UNESCO renews the UPC's UNESCO Chair on Sustainability until 2030

The Organization has extended the validity of the agreement with the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya until 30 June 2030. The renewal opens a new four-year cycle for the UNESCOSOST programme and its network of joint offices, and follows a 2022–2025 period that closes with 4,228 people trained from 36 countries, 14 research projects and a consolidated network of sixteen offices.

An agreement in force until 30 June 2030

UNESCO has informed the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya – BarcelonaTech of the renewal of the agreement concerning the UNESCO Chair on Sustainability, formalized in 2018 under identifier 2018ES1298. According to the letter sent to the Rector on 3 June 2026 (ref. ED/FLI/26/158), the agreement will remain in force until 30 June 2030 under the direction of Professor Jordi Morató Farreras as chairholder. Under this new mandate, the Chair will contribute to the activities of UNESCO's Science Sector through research, teaching and training, community action and communication. The Organization also encourages the Chair to continue contributing to the Intergovernmental Hydrological Programme (IHP) with innovative approaches that integrate science, local knowledge and community participation: priorities fully aligned with the work the Chair has been developing for years around the water–energy–food–ecosystems (WEFE) nexus and urban regeneration.

The renewal also incorporates two commitments highlighted by UNESCO for this mandate: to disseminate the research produced in open access, in line with the 2021 Recommendation on Open Science, and to publish teaching materials as Open Educational Resources, in accordance with the 2019 Recommendation. The focal point designated by UNESCO to follow up on the Chair is Mr Simone Grego, of the Groundwater Sustainability and Water Cooperation Section.

Four years in review: UNESCOSOST in figures

The renewal comes after a cycle of consolidation documented in the 2022–2025 final report that the Chair submitted to UNESCO. Over these four years the Chair has trained more than four thousand people, managed close to 1.1 million dollars in research projects and expanded its international network of joint offices.

Training and teaching

Between 2022 and 2025 the Chair organized, co-organized or took part in 61 training courses —50 in person and 11 online— with 4,228 participants from 36 countries, of whom 1,420 were women. Among the activities with the widest reach were several online courses and meetings: 313 attendees at the FLACAM+32 Congress and 216 at the Intercoonecta (AECID) course on ancestral hydro-technologies in 2022, and 226 people certified in the 65-hour Diploma in Nature-Based Solutions for reducing vulnerability in urban basins in 2023. In November 2025, the course “From wastewater to resources: circular solutions for a climate-resilient future”, organized with UNEP and Aarhus University, closed the period with close to 300 registrations.

Between 2022 and 2025 the Chair organized, co-organized or took part in 61 training courses —50 in person and 11 online— with 4,228 participants from 36 countries, of whom 1,420 were women.

In formal teaching, the Chair maintains its base at the ESEIAAT on the UPC Terrassa Campus: 325 undergraduate students in the course “Technology, Society and Globalization”, 58 students in the master's module “Biodiversity and Socio-Ecological Systems” and an average of 60 students per year in the Senior Diploma in Science, Technology and Society. In total, the Chair's academic staff supervised 60 academic works: 42 bachelor's theses, 9 master's theses and 9 doctoral theses.

Research

The period closes with 14 research projects across six lines of work —climate change governance; water and human settlements; green infrastructure and nature-based solutions; circular economy and the built environment; intangible cultural heritage and local and Indigenous knowledge; and the WEFE nexus and artificial intelligence tools for resilience— with a combined budget of 1,099,144 dollars.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Publications and recognition

In terms of scientific output, the Chair published 9 books, edited 2 and authored 3 chapters, in addition to 14 articles in indexed journals and 10 research reports. Among the articles are the two papers published in 2025 in PNAS on nature-based solutions for urban sustainability, and the article “Ancient Hydro-Technologies as a Response to Climate and Food Emergencies” in Blue Papers.

In June 2025, during the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the IHP and of 60 years of water sciences at UNESCO, the Organization formally recognized Jordi Morató among the Programme's long-standing contributors.

