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Putting Education for SDGs into Practice in Higher Education

By SDSN Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific

The higher education sector has an essential and unique role in helping achieve SDG target 4.7, which calls for all learners to acquire the knowledge and skills to promote sustainable development. But what does implementing this ambitious goal in higher education look like in practice, and how are higher education institutions in our region progressing towards this?

To answer these questions and help inspire and empower further action, SDSN AusNZPac partnered once more with the Australasian Campuses Towards Sustainability (ACTS) to organize the 2025 Regional Forum: Putting the SDGs into Practice in Higher Education.

Over two weeks and four webinar sessions, the Forum brought together leaders and practitioners from across the region and beyond to explore issues and challenges, and share practical examples and recommendations.

The four sessions addressed a range of “hot” topics that higher education institutions have been grappling with:

  1. Institutional pathways to mainstreaming education for the SDGs: Perspectives from senior Higher Ed sustainability leaders
  2. The role of higher education in accelerating our region’s transition to a sustainable economy and society
  3. Practical approaches to integrating education for the SDGs into Higher Ed degrees and programs
  4. Empowering Higher Ed educators to integrate ESD into their teaching

The full program, list of incredible speakers, session recordings, and additional resources can be found on the Forum website. If you would like to stay informed about follow-up activities that SDSN AusNZPac is planning, you can connect with us through our Mailing List and LinkedIn page.

Below are some of our key takeaways from the dynamic and rich conversations across the Forum.

1. Education for sustainable development (ESD) and the SDGs are more important than ever. The 2024 UN Pact for the Future affirmed the commitment of the majority of countries to sustainable development and the SDGs, including the urgent and ongoing global crises of climate change, environmental degradation, and growing inequality. Accelerating the implementation of ESD measures is one of the key avenues higher education institutions can take to positively support these goals, as well as to address the current top-of-mind challenges of geopolitical tensions, attacks on the core principles of sustainable development, and the questioning of the value of higher education.

2. While there are many frameworks around education and sustainability, the core messages are the same: Sustainable development is relevant to all learners, and we want all graduates to understand, care, and act. Different institutions/departments/people use different frameworks and terminology to describe their approach to integrating sustainability into education. These include education for sustainable development, education for sustainability, education about the SDGs, global citizenship, planetary health, social impact, regenerative thinking, and green skills. There is substantial overlap between these, with the core common elements being basic literacy about sustainable development, cross-cutting skills and competencies, profession-specific knowledge and skills, and mindsets to contribute to positive change for all learners. We use “SDG 4.7”, “education for the SDGs”, and “education for sustainable development (ESD)” somewhat interchangeably as an overall frame to capture all of these frameworks.

3. Implementing SDG 4.7 is a big and complex task for higher education institutions, but there are concrete steps institutions can take to get started. These include setting an overall strategic direction and graduate attribute, mapping the curriculum to identify strengths and gaps, undertaking a baseline survey of staff and student sustainability literacy and culture, developing interdisciplinary programs, upskilling and supporting academics across the institution in ESD, community engagement, and “walking the talk” as a whole institution.

4. The higher education sector has a key role in providing our current and emerging workforce with the “green skills” that are needed now to enable the transformation to a sustainable economy. “Green skills” are often used to refer mainly to technical skills and jobs, which are less relevant to higher education. In fact, every job needs to be a “green job”, and all graduates need basic literacy, profession-specific skills, and general soft skills in order to contribute to a sustainable economy. Higher education has a key role in providing foundational green skills across all degrees, providing more agile upskilling opportunities (like professional development and microcredentials), and partnering with industry to strengthen content and accreditation and to provide real-world student experiences.

5. Integration of ESD across the curriculum can be scaled up through a combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches. While ESD needs to be integrated into the curriculum in every degree, what this looks like will be different in each subject. A general institutional direction (such as a broadly-worded graduate attribute), together with support, can provide a top-down nudge with enough scope for educators to determine their own approach and encourage bottom-up action.

6. Building the capacity and empowering educators across all disciplines to integrate ESD into their teaching is a key action for mainstreaming ESD. Few educators in different disciplines will have the specialised ESD knowledge, confidence, time, or resources to integrate ESD into their own teaching, even if they are keen to do so. Empowering them to do so through a range of measures, such as professional development, guidance, co-design support, and cross-institutional ESD communities of practice, is essential.