Without a doubt, entrepreneurship is vital to achieving United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 4 and 8. SGD 4 is to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education that promotes lifelong learning opportunities for all. Specifically, SDG target 4.4 aims to substantially increase the number of young persons and adults who have the relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment and decent jobs and entrepreneurship. SDG 8 is meant to promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all. As highlighted in our recent article[1], our initial research shows that entrepreneurial ecosystems are a critical means by which social and economic goals are achieved. Thus, nurturing and promoting vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystems has become an assumed goal of most government and communities globally.  In this paper, an entrepreneurial ecosystem is defined as “a set of interdependent actors and factors coordinated in such a way that they enable productive entrepreneurship within a particular territory”[2].

Silicon Valley is one of the most important locations in the United States of America, associated with a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem, and it did not “grow overnight.” It took about half a century to achieve that status through regional geographic, social, cultural and institutional evolutionary factors.  Several generations of successful companies grew, matured and spread across the world by following the path discovered by entrepreneurs such as Moore and Noyce in the Silicon Valley[3]. The exploits of these pioneers generated a formidable entrepreneurial compounding effect called the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Global companies such as Facebook, Google, and Uber benefited from the compounding effects created by such giants from past generations to grow their businesses.

A similar history was repeated in China. First-generation Chinese technology companies such as Tencent and Alibaba[4] became the indispensable cornerstones for the emergence of the Chinese entrepreneurial ecosystem. Currently, there are an observed increased number of technology start-ups and a rise of new entrepreneurship hubs all over the world, including Tel Aviv, Singapore, London, and Berlin[5].

What makes a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem? Among others, a thriving ecosystem has the following key elements:

1. A dynamic interaction and interdependence between individual actors and communities to “achieve something together that lies beyond and greater than the effective scope and capabilities of any individual actor.” This (un)conscious shared purpose promotes and strengthens resource efficiency.
2. The recognition that internal social constructions and cultural values generate entrepreneurial action, which in turn drive economic development and revitalization at local, regional and state levels.
3. Entrepreneurial ecosystems foster macro-level resilience within the context of entrepreneurial failure, recovery, and transformation. In this regard, failure and recovery become a rite of passage.
4. Resilient, entrepreneurial ecosystems practiced with complexity theory enable businesspeople to practice entrepreneurship sustainably as envisaged in SDGs 4 and 8.

The lessons distilled from the cases cited in the US, Europe and China above are similar to those co-created by the Kwawu people in Ghana. The Kwawu complex, adaptive and resilient entrepreneurial ecosystems consist of eight (8) inter-related elements. These are a durable enabling entrepreneurial culture, learning-by-observing, doing, adopting, adapting, replicating, spiriting and social inclusion. Each of these elements will now be summarized.

Enabling Entrepreneurial Culture: An enabling entrepreneurial culture within this context is the affirmative sense of empowering individuals to become successful entrepreneurs. The community has quality mentors, who are a network of successful entrepreneurs that offer entrepreneurial mentoring. Start-up capital is usually generated within these trusted networks. The entrepreneurial cultural outcomes they cherish include: created wealth, trusting relations, imaginative and inspired thinking, less wastefulness and the ability to “sniff” business opportunities. Even though entrepreneurship is driven by the “self”, the community also value cooperation and collaboration with business associates.

Learning-by-Observing: From childhood, the Kwawu observe the traits, personas, behaviours and mannerisms of their entrepreneurial parents, uncles, aunties, and other close associates and attempt to do likewise later on in life. Factors that encourage the inclination towards developing by observing include:

• The availability of parents and close associations who are seen to be warm, nurturing, and who reward entrepreneurial behaviour.
• Successful entrepreneurs who are wealthy and admired and have high social status.
• Community leaders who inspire entrepreneurial confidence.

Development-by-Doing: “Development-by-doing” is realised through putting observed behaviour into practice to achieve detectable levels of excellence. Development by doing is complemented by coaching from close associates to accomplish a shared agenda of successful entrepreneurial development.

Learning-by-Adopting: This encompasses the informed selection and acceptance of other peoples tested entrepreneurial ethos as theirs. The Kwawus do this by deliberately choosing to embrace the philosophy of self and personal responsibility without abandoning group interactions. They also embrace the ethos of constant and consistent learning from, and packaging themselves after, successful pace setters and the adopting of new technologies, products and service.

