scholarly journals Scientific Competence in Developing Countries: Determinants and Relationship to the Environment

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (22) ◽  
pp. 12439
Author(s):  
José Mauricio Chávez Charro ◽  
Isabel Neira ◽  
Maricruz Lacalle-Calderon
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Developing Countries ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Formal Education ◽  
Social And Cultural Capital ◽  
Agenda 2030 ◽  
United Nations General ◽  
The Social ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Scientific Competence

In 2015, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Agenda 2030 to guarantee sustainable, peaceful, prosperous, and just life, establishing 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). According to this declaration, pursuing the path of sustainable development requires a profound transformation in how we think and act. People must have scientific competences—not only knowledge of science, but also skills, values, and attitudes toward science that enable them to contribute to the goals proposed. This overall approach, known as Education for Sustainable Development (EDS), is crucial to achieving the SDGs. Scientific competences not only depend on what students learn in their countries’ formal education systems but also on other factors in the environment in which the students live. This study aims to identify the factors that determine scientific competence in students in developing countries, paying special attention to the social and cultural capital and the environmental conditions in the environment in which they live. To achieve this goal, we used data provided by PISA-D in the participating countries—Cambodia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Paraguay, and Senegal—and multilevel linear modelling. The results enable us to conclude that achieving scientific competence also depends on the social and cultural capital of the student’s family and on the cultural and social capital of the schools. The higher the score in these forms of capital, the greater the achievement in sciences.

scholarly journals Optimally Clocking the Low Carbon Energy Mile to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals: Evidence from Dundee’s Electric Vehicle Strategy

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 842
Author(s):  
Ayodele Asekomeh ◽  
Obindah Gershon ◽  
Smith I. Azubuike
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Green Infrastructure ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
Clean Energy ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Agenda 2030 ◽  
United Nations General ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
Development Goals

Dundee City has been successful in installing green infrastructure for charging electric vehicles (EVs). This intervention matches the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of affordable clean energy (SDG 7), sustainable cities and communities (SDG 11) and climate action (SDG 13) of the United Nations General Assembly Agenda 2030 (Transforming our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development). Local authorities can align interventions with SDGs according to needs. The purpose of this paper is to consider whether Dundee’s EV strategy represents the most viable and equitable intervention that could be adopted given the city’s context. We adopt a positive review and value argumentation approach to determine the extent to which the strategy satisfies the criteria of “level of urgency”, “systemic impact” and “policy gaps”, which have been employed in the extant literature as the basis for a multi-criteria analysis (MCA). We eclectically review elements of the strategy against the city’s peculiar physical and socio-economic environment, as well as argue their fit against these criteria. We interpret these criteria based on the complementarity and benefits of the strategy from the lenses of SDG 7, SDG 11 and SDG 13. Additionally, we consider the alignment of the EV strategy with the other SDGs. The criteria also allow us to evaluate the strategy based on the localisation principles of equity, acceptability and affordability of the intervention. Our review shows that the EV strategy represents a sustainable and community life-enhancing intervention that aligns with some key SDGs. However, the outcome raises concerns about the equitability of the strategy. Smaller, similar or bigger cities could utilise this approach. However, we recommend the evaluation of local priorities to improve alignment with the SDGs and the provision of clear justifications for selecting an intervention from a range of responses.

Sustainable Development Goals

Public Health ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Hawkes ◽  
Kent Buse
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
National Development ◽  
Population Characteristics ◽  
World Health ◽  
Intersectoral Collaboration ◽  
Agenda 2030 ◽  
The Social ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Development Goals

The adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development marked a defining moment in the history of the United Nations and the creation of an unprecedented development paradigm bringing together the social, environmental, and economic development strands into one comprehensive, ambitious, and balanced framework. With seventeen interdependent Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets, the Agenda replaces the narrower and more limited Millennium Development Goals, and has two important features: universality (applicable to all countries and populations); and a commitment to “leaving no one behind”—irrespective of population characteristics or place on the development-humanitarian continuum. SDG 3 (the “health goal”) is supported by nine substantive targets across a broad spectrum of health issues, and four means of implementation targets covering issues such as financing, human resources, and research and development. Given that the social determinants of health (e.g., education, employment, gender-equality) are the focus of other SDGs and the Agenda’s architects conceptualize the goals and targets as interdependent with cross-cutting approaches as well as intersectoral collaboration, in practice at least eleven goals and many more targets are health-related (see World Health Organization 2017, cited under Health-Related Goals, Targets, and Indicators in Agenda 2030). Accountability is key, and many countries have reoriented their national development strategies around the SDGs and have been enthusiastic in presenting Voluntary National Reviews to the annual UN High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development. Nonetheless, the SDGs have been critiqued for their omissions (from social mobilization to global health security) as well as their perceived failure to disrupt deep economic and structural injustices which are harmful to people and planet. In our review of the English language literature, we identified over fifty papers addressing some aspect of the SDGs and health. We are reluctant to conceptualize these as a single literature on the broad, diverse, and complex nature of sustainable development as it relates to human health, particularly since a significant proportion are commentaries rather than primary studies or new theoretical/conceptual ideas. We have grouped the papers into six areas: the genesis and significance of Agenda 2030 and its relationship to health; goals, targets, and indicators; projections of progress and financing implications; goal interdependence and intersectoral collaboration; human rights, participation, and the principle of leaving no one behind; critiques and criticisms. If any topic dominates, it is on universal health coverage, one of the thirteen targets in SDG3; conversely the literature tends to lack a detailed prescriptive guidance on how to move from analysis to action. Given the Agenda was only agreed upon in the past few years we are hopeful that policy- and practice-relevant literature on how to implement action and activities to reach the Goals will be forthcoming in the near future. The views contained herein do not necessarily reflect those of UNAIDS.

