International Conference on Education as a Driver for Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

Introduction

The United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UN DESD) (2005–2014) highlighted the vital role that education can and must play in the journey towards sustainable development. In September 2015, the UN formally adopted the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) as an outcome of a major global consultative process.

Following this, an international conference titled, ‘Education as a Driver for Sustainable Development Goals’ (ESDG), was organized by the Centre for Environment Education (CEE), India, in partnership with United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Government of India. The conference was organized from 11 to 13 January 2016, at CEE, Ahmedabad, India, with the aim of bringing together global experience and expertise to highlight and strengthen the role of education in realizing the SDGs. It was an opportunity to build upon the learnings from the UN DESD and recognize education as a key enabler.

The SDGs are applicable to the world as a whole. Increasingly, the emphasis has moved away from a solely economic view of development to a larger view that includes the three pillars of sustainability: environmental, social and economic. With this new emphasis comes also the recognition that policy instruments or technological solutions are not going to be enough and that behavioural change is critical to achieving sustainable development. Thus, the role of education in its broadest sense—including training and capacity building, communication and creating public awareness, scientific research, sharing and access to information and networking and partnerships—becomes a key strategy for achieving the SDGs.

Workshops

In all, the conference involved 17 working groups and a total of 21 workshops over a period of three days. These workshops were organized on the lines of the 17 SDGs. The themes of the workshops are given in Table 1.

Table 1

Workshop Themes of ESDG Conference

S. No.	Topic
Workshop 1	Poverty Alleviation
Workshop 2	Sustainability Education for Achieving Food Security and Promoting Sustainable Agriculture
Workshop 3	Ensuring Continuum of Quality Care for Healthy Lives and Well-being
Workshop 4	Quality Education
4.1	ESD for Transforming Formal Education (school systems)
4.2	Early Childhood Development, Care and Pre-primary Education: Cornerstone for Achieving SDGs
4.3	Higher Education and TVET: Addressing Pedagogy, Curriculum, Research and Spaces of Learning
4.4	Empowering Youth for a Sustainable Future—Youth Empowerment and SDGs
4.5	Enable Teachers, Enable Learning
4.7 (a)	Youth-led Monitoring of SDG 4.7: Youth as Game Changers of Data Revolution for SDGs
4.7 (b)	Environmental Education, Ethics and Action: Re-imagining Critical Skills for Sustainable Lifestyles and Global Citizenship
Workshop 5	Gender Equality and Empowerment
Workshop 6	Sustainable Management of Water and Sanitation
Workshop 7	Access to Sustainable and Modern Energy
Workshop 8	Sustainable Economic Growth
Workshop 9	Sustainable Industrialization and Infrastructure
Workshop 10	Education for Equality
Workshop 11	Sustainable Cities and Human Settlements
Workshop 12	Education: A Key-enabler in Achieving Sustainable Consumption and Production
Workshop 13	Combating Climate Change and its Impacts
Workshop 14	Conservation and Sustainable use of Marine Ecosystem and Resources
Workshop 15	Conservation and Sustainable Use of Terrestrial Ecosystems and Resources; Combating Desertification and Land Degradation
Workshop 16	Justice and Peace
Workshop 17	Unified Ways and Unified Decisions—Partnerships for Implementation

Source: http://ceeindia.org/esdg/Workshop%20Themes.html

Note: ESD: education for sustainable development; TVET: technical and vocational education and training.

Plenaries

The conference held five plenary sessions which brought together well-known professionals from diverse fields to talk about high priority areas that need to be focused on, like the importance of education in achieving sustainable development, as well as useful indicators and tools to measure the impacts of our policies and actions. Highlights from the presentations are summarized next.

Inaugural Plenary

In the inaugural session, experts from different backgrounds spoke about the importance of the conference and the need to look at workable solutions to problems in order to achieve the 17 SDGs.

Irina Bokova, Director General of UNESCO, in her video message, said that the 2030 agenda for sustainable development charts a new course for people, for peace and for the planet for the next 15 years. Taking this forward requires new ways of thinking, interacting with others and the world, and this is why education must be the starting point to shape new venues and behaviours for the century ahead.

Mr Ibrahim Thiaw, Deputy Executive Director, UNEP, in his video message, shared his wishes for a successful and insightful conference and emphasized that ‘education’ is a cross-cutting issue, without which none of the SDGs can be achieved.

Mr Susheel Kumar, Special Secretary to the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Government of India, gave an introduction to the shift from Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to SDGs and iterated that climate change has also become a cross-cutting issue along with education. He also pointed out the importance of policymakers being educated on these issues.

Shri O.P. Kohli, Governor of Gujarat, inaugurated the conference and spoke about the need to alter our lifestyles, habits and values to save the environment. He also pointed out that our traditional ways of life were much more inclusive of our environment and all life forms around us, which led to respect and care for the environment.

Plenary 1: Role of Education

The first plenary of the conference was focused on the role of education in achieving sustainable development. Various experts commented on the right educational tools that could become viable solutions to the world’s problems.

Adriana Valenzuela, who is the Focal Point for Education, Training and Public Awareness at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Bonn, Germany, spoke about three main topics: (i) the significance of the agreements made during UNFCCC Conference of Parties (COP) 21 in Paris; (ii) how education has been integrated into the climate change agreement; and (iii) the relevance of the ESDG conference and its potential to come up with recommendations for change.

