Reflections on the Seminar on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Lifelong Learning

How Does Lifelong Learning promote the 17 SDGs?

From the Millennium (2000-2015) to the Sustainable Development Goals (2015-2030): nine syllables in three. SDG is easy to say and remember; one more ingredient in today’s alphabet soup of words and acronyms manufactured daily and soon abandoned? Will these aspirational goals for humankind and our shared eco-environment for these next 15 years lead from resolutions to successful action?

This was the theme of an animated day-long seminar at RMIT University in Melbourne on 11 February 2017, organised by PIMA in collaboration with RMIT. It linked with a recently started PIMA Special Interest Group (SIG) on the SDG’s facilitated by Bruce Wilson, Director of the RMIT EU Centre; a partnership venture with PIMA’s sister organisation PASCAL, which originated 15 years ago through RMIT at an OECD conference in Melbourne on the role of universities in (balanced) regional development.

Our subject was the contribution of lifelong learning (LLL) to the 17 SDGs. We focused on Goal 4 which featured LLL more strongly than did the MDGs, and without which many of the other Goals will prove (even more) unattainable. For this event, Goals 11 (cities and human settlements), 13 (climate change) and 16 (peaceful and inclusive societies) were addressed as well as Goal 4.

After an authoritative global overview of the genesis and context for the creation and adoption of the Goals by Robbie Guevara, the sessions were led respectively by Ken Thompson, drawing on the local Hume Global Learning Village experience; Jim Falk, for many years a leader nationally and globally of the battle-hardened activist Greenpeace environmental movement; and Steve Garlick, founder and for seven years leader of the Australian Animal Justice Party – perspectives from local through national to global. The final main session turned to Jane Niall and the chronically vital question of what governments at different levels can (and should?) do. How can such a subject as the SDGs be managed by systems which – inevitably? – charge different departments with separate duties? To which department of State do the SDGs ‘belong’?

‘SDGs’ simplifies vital ambition: to take back control of humankind’s self-management, and management of our shared eco-system – but not ‘take back control’ in any backward-facing sense that leads to isolated separatism rather than to better, shared, self-governance.

Seventeen ‘simple’ goals and their tasks determine, in their completion or shortfall, whether we become again custodians and privileged fellow-tenants of the land we occupy; or rapists-unto-its-death, with little time to achieve what as the Goals, each again unwrapped, prove to be complex, multifaceted and inter-connected.

The Seminar concluded purposefully with hope trumping despair, though desperation lurked near the surface. Enormity and urgency jostled for attention as the mismanagement of inter-personal relations and behaviours from neighbourhood to international level were spelt out. (Do sustainability and development not today carry such different connotations? Aren’t we swamped by competitive economic growth and election cycles?)

The Seminar closed with asking, but in no way answering, questions about how we in PASCAL, PIMA and a host of other radical and reformist civil society organisations and networks we can best influence and alter policy; and behind that culture, values and behaviour, so as to achieve essential and sustainable change: from lobbying, using the power of diverse mass and ever more prominent social media, to scholarly writing and teaching by doing.

The work of the SDG Seminar will become available through PASCAL, PIMA and other channels. The Seminar links with and feeds into the work of the PIMA-PASCAL SIG on the SDGs. This Special Interest Group is currently looking at four themes through four smaller groups listed below. A fifth group looking at SDG 4 itself and its connection across all the other SDGs is also under consideration.

1. The importance of LLL and learning communities for SDG 11 on cities - Peter Kearns and others; 
2. The discontinuities of existing food systems (SDG 2), with one target for comment being the proposed Scottish Good Food legislation – Kate Sankey and others; 
3. The challenges of multi-stakeholder engagement (SDG 16?) – Pat Inman; and
4. How organising and educational work on what matters in a particular place and context can lead to more informed and empowered political processes (SDG 8 and/or 12) - Shirley Walters and others.

All PIMA and PASCAL members and other colleagues are invited to join the SIG on the SDGs and work on one of its priority themes by writing to Bruce Wilson at: [email protected], if these things are important to them. If you wish to activate a group on another theme with the SDGs please likewise write to Bruce as soon as possible. You may copy to me as PIMA Secretary-General if you wish at [email protected].

The 17 SDGs

1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere;
2. End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agricultura;
3. Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all ages;
4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all;
5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls;
6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all;
7. Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all;
8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all;
9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and foster innovation;
10. Reduce inequality within and among countries;
11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe and sustainable;
12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns;
13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts;
14. Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development;
15. Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystem, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss;
16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective and accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels; and
17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalise the global partnership for sustainable development.

Chris Duke

Reproduced with permission from the PIMA No 10 Newsletter - February 2017