SDGs up to 2030: Critical Look at Behavioural Patterns

This year's 18th Youth Summit will take place in the "Regional Weimar Triangle" from 18 August to 24 August with the focus on "Living Diversity, Commitment to Social Cohesion". At the summit, which is supported among others by the state government of North Rhine-Westphalia, young Europeans aged 17 to 22 from Hauts de France, Silesia (Poland) and North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) in northern France will meet to jointly develop ideas for the future and to deal with current issues in Europe.

Under the direction of Hildegard Azimi-Boedecker of the International Education and Encounter Centre (IBB e. V.), who organise the exchange, this year's Youth Summit also visited the Wuppertal Institute on 21 August 2019. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were the focus of the workshop, which lasted almost three hours and was led and moderated by Dr. Dorothea Schostok, Research Fellow in the International Energy Transitions Research Unit in the Future Energy and Industry Systems Division at the Wuppertal Institute. After a keynote lecture on sustainable development in NRW, Europe and the world, which was intended to provide participants with an introduction to the topic, they discussed Agenda 2030 together with Franziska Nagel, Graduate Research Assistant in the same Reserach Unit and Division.

Subsequently, small groups were formed to identify interactions between the 17 SDGs and to develop measures to achieve the goals. The main focus was on the question of what each of them can personally do to achieve the sustainability goals. Since the fight against hunger on earth is linked to the natural basis of life and the basis of food production, the participants pointed out that there is no shortage of food in the world, but rather a fairer and sufficient distribution of food is needed. This is why measures to combat food wastage, such as food sharing and increased consumption of regional, seasonal and fair trade products, are also necessary. In the concluding group presentations of the work results, there was a lively exchange between the young people, who developed numerous approaches on how the SDGs could be achieved and strengthened by 2030 through individual behaviour patterns.