The European Sustainable Development Week (ESDW) is a European-wide initiative to stimulate and make visible activities, projects, and events that promote sustainable development. Building on the success of previous events the ESDW is now in its 4th year. In 2017, there were 4,031 registered events that spanned 30 European countries and attracted around 360,000 participants!
This year’s ESDW will once again focus on events and activities that are linked to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in an effort to raise more awareness and support for them. Although the ESDW 2018 will focus on all 17 SDGs, particular emphasis will be put on the SDGs that will be covered by the UN’s High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) 2018, which takes place 9-18 July 2018 in New York City.
Today, the earth’s resources are being used at a faster rate than ever before. And that is happening despite the fact that often those resources are finite. We only have this one world and we need to keep it inhabitable for everyone for a long time to come. The environment is the primary limiting factor in the concept of sustainability – not only at national but also at international level.
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which was adopted at the UN Sustainability Summit of Heads of State and Government in New York on 25 September 2015, is a milestone in international cooperation. The adoption of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) marks the first time that the international community agreed on a universal catalog of fixed time-specific targets covering all three dimensions of sustainability. These targets will play a key role in international cooperation in core policy fields in the next decades.