Sustainable Development Goal 12
Developing the introduction
Overall Aim of Sustainable Development Goal 12 – Responsible consumption and production
Sustainable Development Goal 12 Responsible consumption and production, is one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals established by the United Nations in 2015. The official wording of SDG 12 is “Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns”. SDG 12 is meant to ensure good use of resources, improving energy efficiency, sustainable infrastructure, and providing access to basic services, green and decent jobs and ensuring a better quality of life for all. SDG 12 has 11 targets to be achieved by at least 2030 and progress toward the targets is measured using 13 indicators.
The targets are:
Target 12.1: Implement the 10-year sustainable consumption and production framework
Target 12.2: Sustainable management and use of natural resources
Target 12.3: Halve global per capita food waste
Target 12.4: Responsible management of chemicals and waste
Target 12.5: Substantially reduce waste generation
Target 12.6: Encourage companies to adopt sustainable practices and sustainability reporting
Target 12.7: Promote sustainable public procurement practices
Target 12.8: Promote universal understanding of sustainable lifestyles
Target 12.a: Support developing countries’ scientific and technological capacity for sustainable consumption and production
Target 12.b: Develop and implement tools to monitor sustainable tourism
Target 12.c: Remove market distortions that encourage wasteful consumption
According to the United Nations Environment Programme, Sustainable Consumption and Production refers to “the use of services and related products, which respond to basic needs and bring a better quality of life while minimizing the use of natural resources and toxic materials as well as the emissions of waste and pollutants over the life cycle of the service or product so as not to jeopardize the needs of future generations”
Why is it important for educational community?
Education for Sustainable Development is a comprehensive and transformative education that focuses on content and learning outcomes, pedagogy, and the learning environment. This implies that citizens need the knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes that will enable them to collaborate in sustainable development. ESD requires a transformative, action-oriented pedagogy that promotes autonomous learning, participation and collaboration, problem-solving, interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity and linking formal and informal learning. Only these pedagogical approaches will enable the development of the key competences necessary to promote sustainable development in the 21st century.
A concept closely related to Education for Sustainable Development and Education for Global Citizenship is that of the pedagogy of sustainability, but this is hardly mentioned in current discourses on education and learning in the context of socio-ecological sustainability and sustainable development. Teaching sustainable development issues is a challenge because it involves knowledge across multiple disciplines, and the 21st-century skills are a critical reference point for developing these ambitious profiles of knowledge and skills in students (and also in teachers) expecting that they will become future ‘problem solvers’, ‘agents of change’, and ‘transition managers’. In this context, the use of ICT is fundamental in each of the 21st-century skills frameworks. The concept of learning incorporates the importance of the individual learner into the process, a focus on deep learning and the transformative power of ICT, all of which lead to the concept of personalized learning. Personalized learning requires the connecting power of ICT to develop ways of thinking and learning that liberate and empower the learner.
Key dimensions of Sustainable Development 12 Responsible consumption and production
For decades, scientists have been explaining the ways in which humanity is driving the three planetary crises of climate, biodiversity and pollution, all of which are linked to unsustainable production and consumption. Changes in consumption and production patterns can help to promote the decoupling of economic growth and human well-being from resource use and environmental impact. They can also trigger the transformations envisaged in global commitments on biodiversity, the climate, and sustainable development in general. From 2017 to 2020, 83 countries, territories and the European Union shared information on their contribution to the implementation of the 10-Year Framework of Programmes on Sustainable Consumption and Production Patterns. In 2020, 136 policies and 27 implementation activities were reported, bringing the total number to over 700. While specific actions have been taken to improve resource use efficiency in a specific industry or area, this has not resulted in their widespread adoption across sectors and industries. Although limited data are available, as of 2016, almost 14 percent of food produced globally was lost before reaching the retail sector. Estimates vary across regions, from 20.7 percent in Central and Southern Asia to 5.8 percent in Australia and New Zealand. In 2019, the amount of e-waste generated was 7.3 kg per capita, with only 1.7 kg per capita documented to be managed in an environmentally sustainable manner. E-waste generation is expected to grow by 0.16 kg per capita annually to reach 9 kg per capita in 2030.
The annual rate of growth in e-waste recycling over the past decade was 0.05 kg per capita, which will need to increase more than tenfold if all e-waste is to be recycled by 2030. As of December 2020, 40 countries and territories had reported on sustainable public procurement policies and action plans or equivalent legal dispositions aimed at encouraging the procurement of environmentally sound, energy-efficient products and promoting more socially responsible purchasing practices and sustainable supply chains. All this hopefully is going to: by 2030, achieve the sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources, halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses, achieve the environmentally sound management of chemicals and all wastes throughout their life cycle, in accordance with agreed international frameworks, and significantly reduce their release to air, water and soil in order to minimize their adverse impacts on human health and the environment, substantially reduce waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse, encourage companies, especially large and transnational companies, to adopt sustainable practices and to integrate sustainability information into their reporting cycle, promote public procurement practices that are sustainable, in accordance with national policies and priorities, ensure that people everywhere have the relevant information and awareness for sustainable development and lifestyles in harmony with nature, support developing countries to strengthen their scientific and technological capacity to move towards more sustainable patterns of consumption and production, develop and implement tools to monitor sustainable development impacts for sustainable tourism that creates jobs and promotes local culture and products, rationalize inefficient fossil-fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption by removing market distortions, in accordance with national circumstances, including by restructuring taxation and phasing out those harmful subsidies, where they exist, to reflect their environmental impacts, taking fully into account the specific needs and conditions of developing countries and minimizing the possible adverse impacts on their development in a manner that protects the poor and the affected communities.
The interplay between Sustainable Development Goal 12 Responsible consumption and production and the acquisition of 21st century skills
The creation of knowledge, as well as its acquisition, validation, and use, must be common to all people as part of a collective social endeavor. On the other hand, some of these skills are difficult to teach only by traditional methods, which are still effective to promote learning. These skills must be developed by individuals themselves through action based on personal experience and reflection. Incorporating SDGs into the curriculum requires systemic thinking and interdisciplinary approaches and demands pedagogical innovations that provide interactive, experiential, transformative and real-world learning. Twenty-first-century skills are different from 20th-century skills, primarily due to the emergence of highly sophisticated information and communications technologies. Organizations advocating for 21st-century skills have broadly consistent frameworks in terms of what should be added to the curriculum, although different groups place emphasis on different areas within the overall skill set. Using the P21 framework as a starting point, for example, groups focusing on technical skills, along with those that promote digital literacy can be found, emphasizing information and communications fluency through technologies as the most important. For the OECD meeting the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals, especially those related to connectivity and digital accessibility, will guarantee 21st-century skills. Thus, the OECD’s 2019 Skills Outlook report points out that these skills can be reinforced by digital environments, by facilitating the construction by students of their own learning processes at their own pace. P21 also highlights life and career skills, learning and innovation skills, information skills, media and technology, as well as core curricular subjects and 21st-century themes. A key element in the application of digital technologies is design flexibility, which responds to the need to promote student-centered pedagogical methodologies..
