Background: The Agenda for Sustainable Development
At the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit held at the United Nations Headquarters in New York in September 2015, “Transforming Our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (Agenda 2030)” was adopted by world leaders. This agenda declared an action plan to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity. It named the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), consisting of 17 universal goals and 169 targets. UNU-IAS has initiated the Grant for Global Sustainability (GGS) since 2015 to promote and expand the collaboration with research and educational institutes in Japan to jointly address global issues prioritized in SDGs.
Modality: Partnership with Universities in Japan
In accordance with its institutional strategic focus areas such as environment, education, and resilience, the UNU-IAS set four prioritized themes of the GGS (education, resilience, earth system, and gender equality) to implement projects in collaboration with universities in Japan for maximum of three years to contribute to the achievement of SDGs. The results of the projects are expected to be integrated with UNU-IAS’s efforts to impact the policy making and programme designing within the UN system as well as national and regional governments as a Japan-led initiative. Seven projects were implemented in total (2015-2020) under the four themes below.
To accelerate the efforts of UNU-IAS further to scientifically contribute to the achievement of SDGs, GGS has been redesigned in 2020-21 under the new Strategic Plan 2020-2024 to strengthen the partnership between UNU-IAS and educational and research institutes in Japan to promote the outcomes as a Japan-led initiative to contribute to the promotion of the SDG. UNU-IAS projects and researchers are encouraged to design a joint project with a wide range of stakeholders including Japanese universities, research institutes, and companies while taking advantage of collaboration with other UNU institutes and UN agencies.
Priorities
2020–2024: Four themes of the GGS
1. Biodiversity & Society,
2. Water & Natural Resources,
3. Innovation & Education, and
4. Governance for Sustainable Development; Monitoring & Evaluation of SDGs Implementation
2015–2020: Four themes of the GGS
Theme A: Education and governance to achieve inclusive development
Under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, it will be crucial to accelerate efforts to improve education and governance to realize inclusive development, through which all people participate in and benefit from social and economic development. GGS address education and governance toward realizing a more fair development.
Theme B: Solutions to the challenges faced by the Earth’s systems
Changes in the natural environment are causing disasters, resulting in increased poverty and the vulnerability of humans and society. Human and social development, including related to food, water and energy, continue to be prioritized under the Agenda 2030, thus GGS targets to propose innovative solutions to the challenges to sustainable development faced by the Earth.
Theme C: Solutions to the challenges encountered by cities and residential areas
In many developing countries, urbanization is progressing at a pace that exceeds social infrastructure development; and as a result, the less well-off and inflow workers are often forced to live in a poor living environment. Therefore, GGS targets to address the sustainable development of human living through prevention of deterioration of human living in the urbanized world, ameliorating conditions to improve the living environment of all people.
Theme D: Solutions to Challenges Regarding Women’s Empowerment and Gender
The Agenda 2030 emphasized the cruciality of women’s empowerment to end the poverty, improved health, and eradication of violence against women, and they cannot be achieved without gender-equal participation and strong commitment of various stakeholders. Thus, the GGS tackles the issue on how to strengthen their commitment to promote further gender mainstreaming which must be a solid foundation of sustainable development.
