Artibus Innovation is committed to sustainable development principles, and seeks opportunities to enact these principles both within vocational training and education and its business practices.
The focus on sustainable development is intensifying across the globe, in industry and society alike. Sustainable development has implications in all areas of social and economic development, and presents significant opportunities for the education and vocational training systems. Some work has been done in identifying how to incorporate sustainability into some qualifications in the VET system, but this has not yet occurred at a systemic level. Sustainability, as an objective, has always been present within education, but its recognition and articulation has advanced significantly as a result of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Due to its broad applicability to the Australian workforce, VET is ideally placed to incorporate sustainable development principles and practices in an effective, efficient and enduring manner.
Over the last six months we’ve been exploring the applicability of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to the built environment. This is particularly relevant, as:
- The built environment accounts for 22% of the world’s sustainability problems (Journal of sustainability research, 2019, Hapres)
- The World Economic forum (2019) notes that awareness of the UN SDGs in Australia is on par with the European countries of Holland and Germany.
Key points:
- Sustainable development has many aspects - it’s not just environmental, but also social, economic, etc.
- Sustainable development is coming - Australia is a signatory to the UN SDGs
- Industry and government need to consider how to achieve SDG’s both generally and in the workforce setting. Challenges need to be met by industry and government to achieve SDG’s for the workforce
- The vet system has clearly identifiable elements that can support achieving SDG’s
- There is a business return on investment from achieving SDG’s
Sustainable development is a wicked problem – one that cannot be approached in isolation, but requires society, industry and Government to work together.
Artibus Innovation is leading thinking on sustainable development in the workforce of the built environment. We have been sponsoring co-design workshops with industry peak bodies from the property services sector as part of our Industry Skills Forecast activity. What we have discovered so far is that there is an appetite for this discussion and that education has a huge part to play.