Sustainable Development Goals

What are Sustainable Development Goals and how to achieve them?

Posted on December 21, 2015 by

On September 25th, 2015 UN General Assembly adopted a resolution in which Sustainable Development Goals were agreed on. While this is a great reason to celebrate, the huge challenges lie ahead. But what if I told you, that you can support this great cause and have fun at the same time?

 

The Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development explains:

 

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 169 targets which we are announcing today demonstrate the scale and ambition of this new universal Agenda. They seek to build on the Millennium Development Goals and complete what they did not achieve. They seek to realize the human rights of all and to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. They are integrated and indivisible and balance the three dimensions of sustainable development: the economic, social and environmental.

Sustainable Development Goals, similar to Millennium Development Goals before, became a foundation for actions to stimulate changes until 2030.

Those “comprehensive, far-reaching and people-centred set of universal and transformative Goals and targets” are guidelines for the new model of development.

To achieve environmental and economic goals, it will be necessary to build the partnership between all countries. But to do that we have to first reduce inequalities inside every and each of the countries. Hence, the SDGs include the resolve to:

 

(…) build a better future for all people, including the millions who have been denied the chance to lead decent, dignified and rewarding lives and to achieve their full human potential.

With that in mind we divided our blog posts, as well as the Gamepedia posts into 17 categories: Forest, Climate Change, Water, Government and Justice, Cities and Communities, Economic Growth, Education, Energy, Gender Equality, Health, Hunger and Food Security, Infrastructure and Industralization, Partnership and Collaboration, Poverty, Reducing Inequality, Sustainable Consumption and Production, Sanitation, that mirror the Sustainable Development Goals.

Games4Sustainability is not the only website where you can find materials on the SDGs. Obviously, it is worth exploring the UN Sustainable Development Goals website. You can find another great source of tools, resources, information and inspiration about the SDGs on 17Goals.org.

 

Games4Sustainability is a platform with games for teaching, involving and inspiring broad audiences around the SDGs topics.

Alan AtKisson truly loves the SDGs. So do we. And we hope that the games collected here will support you to bring more people to care about them.

About author(s)

Michalina A. Kulakowska - Games4Sustainability

Michalina A. Kulakowska

As a Managing Editor of the Games4Sustainability website, I’m tasked with spreading the word about Sustainable Development Goals. I try my best to use my google-fu for research and social media. In my spare time, I play video and board games.

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3 thoughts on “What are Sustainable Development Goals and how to achieve them?”

  1. An interesting and creative introduction to this very important topic and international thrust of sustainable development

    Reply

  2. Hi Michalina,
    I an educationist with a passion to develop suitable learning environment for young people with Autism and intellectual disability. I wish to find out how Games 4 sustainability incorparate programs to meet the needs of individuals with autism and intellectual disabilities.
    Thanks
    Eric Moor

    Reply

    1. Hi Eric,
      Thank you for reading my post! One of the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals is to empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all. There is a lot of games that foster empathy towards less privileged groups, e.g Gifts of Culture, Evacuation Challenge Game, Climate and Gender Game to name a few. There is unfortunately not quite enough sustainability games that target individuals with autism and intellectual disabilities, but I can recommend “Children with Disabilities and Disaster Risk Reduction” as an good example of actions that could be made to change the situation. I personally, in my work as a game designer, try to always take into the account the groups that would be potentially playing the game. Through the use of different materials, size of materials, the design of instruction and the game flow, I hope to accommodate as many potential groups of users as possible. It is never easy though, as many people have very individualistic needs. In many cases, the weight of accommodating the needs of a game’s participants is left on the moderator’s shoulders. That is why having an experienced facilitator during game workshops is very important. I would be very interested to hear about the challenges of developing a good suitable learning environment for young people with Autism and intellectual disability.

      Reply