GAP & The UN Sustainable Development Goals

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

Following the Millennium Development Goals , 193 UN countries adopted the 2030 Development Agenda. As a result, the world came together to create the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

What are the Sustainable Development Goals?

The SDGs are a set of 17 goals with 169 targets covering a broad range of sustainable development issues. Some of these issues include ending poverty, improving education, and fighting climate change.

Empowered, Active Citizens

Environmental education programmes help protect ecosystems and advance the fight against climate change.

As practitioners of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), we empower people to contribute to the SDGs. Our focus is to engage people with the practical tools to introduce sustainable habits to their daily lives. We look at each of the 169 SDG targets when to structure our workshops. It is important to note that these goals and their objectives are not recent additions to our work. Our objectives have always had sustainable development at their core:

Educate individuals on improving their behaviour with energy, food, water, and waste.
Engage participants in programmes that emphasise measuring resource savings and behaviour change.
Inspire people to live sustainable lifestyles through positive behaviour.

Below are some examples on how our work reflects at least one target within each SDG.

Goal 1: End poverty in all its forms everywhere

UN TARGET: Build community resilience to reduce exposure to climate-related extreme events

How we contribute to Goal 1

Our education work with community groups and schools emphasises local-global linkages, and many of our workshops and seminars explore the causes of global inequality and unfair trade/economic patterns.

Our Action on Global Citizenship programme encourages students to create campaigns against poverty, and our Action on Community Transformation programme helps adults and community groups to understand local challenges from a critical, global perspective and put this knowledge into practice.

We intentionally work with marginalised and vulnerable people in our local and national community.

Goal 2: End hunger, achieve food security and promote sustainable agriculture

UN TARGET: By 2030, end hunger and ensure access by all people to safe, nutritious and enough food all year round.

How we contribute to Goal 2

We engage the community in gardening at our Green Living and Sustainability Community Gardens (GLAS) to reduce food poverty. This promotes grow-your-own, sustainable, and affordable food consumption habits.

Goal 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

UN TARGET: reduce the number of deaths and illnesses from hazardous chemicals and contamination

How we contribute to Goal 3

Through our volunteering programme, and our schools programme, we promote the benefits of outdoor activities, outdoor education and organic horticulture. These have direct health benefits, and well-documented benefits for participants’ mental health, too. Research we commissioned in 2023 on this topic further supports this.

We educate students in our Water Explorer and Park Stewardship Programmes on reducing pollution. At GLAS, we engage volunteers of all ages in promoting biodiversity and living healthy lifestyles.

Goal 4: Ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning

UN TARGET: ensure that everyone gains the skills to promote sustainable development through ESD.

How we contribute to Goal 4

Achieving Goal 4 is at the heart of every single one of our programmes, workshops, and actions.

Our Green Living Programme educates individuals on ways to change their communities. We work directly with school students (at primary and secondary level), and also support adult education and teacher training: We provide workshops, tailor-made toolkits for teachers and CPD opportunities for teachers at secondary and primary school level.

Our work in promoting sustainable lifestyles directly contributes to the realisation of target 4.7.

Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

UN TARGET: Ensure women’s participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision making

How we contribute to Goal 5

Our Action on Global Citizenship programme engages students with the value of gender equality. Throughout the programme, we empower them to create awareness campaigns in their communities.

Goal 6: Ensure access to water and sanitation for all

UN TARGET Support and strengthen local communities in improving water and sanitation management

How we contribute to Goal 6

Our Water Wise school workshops educate students on the importance of water in their community. As a result, we empower them to work with their peers to create collective change.

Goal 7: Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all

UN TARGET: By 2030, increase the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix

How we contribute to Goal 7

Our energy workshops for schools educate participants on how energy sources impact the planet. Energy is also one of the key themes in our groundbreaking climate competitions, which we facilitate for community groups and for businesses. During the challenges, participants discover the power of small, everyday climate actions, in a mix of education, entertainment and real-life impact.

Thus, inspiring simple everyday energy-saving actions that reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions.

Goal 8: Promote sustainable economic growth, employment and decent work for all

UN TARGET: By 2020, reduce the proportion of youth not in employment, education or training

How we contribute to Goal 8

Our workshops inspire students to take part in sustainable extracurricular activities. We also partner to help early school leavers gain employability skills and further their education.

