The Sustainable Development Goals are a universal call to action for a fair and sustainable world for all. To help realise these Goals, this Green European Foundation project aims to raise awareness of the topic among key Green actors and connect them across Europe.
Project Background
The United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people can enjoy peace and prosperity. The goals and targets are interdependent, acknowledging that only a systemic approach can help us to transform our world and societies. as they can only succeed when approached in an interconnected manner. SDGs are therefore the heralds of a new age, in which governance models move away from solving problems in silos – something the Green movement has already been calling for for many years.
SDGs set out ambitious and crucial systemic objectives for Europe, which can only be achieved through the cooperation of actors at all levels, from civil society and grassroots movements, to industries and policy-makers. However, SDG awareness among politicians, let alone citizens, is extremely limited. By acting to inform Green stakeholders, we can work towards achieving the SGDs.
Project Objectives & Activities
This GEF project aims to activate Green actors in the field of SDGs by connecting them with experts within the fields of system-thinking and SGDs and highlighting synergies between these parties.
In doing so, the project will increase awareness about the values and goals that the Green movement shares with the SDG agenda. It will also highlight the crucial role SDGs play in deciding future priorities for the EU and its member states.
The project included the development of an online course on the SDGs as part of the GEF Green Learning platform. The course is free and features interactive content, to make the topic accessible to a wider audience. The project will also see the publication of two larger books on SDG 3 and SDG 5, produced with the support of Ecopolis Foundation, that takes the implementation of those two goals in a Hungarian context in the focus. The publications are the result of conferences held in Budapest which brought together leading SDGs experts to share their vision on those particular goals, how they are interconnected with other goals and to look at the progress towards achieving them.
As a next step, the work done so far on SDGs 1 to 5 will be summarised in a compendium in English which aims to disseminate the findings of the Hungarian case study to a broader public and aims to feed into the wider debate across the EU and hopefully contribute to secure commitment to the implementation of SDGs amongst Green actors across Europe.
