Message from the ProSPER.Net Secretariat

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

Happy New Year from all at the ProSPER.Net Secretariat! We hope you had a wonderful holiday season, and are looking forward to another exciting year ahead.

For prospective members, applications have now opened for institutions wishing to apply for ProSPER.Net Membership for 2020; details are below.

As always, if you have any news, open calls, upcoming events, or publications you would like to share via this bulletin, please complete this form and email your submission to the ProSPER.Net Secretariat at ProSPERNet@unu.edu (submissions close on the 15th of each month).

Sincerely,
ProSPER.Net Secretariat

Open Calls

Contribute: The Futures of Education Initiative

UNESCO’s Futures of Education initiative aims to rethink education and shape the future. The initiative is catalysing a global debate on how knowledge, education and learning need to be reimagined in a world of increasing complexity, uncertainty, and precarity. It relies on a broad, open consultative process that involves youth, educators, civil society, governments, business and other stakeholders. UNESCO is welcoming active participation through the following online engagement channels:

• Survey – Top 3 Challenges and Purposes of Education: A 3-minute online survey to offer views on the top three development challenges ahead in the future, and the top three ways education can address them.

• Submit artwork – Your Vision of Education in 2050: This platform invites people to share their original creative, artistic visions of what education might look like in 2050.

• Written contributions – Your View on the Futures of Education: This platform invites people to present their thoughts on what they see as the one major issue for the futures of education.

Find out more about the initiative here.

Reminder: Applications Open for 2020 UNU-IAS Master's and Doctoral Degree Programmes

UNU-IAS is now accepting applications for September 2020 admission to its postgraduate degree programmes: the Master of Science in Sustainability and the PhD in Sustainability Science. Both programmes aim to produce the policymakers and researchers of tomorrow, who will be at the forefront of global efforts towards a more sustainable future. The application deadlines are 28 February, 2020 for the master's programme, and 10 April, 2020 for the doctoral programme. Read more

Reminder: Applications Open for 2020 JSPS–UNU Postdoctoral Fellowship Programme

UNU-IAS is now accepting applications for the JSPS–UNU Postdoctoral Fellowship programme for 2020. Jointly organised by UNU-IAS and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), the programme provides promising, highly qualified, young researchers with the opportunity to conduct advanced research relevant to the main thematic focus areas of the institute (Education for Sustainable Development is one of the specific areas of the Programme). The application deadline for the JSPS–UNU Postdoctoral Fellowship programme is 21 February, 2020. Read more

Upcoming Events

Save the Date: ProSPER.Net Joint Meetings – General Assembly and Board Meeting

The ProSPER.Net Secretariat is pleased to announce that the ProSPER.Net Joint Meetings, the 14th General Assembly and the 20th Board Meeting, will be co-hosted by Ateneo de Manila University and the University of the Philippines on 15 October, 2020, in Manila, the Philippines. The meetings will be followed by a Sustainability Forum, to be held on 16 October, 2020. More information will follow later in the year.

Publications

Integrating ESD in Teacher Education in South-East Asia Website Launched

A new website, 'Integrating ESD in Teacher Education in South-East Asia' by the Southeast Asia Teacher Educators' Network (SEA-ESD Network) and launched by UNESCO Bangkok, aims to serve as a guide and a platform to share information on integrating ESD in teacher education. The online guide takes readers through a step-by-step action research approach to integrate ESD in teacher education programmes and practices, and features stories shared by the SEA-ESD Network members, learning activities, teaching and learning tools, and reading resources. Users can read news from the network members, and also submit content in order to enrich the website. Take a look at the website here.

Assessing Progress towards Sustainable Development over Space and Time

Quantifying progress towards achieving the SDGs is essential to track global efforts towards sustainable development and guide policy development and implementation. However, systematic methods for assessing spatio-temporal progress towards achieving the SDGs are lacking.

Featured in Nature this month, this paper presents systematic methods to quantify progress towards the 17 SDGs at national and subnational levels in China, with the analyses indicating the scores of 13 of the 17 SDGs improved over time at the national level, whilst the scores of four SDGs declined. There were also large spatio-temporal variations across regions. The study suggests the need to track the spatio-temporal dynamics of progress towards SDGs at the global level and in other nations. Read more

This is a publication of UNU-IAS ProSPER.Net Secretariat. The bulletin is a great way to share your activities, events and news as a ProSPER.Net member with the rest of the network. Feel free to send us any information you may deem relevant for the rest of the community by completing this form and emailing it to prospernet@unu.edu. We look forward to your inputs! Visit ProSPER.Net regularly for up-to-date news and event information.

ProSPER.Net Secretariat 

United Nations University 
Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability 
5-53-70 Jingumae, 
Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-8925 
Japan