Skip to 0 minutes and 9 seconds The greatest challenges facing our globalised world today include protecting human rights, overcoming poverty, disease, and exclusion, and helping nations to achieve self-determination. But today, we also face challenges that previous generations didn’t have to consider, the need to support a livable earth and the mass migration of people across borders. The extreme connectedness of our modern world means we cannot fail to recognise the significance of these global issues on the lives of individuals and to fully appreciate their impact on human dignity. In September 2015, the governments of the world signed up to the Sustainable Development Goals, a universal UN framework for global development. In December of the same year, they also signed global agreements on climate change.
Skip to 0 minutes and 58 seconds In doing so, governments renewed their commitment to the eradication of poverty and hunger while also addressing patterns of unsustainable consumption of our natural resources. The goals are universal and global in their reach, a transformative change that recognises that all countries, North and South, are really unfinished products, continuously evolving in an effort to achieve the well-being, flourishing, and prosperity of their peoples. Together, these 17 goals and actions on climate change have set over 160 targets for improving our world by 2030– in areas such as health, environment, education, and security.
Skip to 1 minute and 41 seconds Now, citizens, scholars, and human beings everywhere who want a different world and a better future must find a way to make good on these pledges, to turn those words into actions, and determine if those actions can have an impact on the lives of real people. What is impact? What does it look like? How do we measure it? What will the impact of the goals be on peacekeepers in Colombia, women seeking employment in Uganda, or health workers in Ireland? Together, over the next four weeks with researchers from Trinity College Dublin, we invite you to critically examine these key goals– peace, health care, our environment, and economic equality.
Skip to 2 minutes and 29 seconds We will examine how these link together and how they can make a difference to our lives. Effectively tackling challenges that are interrelated in our everyday experience– such as climate change, peace, equality, and health– will be explored through case studies. We will discuss the importance of sustainable development goals from the perspectives of people living and working around the world, focusing on the lives of people living in poverty. This course is for anyone interested in the future of our world and how we can improve it.
Skip to 3 minutes and 3 seconds We invite you to join us at TIDI, Trinity’s International Development Initiative, with researchers from peace studies, medicine, engineering, and economics, to explore concepts at the heart of sustainable global development, and to reflect on what it means to take on and attempt to solve these challenges. Together, we will share our understanding of how to make the sustainable development goals a reality.
