Just in time for Easter, Global Utmaning wraps up its first module in the EaP Sustainability Leadership Programme with an interactive seminar focused on discussions among Belarusian, Georgian and Ukrainian representatives on aspects of SDGs localization.
On March 25, participants from Belarus, Ukraine and Georgia gathered for the second transnational webinar to participate in an interactive peer-learning session on sustainable development.
The day started with two inspirational presentations from Swedish peers and their work with local sustainable development. First guest was Albert Edman, representing Swedish Research Institute (RISE) and Viable Cities. He provided the participants with practical examples on sustainable initiatives from the Swedish city Umeå – a frontrunner for sustainable cities. The next speakers were Kristina Birath and Charlotte Halvardsson Kindmark, representatives from Eskilstuna Municipality. They described how Eskilstuna works with inclusive stakeholder involvement in their city planning processes and highlighted experiences of co-developing the Eskilstuna Vision2030 with different stakeholders within its municipality.
Based on previous submitted texts and input from the participants, the following discussions were organized after 3 recurring themes: 1) Sustainable Cities, 2) Awareness Raising, and 3) Multi-Stakeholder Involvement. During the second part of the webinar, participants were divided into thematic interactive breakout rooms to present their relation to the topic, as well as participate in discussions on how to move forward. Below some main points from the three discussions are presented.
Sustainable cities
While the theme ‘sustainable cities’ is very broad, the discussion was too. The discussion contained a plurality of different perspectives and topics.
Today’s lack of green areas in the city is considered a problem. Creation of more green areas is an opportunity for achieving a sustainable city. By increasing urban planning and community gardens, cities will be more resilient towards climate change. A green and sustainable city would also be more attractive from a touristic perspective.
The changing climate poses a challenge for the more vulnerable groups of society, for e.g. elders and people with health problems. As for the city, climate change also disrupts the city’s possibilities to create green and blue infrastructure. From another point of view, climate change can also be an opportunity for tourism, however, the negative effects of climate change triumphs over the positive ones.
The level of accessibility is another subject discussed in the breakout room. Accessibility should not only be understood as an area related to disabled people. It relates to many groups of society, such as children, elders and young mothers. Equal accessibility is therefore an important factor to achieve a green and sustainable city. At the same time, limited accessibility can pose as an opportunity when it comes to establishing a greener, better city for everyone.
Technical areas such as insufficient water quality and industrial pollution are identified as challenges. Answers on how to cope with them are absent.
One of the key areas of discussion was the need for stronger city strategies. Participants identified a lack of proper organizational structure within the municipality administration. Local public officials’ low awareness on sustainable development affects the grade to which sustainability is taken into account when conducting a new strategy. The lack of knowledge also affects the level of finance sustainability actions are given in city strategies. While making a strategy, better analysis and risk assessment are needed. Public officials need to analyze actions’ outcomes and impacts more thoroughly. Creation of smaller pilot projects could provide an opportunity to try out different solutions in practice. Pilot projects deliver an insight in what projects are successful and should be implemented on a larger scale. This could work as a strategy to tackle the small budgets, so less insufficient or misdirected initiatives are taken. Monitoring processes could also benefit from being more digital. A well thought out strategy creates a good ground for setting priorities. It also opens up for engagement and collaboration with different groups and stakeholders who possess deeper knowledge in these issues. The inclusive procedure when conducting a city strategy can also be viewed as an awareness raising initiative. Regional administrations are important drivers for change, therefore collaboration with them is key.
Greater inclusion of the private sector and companies is requested. Participants want to see more joint social projects with the private sector. It is also important to increase corporate social responsibilities. Currently, there is a lack of knowledge among the private sector on how they will benefit from working with sustainability issues. Moving forward, more focus on this question needs to be addressed. At the moment, the private sector is considered a challenge to sustainable cities, however, if they contribute to the sustainable cause, they will be received as a positive force.
Youths play an important role for the long-term perspective. Therefore, sustainable development education should start already in the classroom. To achieve this, teachers must be given special training on sustainable development and SDGs so that they are prepared to educate the children. More digital tools are needed in order to raise awareness more efficiently.
Individual behavior patterns have got to change. Today, people do not understand that they have to act responsible. One example of this is waste management. The lack of social responsibility in combination with poor recycling infrastructure results in insufficient waste management.
The knowledge of sustainable development exists in the society within smaller sectors. NGOs and youths are considered the main drivers of sustainable development. A strategy on how to use their knowledge and engagement as a catalyst for other sectors of society has to be developed further. Awareness raising is best achieved from a bottom-up approach.
Stakeholder involvement
The stakeholders that were discussed were youths, media, businesses, NGOs and municipalities. These play an important role in strengthening local sustainability.
The business sector gives the impression of having a busy schedule and shows no interest in joining multi-sectoral discussions on local SDG work. Participants are eager to find a way to motivate the private sector to participate and come up with arguments to how it will benefit their work as well.
Participants gave examples on engaging youths in different projects. More focus has to be on engaging governmental staff and show how they would benefit from a green policy. Similar argumentation has to be addressed towards the business community, to show what they will gain from participating in multi-sectoral dialogues.
