Wherever you go – to the shops, the pub, the cinema – there's seemingly no escaping the sustainable development goals. But these are often invoked to add some spurious relevance to whatever was going to happen anyway. There was a glaring example of this last week when a conference was announced with an SDG fanfare to whip up interest – even though what was going to be focused on didn't mention the goals. Shameful, really.
I was interested, therefore, to get an invitation to take part on a new study:
Sustainable Development Goals and Sustainability Teaching at Universities
This is being carried out by the Inter-University Sustainable Development Research Programme and World Sustainable Development Research and Transfer Centre [that's IUSDRPWSDRTC if you didn't know; it's even longer in German].
As the name implies, the study,
"... will ascertain the extent to which the SDGs are currently being considered or approached as part of the teaching programmes offered by universities round the world."
As usual,
"... the results will be published as a scientific article in a high-impact journal, and those contributing to the work are able to obtain a copy of the paper when it is completed, if they wish."
Tempting, of course, but not really for me, although, contrary to what I noted, above, this does seem to be an example of an initiative that is actually about the goals. My guess is that there a lot going on in universities about the goals.
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