SDGs in Action initiative

The motivation

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been intended as a general framework for governments, businesses, the community, and organisations of all kinds to help guide them to prioritise and accelerate action to address key global and local challenges.

While many organisations are starting to align/map their work to the SDGs, only a few have started experimenting and innovating with ways to use the SDGs framework as a tool for better, more ambitious and more forward-looking thinking and planning.

About the initiative

To help accelerate uptake of the SDGs framework, this initiative aims to showcase the exciting and innovative projects our members are involved in that use the SDGs framework as a tool to help governments, businesses, communities, universities and others take more ambitious “beyond-business-as-usual” action on sustainable development.

The initiative has three key elements:

1. Collection of case studies of projects being undertaken by SDSN AusNZPac members. (The call for case studies closed on 26 June 2020.)
2. Preparation of a Regional SDG Action Report, including the case studies and a synthesis of the key learnings on using the SDGs. The launch of the report will now take place around Feb 2021.
3. Presentation of the projects in webinars and stakeholder engagement. The aim is to give a cross-sector audience an opportunity to engage with the project teams and each other, to help strengthen the SDG community in our region.

The criteria for for the projects that are being included are that they:

1. Involve an SDSN AusNZPac member institution as project leader or project partner.
2. Focus on developing approaches, resources, or tools that use the SDGs framework to help organisations go beyond business as usual.
3. Demonstrate collaboration with partners.
4. Have an “action” component, to implement or test the approach in real-world situations.
5. Are currently active (i.e. already started) or completed within the last two years.

Seminar/Webinar schedule

• 19 February 2020: The Local SDGs Program: Charting pathways towards achieving the SDGs in local communities (Deakin University and Monash University)
• 30 July 2020: University SDG leadership from Down Under (University of Auckland and RMIT University)
• 27 October 2020: SDSN Global Solutions Forum (reporting on project progress to date)

Contact

For further information, please contact Tahl Kestin, SDSN AusNZPac Network Manager, at tahl.kestin@monash.edu.