“This recognition is not for an individual career, but for the shared path of a group of friends and collaborators who have grown and worked around the UNESCO Chair in Sustainability of the UPC, and I want to remember very especially José Luis Martín Bordes, Nicola Tollin, Olga Lucía Sánchez, Brent Villanueva and the late Rosario Pastor.” Dr Jordi Morató

• 

• 

• 

Network and partnerships

The Chair signed 37 cooperation agreements with institutions in seven countries, organized 16 congresses and workshops —including the international conference on ancestral hydro-technologies held in Barcelona in 2023 and the WEFE nexus conferences in Rabat and Cairo in 2025— and hosted 20 exchange students from eight countries.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Two of those meetings were the international WEFE nexus conferences coordinated by the Chair in 2025 within the PRIMA SureNexus project. The first, “Exploring and Bridging Nexus for a Sustainable Future”, brought together 171 participants from 15 countries on 11 and 12 February at the Institut Agronomique et Vétérinaire Hassan II in Rabat, jointly with the BONEX project.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

The second brought the WEFE Nexus to Egypt and the MENA region on 13 and 14 May in Cairo, with 161 people registered from 23 countries —105 of them attending in person—, 21 invited speakers and the participation of the Egyptian Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation, Hani Sewilam, in the opening session.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

A cycle closing with four international projects

During 2025 the Chair completed four international projects:

●      SureNexus (PRIMA) · a project coordinated by the Chair that has applied the water–energy–food–ecosystems nexus approach through participatory artificial intelligence and digital twin methodologies. The work was carried out at demonstration sites across the Mediterranean —Spain, Greece, Tunisia and Morocco—, co-creating with farmers, managers and public authorities water and energy use scenarios assessed with shared indicators.  https://surenexus.eu

●      NUTABE (Colombia, with EPM) · a project coordinated by the Chair together with Empresas Públicas de Medellín for the ethnic strengthening of the Nutabe Indigenous community of Orobajo, in the municipalities of Sabanalarga, Peque and Ituango (Antioquia). Using a co-creation methodology, it has worked along four lines: women's empowerment, social fabric and family networks, psychosocial support in grief and territorial readaptation, and ethnic communication.

●      LIFE GreenAdapt · a European project led by AIMEN, with partners from Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands and Slovenia, devoted to adapting landfills to the challenges of climate change through nature-based solutions and techno-soils, with a demonstration site in As Somozas (Galicia). The Chair has taken part in the consortium on behalf of the UPC and has contributed the online training associated with the project.

More Info: https://lifegreenadapt.com , video

●      Living Museum of Water and Biodiversity of the Colombian Massif (Cauca) · promoted with the Government of Cauca, the Regional Autonomous Corporation of Cauca, the municipality of San Sebastián and the Indigenous and peasant communities of the Colombian Massif —a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve—, with the technical support of the Chair. Presented at COP16 on Biodiversity in Cali in October 2024, in January 2026 it was confirmed as a full member of WAMU-NET, the global network of water museums of UNESCO's IHP. More Info: Here

Two books on ancestral hydro-technologies, in the final stretch of editing

Work on ancestral hydro-technologies, one of the Chair's most consolidated lines, closes the cycle with two publications in the final stage of editing, together with the Intergovernmental Hydrological Programme for Latin America and the Caribbean (IHP-LAC), the UNESCO Office in Montevideo and the international association RECNET. Both build on the volume “Buenas prácticas sobre hidrotecnologías ancestrales como respuesta a la emergencia climática, sanitaria y alimentaria. Casos de estudio en América Latina” (2024), published as an IHP-IX technical document.

●      “Buenas prácticas sobre hidrotecnologías ancestrales para la emergencia climática, sanitaria y alimentaria. Casos de estudio en Iberoamérica” · brings together nine case studies from Latin America and documents, for each of them, both the engineering dimensions —design, materials, hydraulics and operation— and community participation, knowledge transmission and public policy. Its underlying thesis is not a return to the past, but the integration of these technologies into contemporary water management and into the WEFE nexus. Edited by Jordi Morató, Rosario Pastor, José Luis Martín Bordes and Javier Taks.

●      “Inventario de hidrotecnologías ancestrales y tradicionales en América Latina y el Caribe” · promoted by the IHP-LAC Working Group on Water Education and Culture together with the Conference of Ibero-American Water Directors (CODIA) and the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID). It establishes an operational definition of ancestral hydro-technology, a standardized data sheet for mapping cases and a regional network of focal points, with the aim of gathering at least one initiative per country.

• 

• 

And a cycle opening on five fronts

The new mandate opens with five strategic projects aligned with the priority UNESCO sets for this period: integrating science, local knowledge and community participation into the Intergovernmental Hydrological Programme.

