Columbia Center for Sustainable Development (CSD) talks education, gender, and data usage alongside the International Conference on Sustainable Development

During the 2019 United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) week, the Center for Sustainable Development (CSD) of the Earth Institute, Columbia University partnered with Columbia University schools and organizations to host discussions surrounding education for sustainable development, gender, and data usage as a part of Sustainable Development Solutions Network's (SDSN) 2019 International Conference on Sustainable Development (ICSD).

In alignment with the conference theme of best practices for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), CSD’s gave this year’s focus to how the SDGs are being implemented from culture, cities and communities’ perspectives.

The week kicked off on Monday, September 23rd with Education for Sustainable Development in Culture, Cities and Communities event . The keynote, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, spoke on how important it is for all communities to focus on the Education Goal of SDGs, emphasizing that children to be trained on being global citizens and for teachers to understand the value of making children connect with the environment. The initiatives in Millburn township of New Jersey was highlighted with the presence of Mayor Dianne Thall-Eglow, who congratulated youth representatives, Vidya and Veda Bindal and Aalok Bhatt, Skaila Pundalik of the Eco Ambassadors Program. The program managed by Dr. Radhika Iyengar, Director of Education and designed by Haein Shin, Education Technical Adviser of CSD with a pilot summer program of 25 participants. The youth utilized Design for Change method to observe their immediate environments and devise as well as to act on a solution with their community members.

Educationalists, environment and sustainability experts, and inter-faith organizations were a part of the panel, including Kristin Lord (President and CEO of IREX), Gopal Patel (Director of Bhumi Project), Margie Turrin (Director of Educational Field Programs at the Earth Institute’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory) and Anna Rubbo (Senior Scholar at Center for Sustainable Urban Development). The experts stressed on localization of the SDGs, culturally appropriate education, imparting 21st century skills, connecting schools globally, and focusing on the overall development of children. The event closed with a call to action by Sanket Kumar, a youth climate activist at Saint Peter’s University.

On the gender front, CSD partnered with Barnard College's She's The First chapter to co-host Gender in Culture, Cities and Communities . The event opened with a video message sent from Nigeria's Kaduna State Government’s Commissioner of Ministry of Public Works and Infrastructure, Balaraba Aliyu-Inuwa. By sharing her personal and professional trajectories, she advocated for strong and meaningful women’s representation at various levels of leadership that goes beyond tokenism.

The event’s talk was given through a powerful message by Mark Greene, Senior Editor at Good Men Project and author of The Little #MeToo Book for Men . The toxic masculinity culture around the world detriments personal and societal relationships and power dynamics, and this conversation will be crucial to continue for any endeavor for gender equality and inclusion and equity for marginalized populations.

Moderated by Director of Education of CSD, Dr. Radhika Iyengar, the panel discussion with Professors Nidhi Thakur (Kean University) and Amita Gupta (CUNY), shed light on daily gender biases and inequalities that need to be caught in our conversations at schools, homes, businesses, and public spheres. The event closed with youth perspectives from Ines Im of Brearley School, sharing reflections on her research on menstrual hygiene management and education in India and Nepal, as well as a video footage created by Daehoon Chung on his service trip to Mariposa Foundation in the Dominican Republic, where the educational program is cultivating a new culture of living out and practicing the values that young women deem important in their lives.

On data usage, CSD partnered with School of Public and International Affairs (SIPA)'s Master of Public Administration in Development Practice (Development Practice Seminar Series) and SIPA's Pan-African Network to co-host Nigeria Kaduna State Government’s Data System for SDG Implementation .

Kaduna State Government’s Commissioner of Ministry of Public Works and Infrastructure, Balaraba Aliyu-Inuwa, shared the state government’s efforts to institutionalize the SDGs through multiple strands of drastic reforms, including revitalizing civil service, changing the teaching force to introduce better qualified teachers, incorporating more technology, and updating the usage of data and record-keeping via the bureau of statistics to develop targeted surveys and tools to decipher access to power, water, and sanitation. This took place in conjunction with an inch-by-inch aerial mapping of the state, to guide both planning and implementation.

A panel of data researchers, including Emilie Schnarr (Senior Research Associate at the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), a unit of the Earth Institute at Columbia University), Anela Layugan (Senior Research Staff Assistant of CIESIN) and Tara Stafford Ocansey (Senior Education Technology Specialist of CSD) presented examples of data usage for policy discussions via the Geo-Referenced Infrastructure and Demographic Data for Development (GRID3) Nigeria Project, which provides supports the country to collect, analyze, integrate, disseminate and utilize high-resolution geo-referenced data on population, boundaries, settlements and infrastructure along with other key spatial datasets for evidence-based development and humanitarian decision making.

As a part of the ICSD plenary session, Culture, Cities and Communities , CSD’s Director of Education, Radhika Iyengar, moderated the panel with Aromar Revi, founding Director of the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS) and Andreas Hutahaean, Deputy Director at the Coordinating Ministry for Maritime Affairs of Indonesia. Revi focused on the need for the SDGs to be viewed from more human communities perspective with the need to understand macro-level global population trends, movement of people, and bridging the spatial inequalities; and empathy as the key enabler for realizing the connected nature of the issues and the solution to bridge the current gaps. Hutahaean shared Indonesia’s plastic pollution issue affecting the island country, and creative and innovative endeavors in which the government explores reuse of plastic usage for goods and infrastructure.

The celebratory occasion of the week was also the Memoradun Of Understanding (MOU) signing between The Coordinating Ministry for Maritime Affairs of Indonesia and Center for Sustainable Development of The Earth Institute, Columbia University. The MOU signing, represented by Deputy Minister Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa and Director of research Operations Juliana Powell on behalf of the Trustees of Columbia University, enables maritime cooperation for capacity building and innovation, with plans for collaboration for environment and sustainability education initiatives engaging the public and communities in Indonesia, India, and the USA. The educational implementation initiatives aim to reduce plastic pollution, creatively reuse plastics and byproducts for consumer goods, while incorporating vocational training and community mobilization with government, community, academic institution, and social sector stakeholders for maximum reach.