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SDSN Spain Launches New Report on Culture and SDGs

By Marta Garcia-Haro

The Spanish network publishes a document that analyses the 2030 Agenda from a cultural perspective.

In February 2022 the Spanish chapter of SDSN (REDS) released the report The Sustainable Development Goals and its targets from the cultural perspective , in collaboration with the Spanish Ministry for the Agenda 2030.

In the absence of a specific SDGs dedicated to culture, cultural actors have been calling for some time for a measurement system that monitors the contributions of the cultural system to the goals of the 2030 Agenda. Thus, this manual provides a tool that will allow sustainable development practitioners and cultural professionals interpret the targets under a cultural scope. The report is one of the first of its kind, filling an important gap in analysis that no other Spanish entity is addressing.

Read more and download the report (in Spanish).

Objectives and content of the publication

The publication is structured in five chapters, seeking to interpret the Sustainable Development Goals, along with their targets, from a cultural perspective, adapting some of these targets to the aims and principles of the cultural dimension.

Objectives of the report are as follows:

  • To carry out an assessment of how culture can contribute and impact a specific target.
  • To adapt the SDGs to the goals and principles of the cultural dimension of development, even if they do not mention culture.
  • To define and specify with a specific formulation if culture is considered to have an indirect impact on an SDG or on a specific target.
  • To enable the evolution of these processes of analysis and interpretation towards the construction of specific indicators relating to culture.
  • To highlight the multi-dimensional nature of culture as a system that contributes to and enables, in a cross-cutting manner, sustainable development.

This work has been led by professor Alfons Martinell, coordinator of the Community of Practice on culture and sustainable development (SDSN Spain / REDS) and honorary director of the UNESCO Chair Cultural Policies and Cooperation.

More information about REDS's work on Sustainable Culture: www.culturasostenible.org