Mahesh Pradhan, Head of UNEP’s Environmental Education and Training Unit, shared the activities and objectives of the Global Universities Partnership on Environment and Sustainability (GUPES), a flagship programme of UNEP’s higher education sustainability initiative. He also touched upon the universal nature and integrated approach of SDGs.

Prasad Menon, Chairman, Tata–SIA Airlines, pointed out the importance of including and co-opting the industries in the process of creating a sustainable planet, rather than excluding them.

Ashok Khosla, Director, Development Alternatives, shared a brief insight on what sustainability really means and the relevance of Gandhian values and thoughts in achieving it.

Aromar Revi, Director, Indian Institute of Human Settlements, spoke of how urbanization has increased since the last 100 years, the challenges of urbanization as well as the enormous economic opportunities that this phenomenon provides. He raised the question of how our systems of knowledge creation and education can be reoriented to make things possible.

Dr Anil Kumar Gupta, Executive Vice Chair, National Innovation Foundation, spoke about the importance of learning through experience and the need to encourage children to ask questions. According to him, it is important to focus on the kind of education which will help us achieve SDGs and explore ways to engage the society in the process.

Plenary 2: Measuring Indicators and Tracking Progress

Jean Christophe Carteron, Director of Corporate Social Responsibility, KEDGE Business School, France, touched upon the question of why we need to measure sustainable behaviour, and then spoke also on the responsibility of an educational institution for its students’ sustainable behaviour.

Sudarshan Iyenger, former Vice Chancellor, Gujarat Vidyapith, India, highlighted the relevance of and need to generate authentic data for measurement. He also spoke about the need for the education of the hand, head and heart.

Sonal Zaveri, Joint Secretary and Treasurer, Community of Evaluators, South Asia, emphasized the need for strong tools for evaluating our work and progress in order to achieve efficiency in achievement of these goals. She discussed the need to link activities to outcomes, collect evidence that is policy relevant, as also the need to identify the users and uses of the evaluation reports so that it is put to the right use. Reiterating that evaluations are an extremely powerful resource, she went on to state that maximizing the use of evaluation and making it actionable are important.

Martand Shardul, Representative for South-Asia at Youth Assembly of UN Sustainable Development, touched upon the need for targets and indicators at four levels: global, regional, national and thematic. He also pointed out the need to bring the youth onboard in the dialogue on SDGs since they will be the torchbearers by the time the SDGs are achieved.

Plenary 3: GAP and SDGs—Strengthening Commitments

In this panel chaired by Charles Hopkins, UNESCO Chair on Reorienting Teacher Education, several experts spoke on global, regional, national and local experiences in educating for sustainable development.

Alexander Leicht, Chief, Section of Education for Sustainable Development, UNESCO, gave a comprehensive introduction to Global Action Programme (GAP), including its rationale and aspects.

Shepherd Urenje, Environmental and Sustainability Education Programme Specialist at Swedish International Centre of Education for Sustainable Development, shared experiences on training teachers in Southern Africa and Scandinavia, highlighting that for schools to be ready for such trained teachers, the government departments of education also need to be co-opted in the endeavour.

Osamu Abe, Director of ESD Research Centre, Rikkyo University, Japan, discussed the national action plan of Japan which focuses on integration of ESD through sustainable community development. He also noted that at the local level, Japan needs to build a resilient society in view of the frequent disaster it faces. He brought out the need to localize the international agenda, that is, SDGs, in order to impact formal and non-formal education.

Meagan Fallone, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Barefoot College International, and Founder, Step-up Consulting, shared experiences and the impacts of educating women in villages of Rajasthan to develop, sell and maintain solar appliances.

Heila Lotz-Sisitka, Professor in Education, Murray and Roberts Chair in Environmental Education, Rhodes University, discussed in detail the idea of transformative learning, which is closely linked to motives, interests and values. It has to be humanistic, dialogical and deliberative, while also involving creativity and re-imagining. She concluded with the thought that we should not lose the important qualities of transformative education and learning in our quest for measurement of outcomes.

Sarah Dobson, Youth Coordinator, Earth Charter International (ECI), explained some of the initiatives taken/courses started by ECI for youth as part of their commitment to GAP.

Torvald Jacobsson, Director, Young Masters Programme (YMP) on ESD, shared the experiences of conducting the YMP course in different countries.

Closing Plenary

Sunita Narain, Director, Centre for Science and Environment, India, spoke about the role of education and the need to reinvent educational methods to bring about transformative action which is imperative. She spoke about what we can do to combat climate change and pollution.

Jim Taylor, Director of Environmental Education, Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa (WESSA), took the audience through the process of drafting and finalizing the Ahmedabad Plan of Action, the outcome document of the conference, with inputs from participants. He also noted that non-measureable factors such as dignity, empathy, passion, commitment, kindness, care and vigour are crucial to create an enabling atmosphere for educational transformation towards sustainability.

Kartikeya Sarabhai, Director, CEE, concluded the plenary with an overview of the conference and ideas for the way forward.

In Conclusion

Details of the conference, workshop recommendations, the outcome document and videos of speakers can be accessed at http://ceeindia.org/esdg/