Accelerating Education for the SDGs is a guide to help universities, colleges, and tertiary and higher education institutions provide their learners with the knowledge, skills and mindsets to contribute to solving the world’s sustainable development challenges and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The guide aims to inspire and empower universities to take action and support them through this process, by offering practical approaches and guidance.The Chinese Edition was translated by Zheng Yi from TUSDG.

Universities and other higher education institutions have a critical role in helping society achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through their research, learning and teaching, campus operations and leadership. This guide focuses on one of the most important ways they can contribute, which is to harness their learning and teaching functions to provide “Education for the SDGs (ESDGs)”, that will help learners develop the necessary knowledge, skills and mindsets.

The need to greatly expand society’s capacity to solve complex challenges has never been more important or more urgent, with just ten years remaining to the 2030 deadline of achieving the SDGs, the growing understanding of the urgency of addressing climate change, and now the COVID-19 crisis. By expanding and mainstreaming ESDGs as part of a higher educational experience, universities can respond and adapt to the needs of our “new normal”.

While ESDGs builds on the established field of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), it incorporates a broader agenda of issues, objectives and methodologies than ESD, and responds directly to the greatly increasing interest across the university sector in engaging with the SDGs.