Inclusion and education for sustainable development: the experience of the University of Siena

According to SDG 4.7, by 2030 all learners will "acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture's contribution to sustainable development". Since 2009, with the establishment of the Working Group on Good Practices for Sustainable Development at the University of Siena has worked to raise awareness and promote good practices for the sustainable development: the campus became carbon neutral, it encouraged sustainable mobility, it tried to put the 2030 Agenda goals into practice, and it expanded the educational activities on sustainability themes. Recently the international conference organised in June 2021 by the European Training Foundation and UNESCO, in collaboration with the International Labor Organization (ILO), the European Bank for reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and UNICEF, "Building lifelong learning systems: skills for green and inclusive societies in the digital era",1 has made evident that the challenges brought in our lives, including the effects of the Covid 19 pandemic, require "changes in values, mind-sets, attitudes" to make sure that all contribute to and benefit from these changes. [...]it becomes important to define how education can contribute to SD, which kind of ESD the Agenda 2030 wishes to promote, and what role higher education institutions can play. The relevance of ESD is demonstrated at international level by several recommendations such as those adopted at the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) (Hopkins, 2012). Since the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2004-2015)3, UNESCO has launched a programme aimed at reorienting education systems towards sustainable development through its Aichi-Nagoya Declaration on Education for Sustainable Development.