Putting the UN SDGs on the Map: The Role of Cartography in Sustainability Education

Introducing a QGIS technical supplement for Mapping for a Sustainable World

“…Maps of SDG indicator datasets are essential for monitoring progress towards these goals, focusing discussion and policymaking about the SDGs upon global inequalities, interdependencies, and alternatives, and supporting public awareness about our planet's most pressing challenges. Accordingly, mapping the SDGs is drawing increasing attention by the cartographic community (Kent et al 2020;Pirani et al 2020), including establishment of an ICA Working Group on Cartography and Sustainable Development.…”

“…Maps of SDG indicator datasets are essential for monitoring progress towards these goals, focusing discussion and policymaking about the SDGs upon global inequalities, interdependencies, and alternatives, and supporting public awareness about our planet's most pressing challenges. Accordingly, mapping the SDGs is drawing increasing attention by the cartographic community (Kent et al 2020;Pirani et al 2020), including establishment of an ICA Working Group on Cartography and Sustainable Development.The Mapping for a Sustainable World book project began as a partnership between the United Nations Geospatial Information Section and the International Cartographic Association to respond to the challenges of mapping the SDG indicator datasets (see Kraak et al 2019 for the original design concept). Published in 2020, the book serves as both an overview of cartographic design principles and a guide for mapping the SDGs, and comprises four sections and 51 chapters on the topics of geospatial data, map design considerations, map and diagram techniques, and map use environments.…”

Collaborative spatial learning for improving public participation practice in Indonesia

“…However, as the SDGs are not legally binding, states should take the responsibility to establish a national framework to achieve the SDGs (Janoušková et al, 2018). They should be able to adapt and localise the targets and indicators of SDGs into their country policies, from the national level to the rural or community levels, including to ensure the availability of geospatial data to support the implementation of SDGs at different levels of governmental structures (Kent et al, 2020;Scott & Rajabifard, 2017).…”

“…The UN-GGIM promotes this urgent need by encouraging countries to improve their geospatial management strategies and to provide accurate and reliable geospatial data for supporting the development processes (UN-GGIM, 2018). Maps, as the visualised spatial data, play an essential role to address the complex and interlinked issues of SDGs implementation (Kent et al, 2020). However, the application of SDGs is often confronted with problems of contextualisation, concerning global goals, targets and indicators.…”

“…Still, in reality, it clearly shows how the grass-root citizens react to the SDGs issues, and how they gain awareness about the SDGs, and why it is crucial to apply village development in a sustainable way at the local context. By putting this information and knowledge on maps, the villagers, as the smallest social structure within the governmental hierarchies, have made their contribution to achieving the SDGs agenda (Kent et al, 2020).…”