Sustainability September may have passed but our focus on the excellent work our NTFs are doing on Sustainability continues. Read the latest in our blog posts about how Wales is responding to the need to embrace the UN Sustainable Development Goals in our teaching delivery. Richard Owen, from Swansea University tells us more.
The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals require a significant re-think of higher education teaching delivery, and this blog post will look at how Wales is responding.
Wales has been the first county in the world to attempt to enshrine the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals into law in the form of the Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. The Act has been described by the United Nations as world-leading,[i] and it makes sustainable development the central organising principle of government in Wales. It is proving influential, as at the time of writing, there is a Future Generations Bill before the UK Parliament, which is based on the Welsh model although in some respects it goes further.
Need for interdisciplinarity
The Act creates seven goals which aim to create a more sustainable future:
These goals interconnect so public bodies are supposed to make the links between the different goals or in other words engage in systems thinking. For example, a public body could not claim it was sustainability reducing carbon emissions by, say, reducing its reliance on certain goods made from plastics – which would be meeting the goal of a healthier Wales – if it switched to importing products which had emitted carbon during their manufacture, as that would not be meeting the goal of a globally responsible Wales.
This need for systems thinking puts a greater emphasis on the need for interdisciplinary study, so the different parts of the system come together in order to find solutions to complex problems.
This need for interdisciplinarity has already strongly influenced education policy for 3 – 16-year-old students through the Curriculum for Wales. The Framework for the Curriculum for Wales is designed to help practitioners to develop a more integrated approach to learning. The six Areas bring together familiar disciplines and encourage strong and meaningful links across different disciplines. This creates an opportunity to develop sustainability practitioners with a grounding in systems thinking.
There are now steps to ensure that this integrated approach to learning will be taken forward into the tertiary and higher education sectors. As the Welsh government has said that its Commission for Tertiary Education & Research, which is proposed in a draft Tertiary Education and Research Bill, will “contribute to the goals set out in the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act” and will plan for an integrated post-16 education sector.
Need for experiential learning
Today’s higher education students will be facing a world where a number of increasingly severe, interconnecting and unparalleled crises exist.
In order to achieve a more sustainable world several environmental challenges need to be tackled such as anthropogenic climate change. In addition to environmental challenges, socio-economic issues such as tackling inequalities also need to be addressed.
If they are to address these challenges, they will have to be change agents, as current practices have contributed to many of these crises. As a result, it will become even more important for them to learn by doing, to playing a role in the community and the world, with students engaged in real-world projects. Students will follow their own questions and desire for change, with faculty guiding and supporting them.
Need to develop soft skills
Unfortunately, today’s graduates are entering a world where those in authority have too often engaged in empty rhetoric on sustainability issues.
The Kyoto Protocol[i] entered into force on 16 February 2005. It committed industrialised countries and economies to limit and reduce greenhouse gases emissions in accordance with agreed individual targets. Nevertheless, since the Protocol was adopted much more carbon has been emitted, and the trend has been ever upwards with only a minor blip in 2020 at the outset of the Covid 19 pandemic.[ii]
This means that higher education needs to develop students who are able to influence and lead discussions and action to ensure that those in authority walk the talk and that the necessary changes are made for us all to live in a more sustainable world.
Taking ideas forward
I am delighted that the Association of National Teaching Fellows have agreed to support work in this area in the form of a HE Sustainability: Community Workshop, as this enables us to hold an event looking at current and best practice in Wales.
Feedback on how to prepare students for the daunting societal challenges they face will be greatly valued.
Richard Owen
Hillary Rodham Clinton School of Law
Swansea University
[i] “We hope that what Wales is doing today the world will do tomorrow. Action, more than words, is the hope for our current and future generations.” Nikhil Seth (Head of Sustainable Development at the United Nations) speaking in 2015 < https://www.futuregenerations.wales/making-it-happen/international/> accessed 15 July 2021
[ii] Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (United Nations, 1998) < https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/kpeng.pdf> accessed 15 July 2021
[ii] Dieter Helm, Net Zero: How We Stop Causing Climate Change (William Collins, 2020) 37