Goal 9: Build resilient infrastructure, promote sustainable industrialisation and foster innovation

UN TARGET: Develop sustainable and resilient infrastructure, to support human well-being

How we contribute to Goal 9

We empower students to reduce their transport-related emissions, and our climate competitions inspire and educate participants on the impact of making small changes to their daily transport choices..

Goal 10: Reduce inequality within and among countries

UN TARGET By 2030, empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all

How we contribute to Goal 10

Our Action on Global Citizenship workshops engage students with the SDGs, empowering them to develop campaigns to solve them in their schools.

We educate and empower all our programme participants. Our Act on Community Transformation (funded by Irish Aid) and Action on Global Citizenship (funded by WWGS) programmes specifically focus on creating campaigns on themes of poverty, gender equality and inequalities in all its many forms.

Goal 11: Make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

UN TARGET: By 2030, provide universal access to inclusive green and public spaces

How we contribute to Goal 11

As an urban organisation, based in Ballymun, a substantial part of our work is focused on social regeneration in the Dublin area.

The GLAS Community Gardens in Ballymun and Blanchardstown engage community members of all ages in grow-your-own and sustainable practices.

Goal 12: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns

UN TARGET: By 2030, reduce waste through prevention, reduction, recycling, and reuse.

How we contribute to Goal 12

GAP is convinced that unsustainable patterns of consumption and production are at the root of the triple planetary crises: biodiversity loss, climate change and pollution. Our work is aimed at raising awareness and knowledge of these patterns, and how individuals and communities can make changes to the habits that cause them.

Our waste workshops, water workshops promote responsible consumption, as does our work in the media and with businesses all over Ireland. Our school workshops educate people on waste reduction and sustainable consumption habits.

Our Green Living programme inspires participants to reflect on how their behaviour impacts on the world. Additionally, it empowers them with practical solutions to reduce these impacts.

Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts

UN TARGET Improve education on climate change mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction

How we contribute to Goal 13

We host climate change specific workshops for primary and post-primary workshops to inspire individual action against climate change.

In our communities, schools and business programmes we assist people to understand the causes of climate change, and to develop targeted actions, large and small, to reduce their carbon footprint. Our pioneering work with the Ducky online platform enables us to organise powerful Climate Competitions, illustrating the measurable impact small individual actions can have on our national greenhouse gas emissions. The ultimate aim of ACT and ‘Just Action’ is to motivate people to take effective, meaningful climate action in whatever capacity they can.

Goal 14: Conserve and use the oceans, seas and marine resources

UN TARGET: By 2025, prevent and reduce marine pollution of all kinds

How we contribute to Goal 14

We encourage students and participants to look at their water consumption and habits, considering own water footprint, while linking it to issues around river and marine contamination and pollution.

Our Water Wise workshops highlight the importance of water within our communities and empower participants to create and enable collective change.

Goal 15: Sustainably manage forests, combat desertification: Protect natural habitats, halt biodiversity loss and protect and prevent the extinction of threatened species

How we contribute to Goal 15

We engage communities of place and communities of interest to promote biodiversity, to understand food poverty and encourage people to grow their own. Our work is aimed at promoting sustainable and affordable food consumption, enhanced well-being and strengthened community engagement.

Our Environmental Education Programme, our Waste Wise workshops, and our GLAS community gardens in Ballymun and Blanchardstown, specifically focus on supporting these goals.

Goal 16: Promote peaceful and inclusive societies

UN TARGET: Ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms

How we contribute to Goal 16

Our workshops, social media profiles, and blogs value collaboration and inclusivity. This providing access to people of all ages and backgrounds to our programs.

Goal 17: Revitalise the global partnership for sustainable development

UN TARGET: Encourage and promote effective public, public-private and civil society partnerships

How we contribute to Goal 17

As a small organisation, our ethos prioritises working in partnerships with others. All our programmes are joint ventures with other organisations, which is part of our contribution to SDG 17.17.

Our work also actively contributes to target 17.6 (knowledge sharing) and 17.14 (policy coherence), and through our GAP International network, we are also liaising with organisations in Kenya, Vietnam and Ukraine, and some middle income countries.

GAP works with public sector groups to engage schools in environmental education programmes. We also empower corporations to improve their corporate social responsibility practices.