The UNDP has launched an open course to promote public engagement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in China on the 4th of August. The UN adopted the SDGs on September 26, 2015, receiving approval from 193 UN member states.

The UNDP Massive Open Online Course on SDGs

The UNDP Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on the Agenda 2030 for SDGs marks the first knowledge product to combine the global agenda with China’s current situation.

The course runs on the NetEase platform which has a total of 19 modules covering the 17 SDGs (including the introduction and conclusion module) and the current status of each of the goals in China.

Each Goal is introduced by a UNDP expert on the basic information of the global agenda, while the Chinese expert introduces the current situation and challenges, and recommendations for actions for all stakeholders.

The course is offered in Chinese or English and with bilingual subtitles in Chinese or English. After following each module users can take a test and receive a certificate issued by the UNDP.

Take a browse of the modules here http://open.163.com/undpsdgmooc

Once on the platform, registered users can also add their comments and ask questions that can be answered by the course moderators.

Implementation of SDGs

The SGDs were adopted last year and the list of SDG indicators were agreed upon by the UN Statistical Commission in March 2016.

The SDGs are currently in the implementation stages and a recent report was issued by the UN to present an overview of the 17 Goals and use the currently available data to highlight the most significant gaps and challenges.

For example this reports reveals that,

"The latest data show that about one in eight people still lived in extreme poverty, nearly 800 million people suffered from hunger, the births of nearly a quarter of children under 5 had not been recorded, 1.1 billion people were living without electricity, and water scarcity affected more than 2 billion people”

The launch of this MOOC is one of the innovative was that UNDP has championed towards the SGDs promotion and advocating for their common awareness in China, and hopefully scalable in other countries as well.

If you are interested in knowing how the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) is aligning its work with the SDGs, visit this dedicated platform here http://www.fao.org/3/a-i4997e.pdf

More information

[1] Eco-Business. http://www.eco-business.com/news/un-launches-open-online-course-for-sdg-awareness/
[2] UNDP NetEase Platform. http://open.163.com/undpsdgmooc
[3] Report of the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goal Indicators. http://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2016/