Hydro Heritage Sites: towards a new UNESCO recognition category

The Chair coordinates the IHP Hydro Heritage Sites initiative for UNESCO's IHP, exploring a future international recognition category for living traditional water systems. Since no existing framework —World Heritage, Ramsar or FAO's GIAHS— places living hydrological functionality at its centre, the report submitted to the IHP in April 2026 proposes eight families of criteria and a three-tier nomination and evaluation pathway, based on a comparative corpus of 54 examples.

AIWARE: responsible artificial intelligence for water resilience in the Mediterranean

AIWARE (“Responsible AI for Water Resilience and WEFE Nexus Capacity Development in the Mediterranean”) is a pilot proposal under the UN-Water SDG 6 Capacity Development Initiative, promoted jointly by UNESCO and UN DESA, with the Chair acting as technical implementing partner. Between September 2026 and February 2028 it will work with three pilots —the Júcar basin, Tunisia and Albania— and a budget of 120,000 euros plus the in-kind contribution of the UPC and its partners. It does not seek to deploy technology, but to build a transferable capacity development package for 90 to 120 professionals, at least half of them women, which will be deposited in the UN-Water repository so that other Member States can replicate it. Its normative anchor is the UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence (2021).

SIRENA (PRIMA)

The SIRENA project (“Streamlining Nature-Based Solutions for Resilient and Sustainable Water Management in the Mediterranean Region”), funded by PRIMA, started in June 2026 and runs for three years. It aims to accelerate the uptake and scaling of nature-based solutions for water resilience and climate adaptation, with partners from seven Mediterranean countries —Egypt, France, Greece, Italy, Morocco, Spain and Tunisia— organized around three demonstration hubs.

Living Museum of Water and the Popayán urban node

The Cauca project enters its departmental development phase, with the preparation of its roadmap and the promotion, together with the Popayán City Council, of the Museum's urban node and of the project “Popayán, agua y patrimonio como sistema integrado”, with a Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) approach. In May 2026 the case was presented at AECID in Madrid (on the 14th) and at the UNESCO World Heritage Centre in Paris (on the 19th).

AI WEFE Nexus tool

The artificial intelligence tool developed over four years in the PRIMA SureNexus project for the analysis and modelling of the WEFE nexus will move on to international pilots: in South-East Asia, to assess water policies, and in Latin America, for the development of agro-industrial businesses in sectors such as cocoa and coffee.

The UNESCOSOST network of joint offices, towards 2026–2030

The network was built on two founding experiences: the first office opened in 2007 in Medellín, with the Tecnológico de Antioquia, and the second in 2014 in Salvador de Bahia, with the Universidade Federal da Bahia. It has since expanded across the rest of Latin America. With the 2022–2025 period closed, the network comprises sixteen offices: the UPC headquarters and fifteen offices in seven countries —Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras, Mexico and Peru—. The offices directly manage the projects arising from the international cooperation agreements promoted by the Chair and are articulated with the RECNET network.

The programme begins this cycle with an update of its working model: each office will sign an annual agreement with a common action plan organized by components —doctoral, master's, undergraduate and faculty mobility; publications; R&D&I projects; scholarships; training; conferences and outreach; and partnerships—, making it possible to plan, compare and evaluate the activity of the network as a whole.

“The renewal is not just continuity: it is the opportunity to reorganize the network, give visibility to the work of each office and measure what we do together over the next four years.” Jordi Morató, holder of the UNESCO Chair in Sustainability at the UPC

About the UNESCO Chair in Sustainability

Established in 1996 within the UNITWIN/UNESCO Chairs Programme, the UNESCO Chair in Sustainability of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya is an interdisciplinary, critical and solidarity-based space devoted to training, research and social innovation in sustainability, technology and humanism. It is based at the ESEIAAT, on the UPC Terrassa Campus.

About UNESCOSOST

UNESCOSOST is the Chair's international network of offices and support teams. Each office is created through an addendum to the framework agreement between the UPC and the host institution, and operates with a joint parity commission. More information at www.unescosost.org.

Contact: UNESCO Chair in Sustainability · ESEIAAT, UPC Terrassa Campus · C. Colom, 1 · 08222 Terrassa (Barcelona) · jordi.morato@upc.edu · www.unescosost.org