What are the SDGs?

Figuur 1 The SDG Wedding Cake. Credit: Azote for Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University CC BY-ND 3.0

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.