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Wrapping up the 10th Year at SDSN

By SDSN

SDSN had a milestone year where we celebrated our 10-year anniversary and launched our new Secretariat office in Kuala Lumpur. A number of our networks, programs, and teams supported the progress towards achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Climate Agreement. Take a look back at 2022 with us.

Climate & Energy

Over the last year, the C&E team has worked around the world to support long-term decarbonization pathways planning in collaboration with our networks and partners. In the US, we worked closely with SDSN USA Chair Gordon McCord, the County of San Diego, and UC San Diego on the 2022 San Diego Regional Decarbonization Framework Initiative via the technical report and accompanying Guide, as well as with the City of Cleveland Office of Sustainability and Climate Justice to convene a decarbonization workshop and scoping exercise. Globally, the Council of Engineers for the Energy Transition (CEET) hosted several events and released a statement at COP27. SDSN also worked closely with Monash University, ClimateWorks Centre, and a globally representative Academic Advisory Panel on a Net Zero Campus Guide, to be formally launched in early 2023. Finally in 2022, the SDSN Global Climate Hub was launched in partnership with the Academy of Athens to provide science-based recommendations for combating the climate crisis and implementing country-specific action plans worldwide. 

Food & Land Teams

FABLE

In March, the Food, Agriculture, Biodiversity, Land-use, and Energy (FABLE) Consortium published a Policy Brief for global and national policymakers participating in the CBD COP15 entitled “Pathways for food and land use systems to contribute to global biodiversity targets” building the case for embedding biodiversity conservation into land-use planning and food production systems to halt biodiversity loss, achieve food and nutrition security, and meet Paris Climate Agreement targets.

In June, the 11th meeting of the FABLE Consortium gathered over 60 participants to take stock of its model developments, policy engagement and goals for the coming year. The meeting was launched with a policy workshop entitled ‘Farm to Fork: How to make it work for Europe and the planet’, created in partnership with the EESC.

In August 2022, SDSN signed an MoU with Colombia’s Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development to strengthen international cooperation for the implementation of the Macro-basin Strategic Plans (PEM), in line with Colombia's 2021 Climate Action Law 2169. In September, the FABLE website was launched and continues to expand with more features.

In addition, 12 papers by the FABLE Consortium were published in the journal Sustainability Science, as part of FABLE’s Special Feature: Globally-Consistent National Pathways towards Sustainable Food and Land-use Systems.

Ahead of COP27, FABLE published a Policy Brief on “National food and land mitigation pathways for net zero” highlighting how countries’ food and land use systems can contribute to net zero targets and hold global warming below 2˚C. The team also co-led the chapter on food and land systems in the 2022 UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report. At COP27, the team participated in three side events: Insights from the Emissions Gap Report 2022 at the European Union Pavilion; Food systems transformation. Why we need to accelerate the transformation and how to do it, at the Nordic Pavilion; and "Changing Systems – Resource Solutions for Planetary Stability" at the Global Innovation Hub.

FELD Action Tracker

2022 was an eventful year with consequential – if not historic – agreements on the global climate and nature agendas: at COP27 in Sharm el Sheikh, with new momentum and increased visibility of the role of food systems and land use; and at COP15 in Montreal less than one week ago, with a new global biodiversity framework with targets and mandate for monitoring action on nature. The FELD team contributed to both COPs, directly and through the FOLU Coalition with an updated critical analysis of NDCs; through the first-ever food systems pavilion at a climate conference and inputs to the actual negotiations; and by sharing our experience in tracking action on nature. In addition to FELD’s global involvement, the SDSN Food/Land team organized a policy dialogue with key EU and NGO stakeholders in Brussels, and we were excited to kickstart the new FELD Catalyst project to support locally-driven policy dialogue in collaboration with SDSN Kenya. As SDSN celebrates its 10th anniversary, we look forward to 2023 as a critical year for the SDGs – to accelerate country action for development, climate, and nature!

Networks

The SDSN Networks program reached the milestone of 50 networks this year and our global membership grew to nearly 1800 institutions, making the SDSN by far the largest such organization in the world. Our annual Networks in Action report,launched in September, highlights all the major accomplishments of these national, regional and thematic networks. Our networks also engaged in new partnerships with G-STIC and PANORAMA for the Global Solutions Forum and with Siemens Gamesa for the Universities for Goal 13 award – both of which have been renewed for 2023 – as well as research commissioned by GIZ on building forward better with a focus on reducing inequalities and Leaving No One Behind.

