Impact Rankings 2023: life on land

The Times Higher Education Impact Rankings are the only global performance tables that assess universities against the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We use carefully calibrated indicators to provide comprehensive and balanced comparison across four broad areas: research, stewardship, outreach and teaching.

This table on SDG 15 – life on land measures universities’ research on life on land and their education on and support for land ecosystems.

The list includes 586 institutions from 80 countries/regions.

View the methodology for Impact Rankings 2023: life on land (SDG 15)

The ranking is led by University of Manchester in the UK. Western Sydney University in Australia and the University of East Anglia in the UK complete the top three.

The UK is the most-represented nation in the top 100 with 25 institutions, followed by Canada with 11 and Japan with 10.

The Impact Rankings are inherently dynamic: they are growing rapidly each year as many more universities seek to demonstrate their commitment to delivering the SDGs by joining our database; and they allow institutions to demonstrate rapid improvement year-on-year, by introducing clear new policies, for example, or by providing clearer and more open evidence of their progress. Therefore, we expect and welcome regular change in the ranked order of institutions (and we discourage year-on-year comparisons) as universities continue to drive this urgent agenda.

View the full results of the overall Impact Rankings 2023

Read our analysis of the Impact Rankings 2023 results


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Explore Impact Rankings for individual SDGs