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      The Contribution of UNESCO Chairs toward Achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals

      , , , ,
      Sustainability
      MDPI AG

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          Abstract

          The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) aims to enhance peace, security, and sustainable development by fostering international collaboration. Based on this aim, it stands to reason that the organization ought to contribute to the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In this research, we examined how an important program of UNESCO, the UNESCO Chairs, contributes to the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). Specifically, we studied the activities of 34 UNESCO Chairs from seven countries of the Northern Hemisphere (Germany, Iceland, Portugal, Slovenia, South Korea, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom) to assess the contribution of the chairs toward the UN SDGs. The data for this study are based on in-depth narrative interviews, and we used Hermeneutic Content Analysis, a mixed methods framework, for analysis. Our results show that, unsurprisingly, all chairs contribute to UN SDG 4 (Quality Education) and 17 (Partnerships for the Goals) based on their extensive research and teaching activities. Interestingly, their academic focal areas contribute to specific UN SDG clusters. Using Multidimensional Scaling, we analyzed the UN SDG clusters across different focal areas to reveal the implicit models of sustainability among the chairs. Our findings have implications on the limits of how UNESCO Chairs conceptualize sustainability and show how this has positive and negative consequences on their contribution toward achieving the UN SDGs.

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            Sustainability requires living within the regenerative capacity of the biosphere. In an attempt to measure the extent to which humanity satisfies this requirement, we use existing data to translate human demand on the environment into the area required for the production of food and other goods, together with the absorption of wastes. Our accounts indicate that human demand may well have exceeded the biosphere's regenerative capacity since the 1980s. According to this preliminary and exploratory assessment, humanity's load corresponded to 70% of the capacity of the global biosphere in 1961, and grew to 120% in 1999.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                SUSTDE
                Sustainability
                Sustainability
                MDPI AG
                2071-1050
                December 2018
                November 28 2018
                : 10
                : 12
                : 4471
                Article
                10.3390/su10124471
                c300fabb-4e98-4066-80b4-1192808aa51b
                © 2018

                https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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