s we come to the halfway point of the 2030 agenda, there is a sudden flurry of governmental, organizational, and corporate metrics and actions being set out to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Recent progress, such as international agreements to protect biodiversity or the high seas create much-needed moments of hope. And yet, scientific findings such as the latest IPCC report, highlight that our current trajectory is one of existential risk. That climate risk only continues to grow. Clearly, we must do more to create a sustainable future, and the time to take impactful action is dwindling. Thinking and acting for a more sustainable planet requires we evolve in how we see and interact with ourselves, each other, and the world around us. It requires collaboration on an unprecedented level, and will require a revisioning of power, justice, and partnership that includes everyone.
Young People are Eager to Engage
Young people don’t currently have much of a voice in how the world achieves the SDGs, but nobody has more at stake. Many young people know this and are demanding inclusion in the process. Youth movements like Fridays for the Future and Turning Green, the rise of activists like Greta Thunberg and Autumn Peltier, and the innovative use of social media to spread messages and build coalitions, all indicate that youth are eager to contribute to priority-setting and decision-making as part of this process. From youth climate action strikes to protests for more equitable and representative societies, there is evident energy from this generation, and a clear drive to engage in creating a shared, sustainable future. The role that youth can play in thinking and acting for a more sustainable future is also laid out in the SDGs, specifically the call of SDG 4.7, to “ensure all learners acquire knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development.” Youth want change, and the SDGs support this. Yet global leaders have been slow to engage youth as authentic partners.
Youth activism is on the rise, international agreements, corporate actions on the environment, sustainability, and governance–there is a confluence of opportunity and energy around those focused on a sustainable future. But partnership and collaborative action between young people, governments, businesses, and more established civil society groups is lacking. Part of this disconnect is due to the lack of institutional support for young people–not only supporting their activist efforts, but support through traditional education channels. Educational institutions lack an overriding focus of helping youth to gain knowledge and tools to envision and take action for sustainable futures. While, concurrently, omitting many of the issues young people care most about from national and local curriculum and standards. We need to transform our ideas about education. There is opportunity for SDG 4.7 to play out by elevating the value of education and the critical role it plays.
Transform Education, Transform Ourselves
So, what does transformative education for a sustainable future look like? What knowledge and skills are most crucial for young people? Education with this aim must involve specific content knowledge such as teaching about the role of greenhouse gasses in global warming or the impact of an acidifying ocean. However, content knowledge alone is insufficient. Equally important are the skills, attitudes, lenses, and behaviors needed to move toward creating a more sustainable world. In other words, standards, curricula, and educational approaches should not only focus on the details of the climate crisis, but also the opportunity to develop skills and perspectives to navigate complex systems and issues in pursuit of shared, sustainable futures. And this education is not just for youth, it is for all of us. Leaders can and should model these same skills as they work toward sustainability on the basis of something like the climate crisis, but also the opportunity to develop skills and perspectives to navigate complex systems and issues in pursuit of shared, sustainable futures. And this education is not just for youth, it is for all of us. Leaders can and should model these same skills as they work toward sustainability.
Authentic engagement with youth partners means not only encouraging them to learn, but also learning ourselves. For example, we must support youth in realizing their existing agency and ability to take action to address the problems they notice in their communities–and through education, empower them to do so. This also necessitates a shift in the way adults and societies approach education. If we want a true partnership with youth, one of the first steps is to share power in educational spaces–to transition from a model that frames adults as experts and youth as apprentices to a scenario where young people are engaged as co-creators of knowledge and solutions.
Similarly, to move toward informed, thoughtful, sustainable approaches to the future, young people need to learn to consider different perspectives and reflect on their own selves and positions. Educators and policymakers must develop similar skills–to take on the perspective of young people and understand the frustration at the slow–sometimes backward–progress on achieving a more sustainable future. Just as we hope youth find sustainable pathways forward by balancing different points of view, so too must decision-makers balance the very real short-term needs and constraints, with a longer-term view focused on the future these young people represent.
None of this can be done in isolation. Developing necessary approaches around connection and collaboration will require us all to evolve from ideas privileging individual goals and achievements to focus on relationality and our global collective. We must all rethink how we view ourselves and those around us, including our relationship with the natural world. When we look to the wisdom of groups that have focused on sustainability and planetary health, we find deep interconnection and embeddedness between people and the natural world. Indeed, there is no boundary between the environment and people. People are part of the environment, and the environment is part of people. We find deep interconnection and embeddedness between people and the natural world. Indeed, there is no boundary between the environment and people. People are part of the environment, and the environment is part of people.
