The North-American Consortium for Sustainability Research (ENASRC), which brings together universities from Europe, Canada, Mexico and the United States of America, is the most recent network to be established by the FTZ NK.
The FTZ NK also coordinates the European School of Sustainability Science and Research (ESSSR) with over 70 member universities and colleges from all over Europe and manages the Inter-University Sustainable Development Research Programme (IUSDRP) the world's largest network of universities in the field of sustainable development research with 172 members.
Networking and the organisation of numerous specialist events have made the FTZ NK an extremely important institution in sustainability research with a unique track record: its portfolio includes almost 70 projects with a total volume of over 96 million euros, over 150 books, 91 book contributions and more than 300 peer-reviewed publications.
As a result, the centre, which was founded in 2007, now plays a central role in applied research on issues of sustainable development, helping to position the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW) prominently in the sustainability research scene. In addition, Prof. Dr Dr Walter Leal, Head of the FTZ NK, is on Stanford University's list of the world's top two per cent of scientists since 2021.
His first book on the topic of universities and sustainability ("Implementing Sustainable Development at University Level") was published in 1995, followed shortly afterwards in 1998 by the book "Umweltschutz und Nachhaltigkeit an Hochschulen", one of the first publications on the topic of sustainability at universities in German-speaking countries. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, the only peer-reviewed academic journal on sustainability in higher education, which he founded in 2000.
