ED-Master in Sustainable Development and co-learning across the CELESTE partnership

BE2022ICP211A101 01/09/2022 - 31/08/2027 The 2030 Agenda urges for a systemic way of thinking about the nexus between development, environment and climate change, with social inclusion, gender equality, global citizenship and multiculturalism as the orientations of the moral compass. Sustainable Development Goal 4 calls for training committed sustainability experts capable of imagining, designing, triggering and coordinating sustainability transitions following this compass. However, Higher Education in the sustainability field is still commonly oriented by a dualistic perspective on nature and society, and suffers from fragmentation in educational and research approaches. There is also a persisting tendency in academic curricula to constrain sustainability solutions to technological innovations and technical skills. Training ‘green talent’ is necessary; but there is ample evidence (see COVID-19, climate crisis) that it is not enough for Higher Education to contribute to tackling fundamental drivers of social vulnerability and unsustainable development. This is why the Master in Sustainable Development trains sustainable development professionals and scholars with interdisciplinary knowledge, expert skills in relevant socio-ecological domains, and critical and systemic thinking yet situated within specific content areas. Through its integrated course ‘Sustainable Development Living Lab & Project’, the Master engages with societally relevant research and research-geared education with transdisciplinarity, gender-sensitivity, decoloniality as core pillars. Such integrative engagement involves co-production with communities and non-academic actors of locally specific and globally relevant solutions. Thus, the Master will further develop and consolidate the CELESTE Network. CELESTE stands for ‘soCiety, EcoLogy, spacE and SusTainable dEvelopment’. It gathers in an international learning community academics, students, alumni, and practitioners co-producing inter-/transdisciplinary, gender-sensitive, decolonial and research-driven education for sustainable development.