The Contribution of UNESCO Chairs toward Achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals

Zinette Bergman, Manfred Max Bergman, Kiran Fernandes, Daphne Grossrieder and Lea Schneider
Additional contact information
Zinette Bergman: Department of Social Sciences, University of Basel, 4001 Basel, Switzerland
Manfred Max Bergman: Department of Social Sciences, University of Basel, 4001 Basel, Switzerland
Kiran Fernandes: Business School, Durham University, Durham DH1, UK
Daphne Grossrieder: Department of Social Sciences, University of Basel, 4001 Basel, Switzerland
Lea Schneider: Department of Social Sciences, University of Basel, 4001 Basel, Switzerland

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 12, 1-16

Abstract: The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) aims to enhance peace, security, and sustainable development by fostering international collaboration. Based on this aim, it stands to reason that the organization ought to contribute to the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In this research, we examined how an important program of UNESCO, the UNESCO Chairs, contributes to the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). Specifically, we studied the activities of 34 UNESCO Chairs from seven countries of the Northern Hemisphere (Germany, Iceland, Portugal, Slovenia, South Korea, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom) to assess the contribution of the chairs toward the UN SDGs. The data for this study are based on in-depth narrative interviews, and we used Hermeneutic Content Analysis, a mixed methods framework, for analysis. Our results show that, unsurprisingly, all chairs contribute to UN SDG 4 (Quality Education) and 17 (Partnerships for the Goals) based on their extensive research and teaching activities. Interestingly, their academic focal areas contribute to specific UN SDG clusters. Using Multidimensional Scaling, we analyzed the UN SDG clusters across different focal areas to reveal the implicit models of sustainability among the chairs. Our findings have implications on the limits of how UNESCO Chairs conceptualize sustainability and show how this has positive and negative consequences on their contribution toward achieving the UN SDGs.

Keywords: UN SDGs; UNESCO; sustainable development; hermeneutic content analysis; content configuration analysis; multidimensional scaling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/12/4471/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/12/4471/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:10:y:2018:i:12:p:4471-:d:186124

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().