Sustainable Development Goals/Cross Cutting Issues

Women and gender equality
Despite a stand-alone goal on gender equality, there is widespread consensus that progress on any and all of the SDGs will be stalled if women's empowerment and gender equality is not prioritized. Arguments and evidence from sources as diverse and as economically-oriented as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to expected sources such as UN Women, bolster the case that investments in women and girls impact national and global development in ways that exceed their initial scope.

Role of women board members
European scholars have insisted that the economic empowerment of women should be construed as an issue of global significance in both Northern Hemisphere nations and the Global South: “the empowerment of […] women board members” being viewed as a central, cross-cutting issue allowing female experts and thought leaders to exercise direct oversight over corporations, governments and institutional asset owners in both developed and developing nations

SDG-driven investment
Capital stewardship is expected to play a crucial part in the progressive advancement of the SDG agenda across all asset classes:
 * “No longer ‘absentee landlords’, [ pension fund ] trustees have started to exercise more forcefully their governance prerogatives across the boardrooms of Britain, Benelux and America: coming together through the establishment of engaged pressure groups […] to ‘shift the [whole economic] system towards sustainable investment’.”

The boards of directors of large Dutch and Scandinavian public and sectorial pension funds were early adopters of this SDG-driven approach: in March 2017, Holland’s Pensionfund Metalektro (PME), the main retirement scheme for the metal and electrical engineering sector, announced it would bring rapidly 10% of its €45 ($49) billion investment portfolio in line with the UN SDGs

North-South economic cooperation
At the 2017 G20 Hamburg summit, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi invited Norwegian pension funds to invest in his country's National Infrastructure Investment platform as he met Norway's Prime Minister Erna Solberg, who, in a gesture symbolising renewed cooperation towards the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals, offered him a leather football embroidered with the initials 'SDGs'

Education for sustainable development (ESD)
See main article: Education for sustainable development

Education for sustainable development (ESD) is explicitly recognized in the SDGs as part of Target 4.7 of the SDG on education, together with Global Citizenship Education (GCED), which UNESCO promotes as a complementary approach. At the same time, it is important to emphasize ESD’s crucial importance for all the other 16 SDGs. With its overall aim to develop cross-cutting sustainability competencies in learners, ESD is an essential contribution to all efforts to achieve the SDGs, enabling individuals to contribute to sustainable development by promoting societal, economic and political change as well as by transforming their own behaviour. .

See also Open Educational Resources.

Massive open online course (MOOC)
MOOCs can be seen as a form of open education offered for free through online platforms. The (initial) philosophy of MOOCs is to open up quality Higher Education to a wider audience. As such, MOOCs are an important tool to achieve Goal 4 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development ("Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all"). They could also make an important contribution to SDG 5: "Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls".

Open Badge Management
MOOCs provide the learning resources that a wide audience can access an infrastructure for capacity building supporting the SDGs. A Open Badge Systems allows the certification of the learning efforts.

Open Badge Management
MOOCs provide the learning resources that a wide audience can access an infrastructure for capacity building supporting the SDGs. A open badge systems allows the certification of the learning efforts

Learning Task

 * Why are nearly every problems related to one SDG are connected to other SDGs indirectly?
 * Open access to MOOCs provide a learning opportunity for citizen, students and teachers to learn about SDGs and its cross cuttong issues. This is a value on its own. Explain the value of Open Badges for small learning units in general and compare the Open Badge infrastructure with an accredited Master course.