A main challenge that was identified was the low trust from local governmental representatives. It is difficult to gain trust and find a way of receiving that trust from governmental officials. The discussion also touched the fundamental question: how to find trust in involving different stakeholders? And after finding the trust to involve different stakeholders, how do you find the trust to motivate them, to make them understand the common goal of the cooperation? The answer is simple – ownership. After people or stakeholders are included, they start to feel ownership over the process. They will feel that they are playing an important part in the process and the outcomes. The feeling of ownership will result in a feeling of responsibility. The feeling of shared responsibility will create a feeling of mutual trusts towards each other.
When approaching public officials, it is important to be humble to one’s own knowledge. Do not manifest as if you were coming from the capital or being better than them. You should be clear that you will not do their work for them, however you are able to assist them in the process. It is important that the municipality can feel ownership of their own policies. In the end, they are the ones who are promoting policies, not the people of this program.
Awareness Raising
Prior to the pandemic, social media was an important platform for awareness raising. Now with everything else being online, people are tired of receiving information through digital means. The previous attractive information channels such as Instagram and Telegram have temporarily lost its potency. It is also more difficult to motivate habits through social media than through face-to-face interactions.
A structural challenge is the lack of an existing system channeling people’s motivation. It is easy to get people aware and motivated in the initial stage, however they lack a system that makes this motivation stable over a longer period. Today, there is no clear way on how to use gained knowledge in practice and people face low public motivation to deal with sustainability issues. This results in people losing interest in the matter.
The biggest challenge is how to communicate the SDGs to the broader public. For example, volunteer movements can involve more and more people, but it is a challenge to involve the wider community, from different backgrounds and sectors. There are clear differences in reachability that exist among different parts of society. As an example, it is easier to raise awareness among youths than in the older generation. This problem also relates to the struggle of motivating public officials, where many officials are from the older generation and represent their values. Strategies on how to raise awareness in different stages of peoples’ lives becomes central.
It is important to understand the different impacts different kinds of interactions generate. For example, what kind of media outlets are being used to spread awareness will affect who will see this message. Sometimes awareness can even take place without it being the attention. One of the participants told a story when young girls from her organization made a dance for TikTok. In the background the colorful SDGs could be spotted. People started commenting asking what those colorful boxes in the background were, whereupon they replied they were the goals for sustainable development. This was not the intention of the TikTok dance, however it gave them an insight into understanding what powerful tool TikTok can be to reach the younger generation. This dance resulted into being their most successful video. Other participants will reevaluate their position to outlets such as TikTok and how it is not a counterpart to serious businesses, but rather as an alternative means of communication.
When raising awareness among youths, differences between girls and boys are discussed. Girls tend to be more open to participate in more serious discussions, whereupon boys are more practically inclined. Awareness raising initiatives therefore has to take the gender division aspect into consideration when designing new initiatives, to make it suited for different genders.
Governmental officials’ low knowledge of the SDGs is considered a challenge. Their lack of knowledge complicates the process of receiving financial support for sustainable initiatives, whereby finance has to be found elsewhere. Awareness raising is an important first step to achieve sustainable development. Participants seek guidance on how to raise awareness among public officials.
The educational system acts as a ground pillar for long term awareness raising. In order to mobilize this force and raise awareness among the students, teachers have to be provided with quality education on sustainable development and SDGs. Better pedagogical tools in general are also important to achieve higher quality of sustainable development education. Sustainable development should be incorporated in the school curriculum.
Another strategy to increase awareness is to combine it with popular subjects in a creative way. As an example, one participant explained how they raised SDG awareness through inviting people to analyze popular culture (films, songs, books) from the point of SDGs. One particular campaign used this method to discuss how to improve infrastructure. When awareness raising campaigns opens up for creativity and interaction, it will strengthen the possibility of achieving long term results. The gained knowledge is easier to store, than if it was taught by classical means. This tactic could be used more frequently.
Another important thing to keep in mind is the possibility of unreflected awareness. Even if people are not realizing they are aware or conscious, they can still be thinking and act in those ways. Hopefully, people’s unconscious awareness will spread and impact others and their mindsets. In the end, the goal is to achieve a change in discourse, regardless of the process getting there.
Awareness raising requires accessibility to quality information. Digitalization is an important step in achieving it. As an example, one participant explains how they have conducted a mapping on Google Maps of local sustainability initiatives in Belarus. When finalizing the mapping, they saw how this can be used as a motivational tool for further work, as the examples derived from different sectors of society. The mapping was a good way to inspire people, but also to raise awareness of sustainable development challenges and what steps can be taken by people in their everyday lives.
For the upcoming module, participants will be divided into smaller working groups, where they will deep dive in a focus topic. The aim of the upcoming module will be to mapping the focus topic and how it relates to their vision that they have expressed in the first module.
Tilde Karlsson, Intern at Global Utmaning
Contact: Joel Ahlgren
To read more about our EaP Sustainability Leadership Programme, click here
Photo: Egor Kunovsky on Unsplash
