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How Could SDGs Change Sustainability Studies Programs in North America?

Wed, April 17, 3:15 to 4:45pm, Hyatt Regency, Floor: Bay (Level 1), Bayview B

Proposal

This session considers how underlying, unseen assumptions about education shape “Sustainability Science” and “Sustainability Studies” academic programs at many North American universities and thus reproduce a narrative of global convergence towards “modernity,” consumption and industrialisation. We will explore if change to these assumptions is emergent and what lies ahead as Sustainability Studies academic programs embrace Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The SDGs, along with rising calls for Environmental Justice (EJ), present new challenges to sustainability programs on North American campuses, including the Sustainability Studies Minor at the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment (IonE) and hundreds of similar programs at more than 600 higher education members of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE). SDGs and EJ voices call into question existing paradigms of “development,” framed within the objectives of industrialised countries. Reconsideration of the impact of current lifestyles and livelihoods, as they exist in different parts of the word, on human wellbeing and planetary sustainability, becomes imperative. SDGs add complex layers to sustainability, posing questions not answerable through simple measures of carbon, education or GDP. Taking EJ seriously means higher education must include new voices, change priorities and grapple with questions, such as:

How to include community-based knowledge-holders;
How to take participatory approaches to research and decision-making;
How to share data in inclusive ways while also protecting people and heritage; and
How to acknowledge the presence and heritage of indigenous people and traditional knowledge holders in sustainability efforts.

University of Minnesota and many other AASHE members’ sustainability academic programs follow a “systems approach,” considering human and environmental processes simultaneously, looking across scales of place of time and integrating environmental, social and economic factors. Programs explore sustainability across disciplines, present trade-offs and multiple perspectives, and emphasize complexity. Many programs were created 5 to 10 years ago, when the prospects for effective work within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) seemed more hopeful and when a paradigms of human rights and international cooperation seemed less vulnerable. Recently, many sustainability education programs are reconsidering fundamental priorities.

SDGs are a compelling framework for changing sustainability programs, representing a way to build shared understanding and strengthen the place of social justice, environmental justice and human rights in curricula. In 2018, AASHE’s annual conference embraced the SDGs. The nearly 2,000 sustainability education faculty and staff attendees turned their attention to “global” sustainable development issues for the first time, with the following invitation:

“We stand at a key moment in history. As sustainability challenges intensify and the window for action grows smaller every day, the need for leadership by higher education is greater than ever. With a theme of ‘Global Goals: Rising to the Challenge,’ the 2018 AASHE Conference & Expo will examine the critical role of higher education in achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Adopted by the world’s governments in September 2015, the 17 SDGs establish ambitious global targets to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all by 2030.”
(citation - http://www.aashe.org/conference)

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