred on sustainability governance and long-term continuity beyond leadership changes. For instance, UP Tacloban, which advocated for universities to become "living laboratories" with evidence-based reporting, UP Visayas with its focus on marine science and community resilience, and UP Mindanao, where the pivotal role of higher education in localizing the SDGs for Southern Philippines was underscored.