Education for Sustainable Development

Sustainable Development:

• It contains of two words:

* Sustainable

* Development

• Sustainable means to maintain/sustain something a certain rate for a long period of

time.

• Development means a process of evolution for growth

The Concept:

• The concept of sustainable came from Brundtland Report, 1987.

• It has shifted to focus more on economic development, social development and

environmental protection for future generations.

• It can be defined as the “development that meet the present needs without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”

• The need of sustainable development arises because on the name of economic

development we have damaged natural resources and that can be difficult for the
future generation to sustain.

• The focus of sustainable development goes beyond just the environment. It's also
about ensuring a strong, healthy and equal society.

Sustainable development is generally thought to have three components:

1
Sustainable Development Goals:
• SDGs are a set of 17 interrelated global goals.

• It contains 169 targets that need to be completed by the year 2030.

• It is also called 2030 Agenda for sustainable development.

• An agenda titled “Transforming Our World: the 2030 agenda for Sustainable
Development” was adopted at the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit.

• These goals were adopted at the United Nation Sustainable Development Summit.

• In the city of New York city in September 2015.

• These goals were adopted to create a sustainable future and address the global
challenges.

2
Goal: 1

End poverty in all its forms everywhere

Government Schemes:

 MGNREGA

 PMJAY

 NSAP

 PM Jeewan Jyoti Yojna

Goal: 2

End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable
agriculture.

Government Schemes:

 National food Security scheme

3
  Green revolution

 Developments in agriculture

 POSHAN abhiyan

 Mid-day meal scheme

Goal: 3

Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.

Government Schemes:

 National Mission on health

 PM JAY

 Primary health centres

 Mission Indra dhanush

 Red line campaign

 Janani Suraksha Yojna

4
Goal: 4

Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning
opportunities for all.

Government Schemes:

 SSA

 RUSA

 Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan

 INSPIRE

 SWAYAM

 MOOC’S

Goal: 5

Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.

Government Schemes:

 Reservation for women in Parliament

 Reservation in jobs

 Beti bachao- Beti Padhao scheme

 UJJWALA scheme

5
Goal: 6

Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.

Government Schemes:

 Swachha Bharat scheme

 National Ganga Mission

 Drinking water programme.

Goal: 7

Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.

Government Schemes:

o National solar Mission

o ISA

o PAHAL Subsidy

o DDUGJY

o PM SAUBHAGYA Scheme

6
Goal: 8

Promote sustained inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive
employment and decent work for all.

Government Schemes:

• Start-up India

• Stand-up India

• Skill India

• PM employment schemes

• PMKVY

Goal: 9

Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and

foster innovation

Government Schemes:

 PM Gram Sadak Yojna

 PM Adarsh Gram yojna

 Digital India

 PM Awas yojna

 Smart City

7
Goal: 10

Reduce inequality within and among countries.

Government Schemes:

 Various schemes for the SC/ ST section

 Schemes for the Women

 Assistance from World Bank, ADB, NDS

Goal: 11

Make cities and human settlement inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.

Government Schemes:

 Smart city

 Rurban mission

 AMRUT

 Awas Yojna

Goal: 12

Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.

8
Government Schemes:

 National biofuel policy

 Je-Van schemes

 Distributing LED

Goal: 13

Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.

Government Schemes:

o NAQI

o NAPCC

Goal: 14

Conservation and sustainable use of the oceans, seas and marine resources for
sustainable development.

Government Schemes:

 Marine parks

 CRZ

 Schemes against oil spill

9
Goal: 15

Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystem, sustainably

manage forests, combat desertification

Government Schemes:

• UNCCD WPA 1972

• AIR act NAPCC

• Water Act Project Tiger

• CAMPA Project Elephant

• Biosphere reserves Project Snow Leopard

Goal: 16

Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide

access to justice, accountable institutions

Government Schemes:

 Speedy justice

 Jan Adalats

 Reduce corruption

 Lok Adalats

 Jan sunwai

10
Goal: 17

Strengthen the means of implementation and partnership for global efforts.

Government Schemes:

 Various International efforts like Paris deal

 ISA

WHO MONITOR THE SDG’s?

 The agency responsible to monitor the working, implementation of the Sustainable

development goals is the Division for Sustainable Development Goals (DSDG) in
the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA).

 The DSDG provides substantive support and capacity-building for the SDGs and their
related thematic issues, including water, energy, climate etc.

 It also monitors the Global Sustainable Development Report (GSDR), along with
establishing partnerships and looking for the Small Island Developing States. DSDG
plays a key role in the evaluation of UN system wide implementation of the 2030
Agenda and on advocacy and outreach activities relating to the SDG.

What is NITI Aayog Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Index?

 NITI Aayog has introduced the SDG India Index in 2018.

 The SDG India Index 2019-20, developed by NITI Aayog, was launched on
December 30th, 2019.

 The Index has been constructed spanning across 16 out of 17 SDGs with a qualitative
assessment on SDG 17.

 It tracks the progress of all the States and Union Territories (UTs) on a set of 100
National Indicators derived from the National Indicator Framework.

11
  The SDG India Index—which has been developed in collaboration with the Ministry
of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), United Nations in India,
and Global Green Growth Institute—was launched by NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman
Dr. Rajiv Kumar.

 A composite score was computed in the range of 0–100 for each State/UT based on its
aggregate performance across 16 SDGs.