Imagining the Future
Finally, a sustainable future is a just future. Ensuring we meet everybody’s needs and address inequities is particularly challenging when moving from the abstract to real action, but sustainability cannot truly exist without equality because injustices destabilize systems. This can be a challenging concept for students, and even more challenging for adults who have spent decades benefiting from centuries-old inequitable and unjust systems. Together we face the formidable challenges of learning how to undo hierarchies and unfair power structures, within our educational institutions, as well as within society writ large.
Knowledge, skills, and attitudes in these areas are important precursors to sustainability regardless of the specific topic and are reflected in many frameworks in the sustainability and climate action field. There are many frameworks designed for professionals and higher-education students. For primary and secondary students, the Smithsonian Science Education Center’s Sustainability Mindsets provide a roadmap for the growth and transformation of young people, and can be an opportunity for adults to reflect on their own embodiment of this work as well.
The largest collectives of young people come together as cohorts in schools around the world, with secondary schools topping out at 614 million students globally in 2020. But as of 2022, only 53% of national education curricula around the world include references to climate change, and 30% of educators continue to feel ill-equipped to broach the topic with their students. Local, national, and global leaders are not only failing students by being slow to protect people and the planet but are also failing them by not centering these issues in their approach to education. The majority of education systems are not currently designed to engage students as partners in addressing the most pressing issues of our time. But by embracing Goal 4.7, they can be. They can bridge the gap between global goals, youth urgency for change, and the development of skills and knowledge to help bring that change about. Education systems can be reimagined from a classroom level to a national level in order to integrate standards, professional development, curriculum, pedagogical approaches, and a deep respect for the role of young people. Education spaces can be reimagined as places where young people learn the collaboration and care needed for a sustainable future in partnership with their educators and community.
Young people can–and must–become key partners in moving toward a sustainable future. This requires authentic engagement and reflection from the adults and leaders who work with and for them. Partnerships are defined by their mutually beneficial nature, and the responsibility that each partner holds to the collective outcome. Our institutions, our interactions, and our thinking all must change as we join young people in developing fundamental knowledge, skills, and attitudes that can act as a foundation for a shared, transformative future for us all.
a global affairs media network
Engaging Youth as Partners: Collaborating for a Shared Future
April 10, 2023
We've come to the halfway point of the UN's 2030 agenda and while there is progress toward achieving the SDGs, we remain far behind on climate change. We must better engage with today's youth and education for a sustainable future to do better, write Heidi Gibson and Katherine Blanchard.
A
s we come to the halfway point of the 2030 agenda, there is a sudden flurry of governmental, organizational, and corporate metrics and actions being set out to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Recent progress, such as international agreements to protect biodiversity or the high seas create much-needed moments of hope. And yet, scientific findings such as the latest IPCC report, highlight that our current trajectory is one of existential risk. That climate risk only continues to grow. Clearly, we must do more to create a sustainable future, and the time to take impactful action is dwindling. Thinking and acting for a more sustainable planet requires we evolve in how we see and interact with ourselves, each other, and the world around us. It requires collaboration on an unprecedented level, and will require a revisioning of power, justice, and partnership that includes everyone.
Young People are Eager to Engage
Young people don’t currently have much of a voice in how the world achieves the SDGs, but nobody has more at stake. Many young people know this and are demanding inclusion in the process. Youth movements like Fridays for the Future and Turning Green, the rise of activists like Greta Thunberg and Autumn Peltier, and the innovative use of social media to spread messages and build coalitions, all indicate that youth are eager to contribute to priority-setting and decision-making as part of this process. From youth climate action strikes to protests for more equitable and representative societies, there is evident energy from this generation, and a clear drive to engage in creating a shared, sustainable future. The role that youth can play in thinking and acting for a more sustainable future is also laid out in the SDGs, specifically the call of SDG 4.7, to “ensure all learners acquire knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development.” Youth want change, and the SDGs support this. Yet global leaders have been slow to engage youth as authentic partners.
Youth activism is on the rise, international agreements, corporate actions on the environment, sustainability, and governance–there is a confluence of opportunity and energy around those focused on a sustainable future. But partnership and collaborative action between young people, governments, businesses, and more established civil society groups is lacking. Part of this disconnect is due to the lack of institutional support for young people–not only supporting their activist efforts, but support through traditional education channels. Educational institutions lack an overriding focus of helping youth to gain knowledge and tools to envision and take action for sustainable futures. While, concurrently, omitting many of the issues young people care most about from national and local curriculum and standards. We need to transform our ideas about education. There is opportunity for SDG 4.7 to play out by elevating the value of education and the critical role it plays.
