Education For Social, Economic And Environmental Sustainability

Originally published on the EASG website www.educationacademia.org

HLPF 2018: Transformation towards sustainable and resilient societies

The high-level political forum on sustainable development is the United Nations body focusing on reviewing the progress towards the achievements of the Sustainable Development Goals. This year’s Forum will meet at the UN headquarters in New-york from Monday, 9 July, to Wednesday, 18 July 2018. The ministerial meeting of the forum will be from Monday, 16 July, to Wednesday, 18 July 2018. The progress review towards the SDGS will focus in particular on goals related to sustainability and biodiversity.
You can download the full agenda here.

How does education relate to these goals

Education is the most sustainable, long-term driver of social, economic and environmental justice and for fostering transformation towards sustainable and resilient societies. The Sustainable Development Goals reviewed by the High Level Political Forum in 2018 rely on education for their realization and are at the same time determinant to the realization of Goal 4.

More particularly:

• Goal 6: Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all Education and training increase skills and the capacity to use natural resources more sustainably and can promote hygiene.
• Goal 7: Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all Educational programmes, particularly non-formal and informal, can promote better energy conservation and uptake of renewable energy sources.
• Goal 11: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable Education can give people the skills to participate in shaping and maintaining more sustainable cities, and to achieve resilience in disaster situations.
• Goal 12: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns Education can make a critical difference to production patterns (e.g. with regard to the circular economy) and to consumer understanding of more sustainably produced goods and prevention of waste.
• Goal 15: Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss Education and training increase skills and capacity to underpin sustainable livelihoods and to conserve natural resources and biodiversity, particularly in threatened environments.
• Goal 16: Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels Social learning is vital to facilitate and ensure participative, inclusive and just societies, as well as social coherence.

The EASG side event

The Education and Academia Stakeholder Group brings together human rights-based education civil society organisations as well as academia organisations and networks that work on the right to education.The EASG’s role is to ensure and facilitate meaningful participation of human rights-based education and academia organisations in UN policy spaces, including in the follow-up and review of the SDGs. The EASG is organised and coordinated by 4 organising partners, the GCE, ICAE, Education international and ESU.

The EASG is hosting a side event during the current session of the HLPF.

The event will gather civil society activists, teachers, academics and government authorities and officials to discuss the trends, gaps and main features of education in the context of the Sustainable Development Agenda.

From three different perspectives (civil society, governments and academia), the event is aiming to provide a comprehensive analysis of barriers and challenges of education for sustainable development.

HLPF_Annotated_ProgrammeThe event, Education for Social, Economic and Environmental Sustainability, will be held at 1.15pm-2.30pm, 9 July 2018, Conference Room 3, UN Conference Building.

All accredited HLPF participants are invited to attend. Please download the invitation here.