Learning-by-Adapting: Developing-by-adapting the way business is done in response to changing business circumstances and environment (for examples, changes in social, political and economic conditions as well as the emergence of new technologies). This sort of development is done to mitigate undesirable impacts of past decisions and business environment and explore new ways of making better decisions and improving outcomes. The adaptation involves cooperation and collaboration with business associates and at both formal and informal gatherings that encourage individual input and self-achievements.

Learning-by-Replication: Replication refers to a situation where tested and established business strategies are tried elsewhere in a new geographical area or a new market, or a new set of customers. Replication often leads to the learners setting up new businesses or trading systems where the ability which has already been acquired is used to set up expanded or new companies.

Learning-by-Spiriting: Spiriting, in this context, connotes dispensing wisdom and “grey hair” services. It is about incarnating one’s self into individuals and the community by descending into the system to give birth to one’s entrepreneurial kind. Spiritors are holders and the embodiment of entrepreneurial wisdom. The most desired future of Spiritors includes valuing and exploiting future socio-economic-environmental ideals, grooming future holders of the vision and collaborating with current vision bearers to build businesses.

Social inclusion: It is the character and atmosphere that holds the elements of entrepreneurship development together. Social inclusion provides the required energy and conditions for mutual sustainability. This is achieved by welcoming, accommodating, nurturing and interacting with many different peoples and cultures (internal and external stakeholders) for mutual benefits and sustainability.

Contributions to sustainable management and development theory and practice 

The model and learning derived from the Kwawu entrepreneurial ecosystem can be used to achieve at least three things:

1. “Absorb” entrepreneurial disturbances such as those caused by the current pandemic, and the system adjusted so that it responds to these disturbances positively.
2. Analyse entrepreneurial interactions and identify business model innovations at local, national and regional levels and craft policy innovations at all levels.
3. Research how competition, cooperation, and collaboration among businesses affect the compound effect and shared value creation.

[1] Anuwa-Amarh, E., Hinske, C., Bamfo-Debrah, N. K., Sefa, D., Amarh, S., & Nassam, S. (2020). 26 The Kwawu resilient entrepreneurial ecosystem s. Sustainable Development and Resource Productivity, 317.

[2] Stam, F. C., & Spigel, B. (2016). Entrepreneurial ecosystems. USE Discussion paper series, 16(13).

[3] Berlin, L. (2010). Robert Noyce, Silicon Valley, and the Teamwork Behind the High-Technology Revolution. OAH Magazine of History, 24(1), 33-36.

[4] Jia, K., Kenney, M., Mattila, J., & Seppala, T. (2018). The application of artificial intelligence at Chinese digital platform giants: Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent. ETLA reports, (81).

[5] Fuerlinger, G., Fandl, U., & Funke, T. (2015). The role of the state in the entrepreneurship ecosystem: insights from Germany. Triple Helix, 2(1), 1-26.

Environmental Hazards: Human and Policy Dimensions is an interdisciplinary and international research journal that addresses the human and policy dimensions of hazards. As is well-known, the journal addresses the full range of hazardous events, from extreme geological, hydrological, atmospheric and biological events, such as earthquakes, floods, storms and epidemics, to technological failures and malfunctions, such as industrial explosions, fires and toxic material releases.

With a genuinely international perspective, we are able to highlight issues of human exposure, vulnerability, awareness, response and risk. The role of hazards in affecting development, and issues of efficiency, social justice and sustainability are also explored in the journal. Well-known conventional hazards receive extensive coverage, but so do new forms of hazard, emerging risk management institutions and restructuring of ideas about hazards, including their role in human affairs.

Important to ideas, policies and practices regarding hazard reduction globally in this context has been the development of the UN SDGs. These set targets for specific goals and their objectives, and the relationship with hazards and hazard reduction is easily appreciated. Almost all 17 of the goals are relevant to research on environmental hazards, but some are perhaps more relevant than others. Thus, SDG 1 (No Poverty), SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 3 (Good Health and Wellbeing) and SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation) directly relate to our concern for hazard victims, where these are serious threats to communities during and after hazard events. We take increasingly seriously the distributional and related issues, such as SDG 5 (Gender Equality) and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequality).

