9 SDGs: Activity Seeds

Explore one or more SDGs, or the SDGs as a whole, in a constructively critical manner. Some angles might include:

• Apply critical theory

Support students to explore the SDGs through lenses such as post-development theory and practice; historical materialist understandings of ideology; the construction and dismantling of natureculture binaries; techno-solutionism and the construction of political situations as technical problems; species exceptionalism and the disruption of anthropocentric views; interspecies justice and fresh ways of encountering the more-than-human world; feminist standpoint theory; Science and Technology Studies; diverse economies research; degrowth and post-growth; etc. This could feed into exercises where students rewrite one or more SDGs.

• Curate the goals

There is a lot of information here. Invite students to find ways of communicating it visually and/or interactively.

• Create a model

Divide into groups, each equipped with big sheets of paper, Post-it notes, and the seventeen SDGs on seventeen cards. Ask students to arrange the SDGs so that related goals are clustered together. Then ask them to identify some plausible connections between the goals. When progress is made on one, how might it help with another? Where might trade-offs lie? Emphasise that model-making will be a simplified picture of reality, and encourage students to emphasise the relationships they think are most important.

• Gaps in the goals

There is a lot of ambition here, but what might the SDGs leave out? Challenge students to propose a new SDG. And/or play a game. One group argues for something that is missing from the SDGs, then another group must try to argue that the proposal is already covered under an existing SDG. A third group adjudicates. Rotate these roles over several rounds, and award points.

• Explore assumptions

What do the SDGs assume about justice and the good life? Are the SDGs purely ‘goals,’ or do they also embed assumptions about how those goals should be achieved? What are the politics of the SDGs? Invite students to revise and improve some of the SDGs.

• Working within imperfect frameworks

Once students are aware of the limitations of the SDGs, explore what these limitations entail. Should the goals themselves change? How might this happen? Should institutions adopt alternatives? Are there workarounds or creative interpretations of the goals? Can we use the goals more effectively by being aware of their limitations? Sometimes changing a paradigm or ontology might be a good leverage point. But sometimes it might not be.