SDG Accord Launches in Vancouver

9th September 2017

Iain Patton, CEO of the EAUC, has today launched the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Accord in Vancouver, Canada.  This global initiative is to ensure the SDGs are embedded throughout across post-16 education. 

This initiative was born from members' ideas at the EAUC Conference in Lancaster this year. It is a great example of the power EAUC membership has on the global stage and has met with huge support from worldwide sustainability networks.
 
John North, Managing Director at Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative, said: "This moment in time calls all of us - individually and collectively - to live, learn and lead in a globally responsible way. The Sustainable Development Goals offer a clear and common agenda for humanity and places the onus on higher- and further education ecosystems to respond with urgency and action to meet and exceed the goals. The SDG Accord is an important awareness raising and activation platform for catalysing global responsibility in living, learning and leading."

Announced today at the World Congress on Environmental Education (WEEC), The SDG Accord is the university and college sectors collective response to the SDGs established by the United Nations. It aims to inspire, celebrate and advance the critical role that education has in delivering the SDGs, and highlight the value it brings to governments, business and the wider society.

The Accord is also a commitment from one institution to another that they will do more to deliver the Goals, annually publically report on their progress and share the learning they accrue on the topic with each other both nationally and internationally. 

A sector overview of progress will then be presented annually at the UN High Level Political Forum where global progress on the Goals is annually reviewed.  
 
Iain Patton says: "This is a huge step in the right direction for sustainability on not only a global level, but as a platform for our members to contribute to solving UK and world problems".

Download our SDG Accord flyer, or to sign the Accord please click here.

For a spanish language version of the Accord, please click here.