SDG training at International Humanitarian Technology Conference 2017

During this IEEE International Humanitarian Technology Conference SDGs Training event, Ravi Karkara, Melinda Rooke, Kaileigh Faith and Joan Kerr discussed an overview of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to the participants of the training session.

Ravi explained all 17 Sustainable Development Goals and their progression from Millenium Development goals as defined by the United Nations. Ravi shared the legacy work of the MYWorld Survey and its contributions to the processes developing the SDGs along with the continuing work now performed on reportage of the UNDP, UN consultations, member countries, and UN SDGs platforms.

It was explained that the goals are not mutually exclusive and there can be much overlap in actions towards the goals. Meaning that actions taken towards one goal will hopefully improve others as well. Essentially, people living in one part of the world should not live at the cost of people in other regions globally, nor at the cost of future generations and with consideration of peaceful sustainable development. Sustainability affects all daily activities and economic activities and is a task for all of society to become environmentally aware, socially just, and economically sustainable. We have only one world and right now, on a yearly basis it takes 1.7 earths of resources to maintain our present activities.

Since the Rio 1992 Earth Summit, the UN, UN nation assembly members, and now since the RioPlus20 formally, the civil society major groups have evolved through consensus, an essential participatory framework for implementing the SDGs via the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at the national and local levels guided by the principle of sustainability. On a yearly basis, all nations voluntarily report back to the High Level Panel Forum in July, national sustainability strategy results based on intergenerational equity, quality of life, social cohesion, international responsibility and collaboration amongst regions.

During the CSAYN-Canada presentation Kaileigh described the second Sustainable Development Goal — Zero Hunger, and the local level need for NGLO collective collaboration of the many sustainable agriculture and urban agriculture groups in the Greater Toronto Area, and of course to connect to the globe network. Our official launch was described, and the church garden project which brought Joan, Melinda and Kaileigh closer together in March 2017 to start to implement further planning and recruitment of new membership for CSAYN-Canada. We also discussed our earlier participation in the field school event at Trent University in 2015 hosted by Biochar- Ontario and the importance of partnerships like this. Questions and discussion regarding overlap of other similar groups took place and were well received when our plan to collaborate, not compete with like-minded groups was discussed, as well future actions include more connective events at local universities in the upcoming school year and more SDGs Training sessions will be launched.