Sustainability and SDGs

The HU strives to ensure that all study programmes provide sustainable education kennis- en innovatieagenda Samen Duurzaam (knowledge and innovation agenda Sustainable Together)). That is how sustainable development becomes part of the personal and professional actions of students and lecturers. To achieve this, it must be an integral part of regular education. Not just sustainability in a single course and/or module or in a single minor.

In our education, the students are the change agents who bring about the transition and are prepared for this role during their study programme by the lecturers who are themselves change agents. A sustainable transition means a movement toward making a positive contribution to restoring the balance between ecology, society and the economy, by achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Exactly what the sustainable transition of education looks like varies by study programme. By interweaving sustainable development where possible in learning outcomes, the body of knowledge and skills, competences, assignments and assessment, sustainable action becomes the new normal.

The SDGs are a coherent set of interdependent sustainable goals. For example, SDG 12 on sustainable production and consumption affects almost all the other goals. For example, if you produce, pollute and treat employees poorly, this will have a negative impact on SDGs 3, 6, 8, 14 and 15. Conversely, good education (SDG 4) can contribute to improving almost all other goals.

A frequently used arrangement of the SDGs is the pie model with three perspectives on the SDGs: biosphere, society and economy. All three perspectives are needed, but the arrangement is not arbitrary. Without a healthy biosphere, no healthy society and no healthy economy.

In our current era, the economy usually leads at the expense of the other two. In a sustainable society, the economy serves.

The SDGs are not just goals: sustainable values ​​underlie them. Often the description of the SDG includes a sustainable value. SDG 10 is explicitly about inequality and SDG 16 mentions justice. Other values ​​are in the description of the goals. For example, in SDG 15 on living on the land, the description includes values such as protection and restoration. For the translation into education, it can be helpful to look at the values, as they are closer to the experiences of lecturers and students.