The Summit of the Future and Education

In this blog post, which introduces NORRAG’s blog series on the United Nations’ “Pact for the Future”,  Moira Faul takes the reader for a stroll through global policy discussions past and future, to explain the priorities and topics under discussion.

After five years working on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – the substantive issues that needed improvement universally in order for the world to progress towards sustainable development – in 2020 the United Nations began a process of renewing multilateralism and cooperation as key mechanisms for achieving these substantive goals. Thus, while policy discourse from 2015-2020 focused on identifying distinct issue areas (sometimes called sectors) and developing metrics to measure them, international policy moments after 2020 tend to focus on solutions and ways of accelerating progress towards those goals.

At the same time, the world in 2024 is not the same as the world in 2015 when the SDGs were adopted. We cannot ignore the significant changes in the contexts in which we seek to transform education, and the constraints that these shifts are putting on our capacity even to continue – much less accelerate – the existing unsatisfactory rate of progress towards SDG 4. These shifts also further constrain the transformative potential contribution of education to other SDGs. In what follows, I will explain global policy discussions past and future, to explain the priorities and topics under discussion. There is no judgement as to the validity or not of these global moments, just an informational summary of recent global policy moments and priorities.

From the SDGs to the Pact for the Future, and beyond

Agenda 2030

Agenda 2030 encompasses the Paris Agreement on Climate Change (UNFCCC, 2015), the Addis Ababa Agenda on Financing for Development (UNDESA, 2015) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (UNGA, 2015). The 17 SDGs are interlinked and interdependent, such that progress on one goal can affect progress on others. In response to this, we need to better understand the bidirectional cross-sectoral linkages between SDGs.

SDGs are substantive, intrinsically interlinked issues to be addressed (2015)

Our Common Agenda identifies eleven agreements to accelerate progress on SDGs (2020)

Transforming Education Summit was the only SDG-specific global meeting (2022)

 Pact for the Future details 58 actions to get multilateral collaboration on track (2024)

that will be discussed in the  Summit of the Future (Sept 2024); World Social Summit (2025)

 Our Common Agenda

In 2020, on the 75th anniversary of the United Nations, Member States requested that the Secretary-General provide recommendations to current and future challenges to global governance (UN75 declaration – A/RES/75/1). The Secretary-General’s report, Our Common Agenda, identifies eleven platforms and agreements that will help accelerate in the implementation of the substantive Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs):

• Transforming education
• United Nations 2.0
• Future generations
• Emergency platform
• Youth engagement
• Beyond gross domestic product
• Global digital compact
• Information integrity on digital platforms
• International financial architecture
• Outer space
• A new agenda for peace.

Between 2022 and 2024, the UN Secretary-General issued policy briefs on each of these themes, in which education was raised as a topic more than climate and environment or gender equality.

Top 5 ranking of key topics based on word count in “Our Common Agenda” policy briefs

“if we are to transform our world, then education systems themselves must be transformed across the world”

Our Common Agenda Policy Brief, Transforming Education

Transforming Education Summit

In 2022, the Transforming Education Summit was the only sector-specific  global meeting that was recognised as a key moment in the development of solutions to accelerate progress towards the SDGs. Two forthcoming global summits complete the trilogy: the Summit of the Future (September 2024) and the World Social Summit (2025).

The Calls to Action of the Transforming Education Summit 2022

1. Green education to get every learner climate-ready
2. Connect every child and young person to safe and appropriate digital solutions
3. Improve learning outcomes
4. Enable all crisis-affected children and youth to access education
5. Advance gender equality and girls’ and women’s empowerment
6. Invest more, more equitably, more efficiently, more innovatively in education
7. Empower young people to be effective leaders in reshaping education

Summit of the Future/Pact for the Future

The Summit of the Future will gather world leaders to forge a new international consensus on how to deliver a better present and safeguard the future. The Summit is billed as a “once-in-a-generation opportunity serves as a moment to mend eroded trust and demonstrate that international cooperation can effectively achieve agreed goals and tackle emerging threats and opportunities.”

Intergovernmental negotiations – informed by multistakeholder consultations – are taking place now towards adopting by consensus an ambitious and action-oriented Pact for the Future in New York on 22 September 2024.

If the SDGs represent the substantive issues that need to be addressed to move towards sustainable development, Our Common Agenda identifies eleven platforms and agreements to strengthen and accelerate progress towards the 2030 Agenda, and the Pact for the Future is an action agenda comprising 58 actions grouped into five areas (Figure 1): sustainable development and financing for development, international peace and security, science, technology and innovation and digital cooperation, youth and future generations, and transforming global governance.

Education in the Pact for the Future

Education is not an Action in its own right, nor is it one of five named groupings of the 58 Actions in the Pact for the Future:

• Sustainable development and financing for development
• International peace and security
• Science, technology and innovation and digital cooperation
• Youth and future generations
• Transforming global governance

International peace and security is the closest of the 5 groups to map onto a specific SDG (SDG 16), but can be considered here to be more focused on peace as a prerequisite to achieving any of the other SDGs.

Education specifically is mentioned in the text below Actions in three of the themes: sustainable development and financing for development (Action 6), science, technology and innovation and digital cooperation (Actions 30, 31, 34), and youth and future generations (Action 37).

Both Our Common Agenda and Pact for the Future highlight the specific contribution of children and youth, future generations and intergenerational dialogue as the UN determines how to forge a new international consensus on how we deliver a better present and safeguard the future. NORRAG’s forthcoming Policy Insights #05 convenes a number of diverse authors to provide their recommendations of how to move from words to meaningful action.

World Social Summit (2025)

The 2025 Second World Summit For Social Development aims to address gaps and recommit to the principles outlined in the 1995 Copenhagen Declaration on Social Development and Programme of Action. It “should have a social development approach and give momentum towards the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.”

Conclusion

Our Common Agenda and the Pact for the Future are designed to provide action agendas to accelerate progress towards the SDGs; they do not provide a prioritisation of the SDGs. Education does not appear as one of the five Action groupings, but nor do any other SDGs. The need for the Pact underlines the changes in the world during the past decade outside of education; changes that hold important implications for education, particularly regarding the need for peace, climate mitigation and adaptation, and for renewed and more effective and inclusive global governance.

The UN has designed the Pact for the Future action agenda to describe what it needs to do to clear the path – through global negotiations – towards achieving the SDGs, including SDG 4. None of these global actions, alone, can move the needle on SDG 4. Nevertheless, that does not detract from the utility of having some baseline knowledge of their purpose and content. And, critically, to recognise that as much as education may contribute to other SDGs, other SDGs also contribute – positively and negatively – to the achievement of SDG 4. SDG 4 cannot solve all SDGs.

In our demands to see more attention given to education, we must not over-promise on education’s very real contribution to other SDGs, nor overburden the education sector and education professionals with unrealistic demands.

The Author:

Moira Faul is Executive Director of NORRAG and Senior Lecturer in International and Development Studies at the Geneva Graduate Institute.