Transform Education, Transform Ourselves
So, what does transformative education for a sustainable future look like? What knowledge and skills are most crucial for young people? Education with this aim must involve specific content knowledge such as teaching about the role of greenhouse gasses in global warming or the impact of an acidifying ocean. However, content knowledge alone is insufficient. Equally important are the skills, attitudes, lenses, and behaviors needed to move toward creating a more sustainable world. In other words, standards, curricula, and educational approaches should not only focus on the details of the climate crisis, but also the opportunity to develop skills and perspectives to navigate complex systems and issues in pursuit of shared, sustainable futures. And this education is not just for youth, it is for all of us. Leaders can and should model these same skills as they work toward sustainability on the basis of something like the climate crisis, but also the opportunity to develop skills and perspectives to navigate complex systems and issues in pursuit of shared, sustainable futures. And this education is not just for youth, it is for all of us. Leaders can and should model these same skills as they work toward sustainability.
Authentic engagement with youth partners means not only encouraging them to learn, but also learning ourselves. For example, we must support youth in realizing their existing agency and ability to take action to address the problems they notice in their communities–and through education, empower them to do so. This also necessitates a shift in the way adults and societies approach education. If we want a true partnership with youth, one of the first steps is to share power in educational spaces–to transition from a model that frames adults as experts and youth as apprentices to a scenario where young people are engaged as co-creators of knowledge and solutions.
Similarly, to move toward informed, thoughtful, sustainable approaches to the future, young people need to learn to consider different perspectives and reflect on their own selves and positions. Educators and policymakers must develop similar skills–to take on the perspective of young people and understand the frustration at the slow–sometimes backward–progress on achieving a more sustainable future. Just as we hope youth find sustainable pathways forward by balancing different points of view, so too must decision-makers balance the very real short-term needs and constraints, with a longer-term view focused on the future these young people represent.
None of this can be done in isolation. Developing necessary approaches around connection and collaboration will require us all to evolve from ideas privileging individual goals and achievements to focus on relationality and our global collective. We must all rethink how we view ourselves and those around us, including our relationship with the natural world. When we look to the wisdom of groups that have focused on sustainability and planetary health, we find deep interconnection and embeddedness between people and the natural world. Indeed, there is no boundary between the environment and people. People are part of the environment, and the environment is part of people. We find deep interconnection and embeddedness between people and the natural world. Indeed, there is no boundary between the environment and people. People are part of the environment, and the environment is part of people.
Imagining the Future
Finally, a sustainable future is a just future. Ensuring we meet everybody’s needs and address inequities is particularly challenging when moving from the abstract to real action, but sustainability cannot truly exist without equality because injustices destabilize systems. This can be a challenging concept for students, and even more challenging for adults who have spent decades benefiting from centuries-old inequitable and unjust systems. Together we face the formidable challenges of learning how to undo hierarchies and unfair power structures, within our educational institutions, as well as within society writ large.
Knowledge, skills, and attitudes in these areas are important precursors to sustainability regardless of the specific topic and are reflected in many frameworks in the sustainability and climate action field. There are many frameworks designed for professionals and higher-education students. For primary and secondary students, the Smithsonian Science Education Center’s Sustainability Mindsets provide a roadmap for the growth and transformation of young people, and can be an opportunity for adults to reflect on their own embodiment of this work as well.
The largest collectives of young people come together as cohorts in schools around the world, with secondary schools topping out at 614 million students globally in 2020. But as of 2022, only 53% of national education curricula around the world include references to climate change, and 30% of educators continue to feel ill-equipped to broach the topic with their students. Local, national, and global leaders are not only failing students by being slow to protect people and the planet but are also failing them by not centering these issues in their approach to education. The majority of education systems are not currently designed to engage students as partners in addressing the most pressing issues of our time. But by embracing Goal 4.7, they can be. They can bridge the gap between global goals, youth urgency for change, and the development of skills and knowledge to help bring that change about. Education systems can be reimagined from a classroom level to a national level in order to integrate standards, professional development, curriculum, pedagogical approaches, and a deep respect for the role of young people. Education spaces can be reimagined as places where young people learn the collaboration and care needed for a sustainable future in partnership with their educators and community.
Young people can–and must–become key partners in moving toward a sustainable future. This requires authentic engagement and reflection from the adults and leaders who work with and for them. Partnerships are defined by their mutually beneficial nature, and the responsibility that each partner holds to the collective outcome. Our institutions, our interactions, and our thinking all must change as we join young people in developing fundamental knowledge, skills, and attitudes that can act as a foundation for a shared, transformative future for us all.