At the end of 2021, the Networks program launched the regional University Presidents Meetings. The series started with the Asia-Pacific regional meeting in December which brought together 135 participants, including the Presidents of 98 Universities from 31 different countries. The high-level meetings continued in the first months of 2022 for Central Asia, Europe and Middle East in January, for Africa in March, and for the Americas in April. These regional dialogues intended to strengthen the partnership between the UN and universities around the world. A report on the learnings from the University Presidents Meetings is forthcoming.

The Networks program also published three new SDG Action publications to support the UN’s Decade of Action: the SDGs Edition in July for the High-level Political Forum, a Special Edition on cities in October, and the Climate Action Edition for COP27. Written by world-leading experts, the SDG Action pieces are a resource for sustainability practitioners in all sectors and provide timely analysis of the most pressing challenges, while identifying tangible ways to accelerate progress.

Science Panel for the Amazon (SPA)

Since the launch of the landmark 2021 Amazon Assessment Report at COP26 in Glasgow, the SPA has become a key point of reference on the Amazon, and had several major achievements in 2022, including the launch of three policy briefs at COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh; an official side-event at the UN High-Level Political Forum on “A Green and Inclusive Recovery for the Amazon”; briefings on the report for presidential candidates in Colombia and Brazil; increased dialogues with the Academies of Science of the region, including events held with the Academia de Ciencias del Ecuador and the Academia Nacional de Ciencias del Perú; and a summer seminar course co-organized with Columbia University. We also welcomed Dr. Dolors Armenteras, Professor at the National University of Colombia, as the new Co-Chair of the SPA, alongside Dr. Carlos Nobre, and Dr. Braulio Dias, former Executive Secretary for the Convention on Biological Diversity, as SPA Science Officer.

SDG Academy

This year has been an exciting time of growth and development as the SDG Academy continues towards our mission of creating and curating relevant content on the SDGs, sharing innovative pedagogies and training models, and nurturing a global community of learners to prepare this generation and the next to achieve sustainable development. To address this work, the Academy hosted a session titled “Transforming ESD—Implementing the UNESCO OER Recommendation within Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships” at the UN Transforming Education Summit Solutions Day in September. Additionally, the SDG Academy launched four new courses: "Making Universal Social Protection a Reality" (in partnership with the International Labour Organization), "Ecosystem-based Adaptation: Working with nature to adapt to a changing climate” (in partnership with GIZ, IUCN, and IISD), "Changing Behaviour for Sustainable Development" (in partnership with Monash Sustainable Development Institute), and "Living Heritage and Sustainable Development" (in partnership with UNESCO). The Academy also expanded our portfolio by launching our first Professional Certificate Program on the "Foundations of Sustainable Development."

Additionally, the Global Schools Program achieved many milestones in its mission to support schools and educators in creating a more sustainable world.

  1. In Honor of International Education Day 2022, we launched the first Case Study publication featuring the projects and methodologies of education for sustainable development initiatives at 30 partner schools.
  2. We translated our lesson plan materials into Turkish, Italian, and Russian.
  3. We released two Activities Guides on Quality Education and Responsible Consumption in honor of the UN Transforming Education Summit and COP27. These guides contain 50+ pages of activities and ideas to teach sustainable development in schools.
  4. We hosted the first Global Schools Symposium featuring 10 student and/or student groups and their innovative SDG projects.
  5. We hosted and/or co-hosted events at the ECOSOC Youth Forum, Stockholm + 50, the AFS Youth Assembly, the International Conference on Sustainable Development (ICSD), and the High-Level Political Forum (HLPF). Also, we were represented at COP, the SDSN Asia Launch, the World Tourism Summit, and the UN Transforming Education Conference.
  6. We were featured as one of the top 100 K12 education programs worldwide in the HundrED Global Collection after a prestigious external review by 188 experts.
  7. 470+ schools signed the Global Schools pledge, joining the network committed to integrating sustainable development in school communities.
  8. In February, 280+ teachers graduated from the second cohort of our training program. They reached 75,100+ students across the continents in creative and transformative school-wide activities that instill the values of sustainable development. 51,200+ of these students directly benefited from a classroom lesson taught by Global Schools Advocates with the purpose of increasing sustainable development literacy. These efforts resulted in the engagement of ~16,000+ additional teachers and school administrators, and 30,000+ parents. 8,100+ teachers participated in a trainers of trainers workshop on the SDGs, Global Citizenship, ESD, or another topic led by a Global Schools Advocate.
  9. In July, we launched a new cohort of Global Schools Advocates, training 300+ teachers, who are actively engaging students in SDG projects and thinking about long-term ESD strategies in schools. Full data will be available in February.
  10. We relaunched the Mentor Advocate Program. 70 Mentor Advocates have completed the Mentor Advocate Program, providing guidance and support to teachers in our network schools globally.
  11. We published a paper on our research projects at the International Conference on Sustainable Development (ICSD), and are currently expanding our research work.