scholarly journals Transformative Policies for the Social and Solidarity Economy: The New Generation of Public Policies Fostering the Social Economy in Order to Achieve Sustainable Development Goals. The European and Spanish Cases

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (10) ◽  
pp. 4059 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafael Chaves-Avila ◽  
Juan Ramon Gallego-Bono
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
Social Economy ◽  
Transformative Change ◽  
Critical Factors ◽  
Solidarity Economy ◽  
Agenda 2030 ◽  
The Social ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
The Impact

The United Nations Agenda 2030 has recognized that Social Economy (SE) entities play an important role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). In order to maximize the impact of the SE, governments have recently deployed new policies regarding these entities. The objective is to understand the context of policy change that has allowed these policies to emerge, their main characteristics and the critical factors in their construction and implementation. Successful policy cases in Europe and Spain have been studied. Qualitative data have been collected through key policy documents, experts, and focus groups. As a main finding, the study shows that this new model of policies exhibits the following features: it focuses on transformative change, follows the public-community partnership governance approach and the mainstream approach in the sense of a broader policy context, and finally, it is innovative in terms of means and of complex systematization of strategies. Difficulties in the implementation of the partnership approach, in the deployment of the policy-mainstreaming approach, and in the acceptance of the SE framed by all policymakers, SE representatives, and government staff, and constraints in financial endowment are the main critical factors in the implementation of these policies.

Socio-cultural Resource for Kazakhstan Modernization

2012 ◽  
pp. 74-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Stavinskaya ◽  
E. Nikishina
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Competitive Advantages ◽  
Institutional Reforms ◽  
Cultural Resource ◽  
Bonding Social Capital ◽  
Social And Cultural Capital ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social And Economic Development ◽  
Cultural Features

The opportunities of the competitive advantages use of the social and cultural capital for pro-modernization institutional reforms in Kazakhstan are considered in the article. Based on a number of sociological surveys national-specific features of the cultural capital are marked, which can encourage the country's social and economic development: bonding social capital, propensity for taking executive positions (not ordinary), mobility and adaptability (characteristic for nomad cultures), high value of education. The analysis shows the resources of the productive use of these socio-cultural features.

scholarly journals Semi-Systematic Literature Review on Sustainability and Sustainable Development in Higher Education Institutions

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 7683
Author(s):  
Amila Omazic ◽  
Bernd Markus Zunk
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Systematic Literature Review ◽  
Higher Education Institutions ◽  
Main Research ◽  
Agenda 2030 ◽  
Research Themes ◽  
Development Goals

Public sector organizations, primarily higher education institutions (HEIs), are facing greater levels of responsibility since adopting and committing to the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development (SD) and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). HEIs are expected to provide guidance for various stakeholders on this matter, but also to implement this agenda and the SDGs in their institutions. Although the role of these organizations has been recognized, the fields and issues that HEIs should address on their path towards sustainability and SD are still unclear. To provide further clarity, a semi-systematic literature review on sustainability and SD in HEIs was conducted to identify both the key concepts and main research themes that represent sustainability and SD in HEIs and to identify research gaps. This review increases our knowledge of this topic and enhances our understanding of sustainability and SD in the context of HEIs.

scholarly journals Toward Sociocultural Indicators of Sustainable Healthy Diets

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 7226
Author(s):  
Jill Nicholls ◽  
Adam Drewnowski
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Research Priorities ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Four Dimensions ◽  
Sustainable Diets ◽  
The Social ◽  
Healthy Diets ◽  
Development Goals

Balancing the social, economic and environmental priorities for public health is at the core of the United Nations (UN) approaches to sustainable development, including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The four dimensions of sustainable diets are often presented as health, society, economics, and the environment. Although sustainable diet research has focused on health and the environment, the social and economic dimensions of sustainable diets and food systems should not be forgotten. Some research priorities and sociocultural indicators for sustainable healthy diets and food systems are outlined in this report. The present goal is to improve integration of the social dimension into research on food and nutrition security.

scholarly journals Reinterpreting the SDGs: Taking Animals into Direct Consideration

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 843
Author(s):  
Olle Torpman ◽  
Helena Röcklinsberg
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
Good Health ◽  
Clean Water ◽  
Water And Sanitation ◽  
Agenda 2030 ◽  
Health And Wellbeing ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Zero Hunger

The United Nations Agenda 2030 contains 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs). These goals are formulated in anthropocentric terms, meaning that they are to be achieved for the sake of humans. As such, the SDGs are neglecting the interests and welfare of non-human animals. Our aim in this paper was to ethically evaluate the assumptions that underlie the current anthropocentric stance of the SDGs. We argue that there are no good reasons to uphold these assumptions, and that the SDGs should therefore be reconsidered so that they take non-human animals into direct consideration. This has some interesting implications for how we should understand and fulfil the pursuit of sustainability in general. Most noticeably, several SDGs—such as those regarding zero hunger (SDG 2), good health and wellbeing (SDG 3), clean water and sanitation (SDG 6)—should be achieved for animals as well. Moreover, the measures we undertake in order to achieve the SDGs for humans must also take into direct account their effects on non-human animals.

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