Abstract
When the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) was launched in 2005, the prevailing understanding of the concept of Sustainable Development among the general public was still very hazy. There was no universal consensus on what Sustainable Development involved. In other words we were working towards educating the public about sustainability concepts and issues without having a clear articulation of what constituted the goals of sustainable development or a consensus on this at the international level.
It was towards the end of the Decade, in 2015, that the United Nations was finally ready with the initial set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which amounted to 17 goals and 169 different targets. The major task after this has involved identifying indicators so that the progress towards these goals can be measured. While today the work is not over, we do have over 100 indicators available, and several others which are in discussion.
This brings in a major opportunity for the study and understanding of what sustainability is and therefore what Education for Sustainable Development or ESD should be. The opportunity involves engaging students, institutions of higher learning and others in looking at these measurements and seeing if they can integrate them with their education and the skills which they are acquiring.
There are many instances where these indicators are still in a developmental stage. There are aspects of the goals and targets which we do not know how to easily measure. Such cases provide the possibility of doing research and testing out different policies. So the formation of the SDGs was the first step but the work which is now happening on indicators gives us an opportunity to use them as a tool to do research in ESD. And we see that, as we go forward, this will be a major area for student engagement, in research, writing and action.
In this issue, one of the articles, for instance, talks about how to turn promises into action. The action agenda has been often defined in terms of the Handprint as an indicator and as a symbol of positive action. The Handprint was originally used in a school project of CEE in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. From there, in 2007, it was launched at the UNESCO International Conference on Environmental Education, which was held in Ahmedabad, India, to mark 30 years of the conference held in Tbilisi in Georgia. It was launched during this conference so that interested groups around the world could see its potential and use it. Today we find the Handprint is being used by several groups across the planet. It is therefore important that the Handprint become a tool to both guide students on what type of positive action they can take as well as measure such action. We need to work together on this.
At the first GAP (Global Action Programme) meeting - the Global Action Plan Meeting of UNESCO held in the month of April 2018 in Costa Rica - the first meeting of various groups working on Handprint was also held. It was decided then to form the Global Handprint Network (which has since become operational) and use this as a platform for sharing information. Both the articulation of SD Goals and indicators on one hand and the development of the Handprint on the other are invaluable tools for ESD in terms of research, learning and action for sustainable development.