The United Nations define sustainable development as “development that meets current demands without jeopardizing future generations’ ability to fulfil their own needs.”
As a result, sustainable development addresses environmental challenges and economic, social, and cultural ones as well. Given the rising pressures imposed on society and the environment due to greater human migration, growing urbanization and industrialization, and the continued depletion of non-renewable resources, global action is required to create a more sustainable future.
With its core role as a knowledge creator, higher education can be a potent tool for fostering a more sustainable future. As a result, in recent years, the notion of “education for sustainable development” has emerged as one of the most important educational initiatives for addressing many issues related to human growth.
Indeed, as the globe becomes more globalized and interdependent, higher education’s role in ensuring a sustainable future will presumably become more important.
Access and sustainable development
Education for sustainable development, according to UNESCO, “empowers people to transform the way they think and work toward a sustainable future.” As a result, it entails ensuring that everyone has access to high-quality education at any age.
It entails informing students about the importance of sustainable development through the integration of sustainable development themes into all elements of teaching, research, and service.
This entails reorienting education at all levels to encourage people to think and act in ways that promote a more sustainable world (for example, global citizenship, recycling, climate change, biodiversity, renewable energy and social responsibility).
In practice, this entails providing pupils with the necessary knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values to ensure a long-term future. Students should develop critical and creative thinking skills, participate in authentic interdisciplinary learning activities, and establish a value system that emphasizes personal, social, and environmental responsibility.
As a result, education for sustainable development and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are inextricably linked. Indeed, a growing number of universities are offering sustainable development degree and certificate programmes.
Global problems require global action.
We have significant global difficulties in the modern-day (for example, the refugee crisis, global climate change, extreme poverty, and illiteracy), which are best addressed by universal education and international cooperation.
Higher education not only has a role to play, but it also has the potential to lead that effort. These challenges have been explored in past University World News pieces and the forces that are causing them.
The UN has set 17 broad and interrelated goals for creating a sustainable future on our planet through their SDG programme, with a target date of 2030. The UN’s 193 member states and global civil society have come together to form the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which serve as a strategic framework and a bold normative vision for the future.
Higher education’s primary mission as a knowledge producer cuts across all learning fields. As a result, higher education plays a unique role in achieving the SDGs. Purpose Four, in particular, is concerned with education, with the goal of “ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all.”
People are equipped with the necessary information and skills to address a sustainable future through high-quality education and lifelong learning. Therefore education becomes critical to attaining all of the SDGs.
Furthermore, higher education institutions can engage in the United Nations Higher Education Sustainability Initiative, and the United Nations University offers numerous instances of sustainability in action.
Higher education institutions play a critical role in implementing and promoting sustainable development activities through their institutional policies and practices. What can higher education leaders, teachers, and students do to incorporate sustainable development into their institutional vision, purpose, and values statements, strategic plans, and organizational culture are one of the main concerns to be addressed.
Addressing SDG Goal Four
According to UNESCO, inclusion is “…a process of understanding and reacting to the diversity of needs of all children, youth, and adults by promoting involvement in learning, cultures, and communities while reducing and eliminating exclusion within and from education.”
Equity is defined as the notion of fairness that every person has an equal opportunity to access and participate in education. As a result, equity requires knowing student learning requirements to remove roadblocks to student academic success.
Because good practices beginning with solid research, the International Higher Education Teaching and Learning Association (HETL) has developed a book series titled International Perspectives on Equity and Inclusion to help address inclusive and equitable quality education.
Educational researchers from around the world explore four critical topics in higher education in this upcoming series, each of which has been developed into its volume:
• Gender Identities and Diversity
• A Wide Range of Student Personalities
• Strategies for Facilitating Inclusive Campuses
• Strategies for Fostering Inclusive Classrooms.
All forms of learning (formal, non-formal, and informal) that are conducted throughout one’s life to gain or develop one’s knowledge, skills, competencies, and values are referred to as lifelong learning.
HETL has established a book series titled Refugee Education to help address lifelong learning possibilities for all. Educational experts from around the world discuss three significant concerns in higher education related to the refugee crisis in this upcoming series, each of which has been developed into its volume:
- Policies and Objectives for Refugee Education,
- Language Teaching and Education
- Integration and Acceptance of Refugees in Mainstream Society
These peer-reviewed volumes include case studies and other empirical research that can be used to draw real-world examples, as well as theoretical models and frameworks that show why inclusion, equity, and lifelong learning have become essential in the modern era and how these issues are being addressed around the world.
Meeting challenges and mitigating barriers
“It is crucial to underline that sustainable development works as an organizing concept because it recognizes the interconnectedness of complex environmental and social systems,” writes Taya Louise Owens.
As a result, achieving a sustainable future entails much more than simply establishing green campuses, recycling programmes, or global citizenship projects. It could also entail adopting more blended learning programmes, forming more university collaborations focused on sustainable development, and incorporating sustainable development challenges and projects into the curriculum at all levels and across all disciplines.