2030 Sustainable Development Goals

Aside from public awareness, the path to sustainable development for most nations begins with greater access to the most basic education. Nations in which people have less than six years of public education really cannot hope to develop beyond agrarian or extractive societies (Hopkins, 1999). Education is paramount to increase the ability and capacity of these people and communities to move towards addressing environmental, economic, political, and development concerns. But simply increasing the amount of education will not, and has not, proven to be an effective answer to this problem. In fact, “Current global consumption patterns show that the most educated societies leave the deepest ecological footprints” (Hopkins, 1999). Therefore, basic education globally needs to be overhauled to include more knowledge, perspectives, values, and skills associated with sustainability and move away from standardized monotony that is coveted in most schools today. Individual governments needs to take a hard look at their curriculum and take steps to systematically change the

In an attempt to pool the collective knowledge of the globe, the United Nations invited academics, researchers, civil society organizations, citizens, businesses, the private sector, scientists, and more to help contribute to the creation of the goals (Sachs, 2015). There is a sense that the United Nations wants to foster a greater sense of community and togetherness in the creation and implementation of the 2030 Goals. This sentiment is highlighted by the fact that goal 17 exclusively discusses the importance of global partnerships for sustainable development. Although this is a recognized goal of the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, it also represents one of the ways that individual governments can successfully and efficiently drive pathways toward sustainable policy