Classification criteria based on SDG India Index score is as follows

 Aspirant: 0–49

 Performer: 50–64

 Front Runner: 65–99

 Achiever: 100

Performance of the states according to the SDG India Index 2021

• Top Performers: Kerala retained its rank as the top state with a score of 75.

• Both Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu took the second spot with a score of 74.

• Worst Performers: Bihar (52), Jharkhand (56), and Assam (57) were the worst-
performing states in this year’s India index.

• Top Performer Union Territories: Chandigarh maintained its top spot among the
UTs with a score of 79, followed by Delhi (68) and Lakshadweep (68).

• New Front Runners added to the list: Uttarakhand, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Mizoram,
Punjab, Haryana, Tripura, Delhi, Lakshadweep, Andaman and Nicobar Islands,
Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh graduated to the category of front-runners (scores
between 65 and 99, including both).

• As per the report, Tamil Nadu and Delhi have done well on improving the per capita
income of individuals.

• Gujarat and Delhi have given the best performance in the health sector, while Kerala
and Chandigarh have done well in education.

12
 • Top Gainers: Mizoram, Haryana, and Uttarakhand have been top gainers with 12, 10,
and 8 points respectively.

Where does India stand?

• The country’s overall SDG score improved by 6 points – from 60 in 2019 to 66 in

2020-21.

• This positive stride towards achieving the targets is largely driven by exemplary
country-wide performance in goal 6 (clean water and sanitation) and goal 7
(affordable and clean energy), where the composite goal scores are 83 and 92,
respectively.

Areas of Weakness

• Goal 2 (Nutrition Zero Hunger): It is largely driven by the level of stunting, wasting
among children, anaemia among women, underweight children, pregnant women with
anemia, etc.

• Goal 5 (Gender equality): This goal talks about women’s participation in the
economy and political arena, gender parity, security of women, women’s control over
family planning, labour force participation rate, operational landholding, managerial
positions in the company, equal pay, etc.

• These two areas still belong to the aspirant categories or red zone under which scores
lie between 1 to 49. Hence, these are the areas that have to be worked upon by not
only the government but also with the efforts of the whole society and synergies
across the departments.

• Although there has been an improvement in goals 2 and 5 in comparison to 2019 in

terms of the scores rising from 42 to 48, none of the states belong to the green zone in
goals 2 and 5.

• Some of the states doing well in goal 5 are Chattisgarh, Kerala, Himachal Pradesh,
Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh. The states at the bottom are Assam, Arunachal
Pradesh, Tripura, and Assam. Hence, these are the critical states which require a lot
more attention.

13
OTHER RECENT INITIATIVES BY INDIA:

 In India, the Petroleum Ministry, in consultation with public oil marketing companies,
decided the date of BS-VI grade auto fuels in NCT of Delhi with effect from 1 April
2018 instead of 1 April 2020.

 Around 13 cities will switch over cleaner Euro standard six this year.

 BS-IV will not be sold after March 2020 in India.

 ‘Only One Earth’ – was the theme of environment day this year.

 Under the International Solar alliance mission, which is a first mission India gave to
the world regarding the environment, and it contains the largest group of countries
part of it after the United Nations itself. It aims to generate 1000 GW of solar energy.
The countries that lie within the tropics are a member of the ISA; these countries are
called the sunshine countries.

Education for Sustainable Development

Education for sustainable development (ESD) is defined as education that encourages

changes in knowledge, skills and values attitudes to enable a more sustainable and just
society for all.

ESD aims to empower and equip current and future generations to meet their needs using
a balanced and integrated approach to the economic, social and environmental dimensions
of sustainable development.

14
Being an Educator for Sustainable Development

1. Environmental awareness

2. Competencies for the knowledge economy

3. Human/social capital economic growth

4. Inclusive education

The guidance set for teachers:

1. Acknowledge their key role as a cornerstone of effective ESD programme and co-
developers of the curricula.

2. Understand the cross cutting (main streaming) and multi-disciplinary nature of ESD

3. Avoid overloading the curriculum and to solely link ESD to one or two disciplines

4. Be open to divers learning strategies

5. Appreciate the importance of multi-stakeholder partnership working together to solve

a shared problem.

Challenges and Barriers to ESD:

 Increasing awareness that ESD is essential.

 Structuring and placing ESD in the curriculum

 Listing to existing issues - educational reform and economic variability.

 Facing the complexity of sustainable development concept

 Developing an ESD program with community participation

 Engaging traditional disciplines in a trans- disciplinary framework

 Sharing the responsibility

 Building human capacity

 Developing framework and material resources

 Developing policy.

15
Conclusion:

• ESD must be locally relevant and culturally appropriate, reflecting the environmental
economic and several conditions of the community.

• ESD should be created through a process of public participation in which stakeholders

from across the community can express their visions for a sustainable community and
what an education reoriented to address sustainability should include.

• Each discipline, teacher and administrator can contribute to ESD

• Communities and school system should work together to achieve community

sustainability goals

• Education is our greatest hope for a sustainable future. By contemplating and taking
on the important task of implementing ESD, one can bring the possibility of a more
sustainable future to her/his community and nation.

Reference:

1. Robert Brinkmann, Introduction to Sustainability, John Wiley Publishers.

2. Education for Sustainable development: Challenges, Strategies and Practices in a
Globalizing World.
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_development
4. https://sdgs.un.org/goals

16