SDG Data, Policies, and Financing

The team successfully released the 7th edition of the Sustainable Development Report (SDR), including the 2022 SDG Index and Dashboards for 193 UN Member States. The opening thematic chapter discussed the need for a “Global Plan to Finance the Sustainable Development Goals."

The Europe SDR was also published in December 2022 and launched at a high-level public event in Berlin. This year’s report was published as a special edition in support of the first EU wide Voluntary Review to be presented at the UN in July 2023. New flagship instruments were also developed to monitor SDG performance in the Arab region, Benin, Brazil and Malaysia. Looking ahead, the new SDSN - ESRI partnership will support the development of geospatial data, tools and indicators for targeted SDG actions in countries and metropolitan areas.

The team also strengthened its work on SDG policies and international spillovers. Chapter 3 of the global SDR presented a pilot index score of “Governments' Commitments and Efforts for the SDGs scores (pilot version)”. The team published a new Working Paper setting priorities for measuring globally policy efforts and commitments for sustainable development and connecting this discussion with access to financing. The team additionally published a new study supported by the German government on international spillovers tracking forced labour, accidents at work, and climate impacts in EU's consumption of fossil and mineral raw materials. The launch webinar featured interventions from the French representative to the ILO Governing Body and German government. SDSN’s work on SDG policies and spillovers was featured in the European Parliament’s SDG Resolution adopted in June 2022.

Finally, the team continues to play a leading role in international discussions on vulnerability and access to international financing. The team prepared ahead of COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh a technical note on Adaptation, Loss and Damage: The Case for Climate Justice. Building on two years of work on the Multidimensional Vulnerability Index (MVI), the team prepared a Policy Brief on how structural vulnerabilities impede progress towards achieving SDG 4 (Quality Education) in SIDS and a blog post on “Who’s willing to pay for sustainability in the Pacific?”. The team continues to work closely with governments, Multilateral Development Banks and private financial organizations.

Building on all this work, the team plans to officially launch the next phase of its work and partnerships on SDG Data, Policies and Financing under the umbrella of the forthcoming SDG Transformation Centre. The Centre will be launched with the 2023 global SDR in June 2023, ahead of the 2023 SDG Summit.

SDGs Today

This year, the SDGs Today team celebrated the expansion and diversification of strategic data partnerships to curate and produce innovative and non-traditional data on sustainable development. The team collaborated with SDSN Members to provide training and capacity-building workshops to support the integration of geospatial information and tools into their SDG-related research. We published a series ofeducational videos highlighting GIS applications for SDGs in partnership with Esri. For our My School Today project, we improved our school population estimates by combining IIEP UNESCO's school-age interpolation model with WorldPopProject demographic data for Africa. Lastly, we made all of our data layers and products available to users through the SDGs Today ArcGIS Hub and improved the visualization of our datasets from maps to more interactive multimedia formats.

SDSN Youth

Led by the Global Director, Brighton Kaoma, SDSN Youth has a global team of over 2,600 program members from 127 countries across 23 regional and national networks, with more than 750 member organizations involved. 2022 Highlights include:

  • Our SDG Students Program has been active in 77 university hubs across 25 countries, with a cohort of 90 (2021-2022) and 60 (2022-2023) SDG Coordinators who mobilize for action at their universities.
  • Our Local Pathways Fellowship has grown into a network of 464 fellows from 225 different cities across 85 countries, each developing a project that localized SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities).
  • Our Youth Solutions Program held its first-ever Pitch Competition, with over 500 registrations and significant exposure for innovators, setting the foundation for future events and partnerships for the program.
  • Our Global Youth Network Program welcomed SDSN Youth Kazakhstan to our Network.

Thematic Research Network on Data and Statistics (TReNDS)

SDSN TReNDS continues to be a leading advocate for harnessing new data and methods, including geospatial data, big data, and citizen science, to better guide decision-making and progress on sustainable development challenges. In 2022, TReNDS produced four major reports: a case study of León, Mexico on data stewardship and the city data agenda; a research paper addressing the challenges of using Earth Observation data for SDG attainment using evidence from the Global South and West Africa Region; an accountability report offering recommendations for strengthening the G7 Partnership for Women's Digital Financial Inclusion in Africa; and a report that demystifies the institutional challenges and barriers around data use for official statistics. The network also continues to scale its efforts within the Data For Now initiative, a joint project in coordination with the World Bank, the UN Statistics Division, and others to improve the timeliness of countries’ data, with work progressing in Vietnam, Ghana, and Rwanda.