Governance-related issues also feature strongly in our publication record, reflecting and reinforcing Goals such as SDG 16 (Peace and Justice Strong Institutions) and SDG 17 (Partnerships to Achieve the Goal). More contextual but no less important are SDG 13 (Climate Action), SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) and SDG 15 (Life on Land). What the journal seeks to do, taking an international perspective, is to link particular circumstances in a range of places to modern ideas, including in the SDGs, about hazard exposure, vulnerability reduction and the promotion of community resilience. The SDGs provide a challenging backdrop to that effort, and it is likely in future that more papers will be accepted that explicitly address the relationship between these goals and particular hazards in specific locations. This is not something that we require but will be useful as a way of monitoring the development of ideas and practices with respect to these Goals, and their evolution over time.

Visit the journal for the latest issue of Environmental Hazards: Human and Policy Dimensions here or follow the links below to browse some of the journal’s recent OA articles.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17477891.2021.1912694?src=

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17477891.2021.1898926?src=

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17477891.2020.1771250?src=

By Katrin Kohl & Charles Hopkins, York University, Canada

SDG 4 Quality Education

“I am off to school, see you later!” she shouts, turns her computer on and closes the door. Many families have become used to the new routine of remote learning in 2020. At the height of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, over 80 % of the world´s students from more than 170 countries[1] were at home and often only returned briefly to the physical space of school at the beginning of the academic year 2020/21. Students in 40 countries found themselves back at learning remotely in early 2021.

Children and youth in primary and secondary education adapted to a new reality where access to the internet with the technical infrastructure available for teachers and students to offer and participate in remote learning became crucial. Higher education teachers and students similarly pivoted to remote learning and developed new ways of teaching and studying.

For many, this new way of remote learning has become a Next Normal[2], yet it is a world of extremes. We are facing enormous opportunity, but exclusion at the same time. UNESCO states that approximately half of the world´s students, most of them from the poorer countries[3], did not have access to remote learning activities in 2020. While this number exposed a dire need to create equitable access for all, many government started to improve their infrastructure for students to secure the path towards quality education as stated in SDG 4 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

There is momentum to think outside the box when building the necessary learning infrastructure and further developing the concepts of remote learning. Quality Education as called for by the United Nations is both a singular goal but also a key enabler of all of the other SDGs[4]. At the core of such quality education are the guiding principles of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and global citizenship. Both concepts refer to ways of empowering learners with knowledge, skills, values and attitudes to take informed decisions and become engaged citizens to promote sustainable development[5]. Expanding the classroom through learning together in local and global communities can help to build human connections that create partnership between people for the planet.

Remote learning has come to stay. Many school systems will integrate remote learning into their long-term portfolio to serve in times of short-term interruptions or as a new stream of learning for those students who have come to prefer or thrive in the virtual classroom. With ESD and global citizenship properly integrated into these new opportunities, remote learning can achieve more than being just another form of delivering the curriculum.

As higher education has demonstrated in the last year, teaching and learning can overcome borders and – despite the lack of in-person interaction and hands-on learning – still create valuable experience. Since international students could not travel, they joined programmes in other countries, time zones and languages online. Concepts, such as Collaborative Online Intercultural Learning (COIL)[6] or Globally Networked Learning (GNL)[7], showed the positive impact of students from different regions, languages and backgrounds, continuously learning together.

With primary and secondary education also arriving in the virtual space, there is opportunity to connect schools in similar ways and broadening learning horizons by overcoming borders. Primary and secondary school students can now not only connect to students in other regions but even (partially) participate in an education outside of their current country of residence. Several levels of educating children and youth in more connected ways could be imagined, such as:

1. Learning opportunities for specific subjects or themes through remote learning: language learning, learning about history of a region, arts and culture education.
2. Learning opportunities with cross-curriculum and cross-region teaching: curricula themes, relevant to both regions, could be taught in a partner approach of teachers and in mixed student groups.
3. Remotely attending a school in a different region: If comprehensive remote teaching is offered in school systems, it is an option for students to participate in a complete education programme outside their own region.

Global school networks could provide a basis for connecting schools to each other, e.g. the UNESCO-associated schools network (ASPnet)[8], comprised of more than 11,000 schools in 180 countries. Such networks already follow common objectives, while content and delivery could be contextualized in each region.

However, there are considerable challenges to overcome, such as the languages of instruction, time zones, cultural differences, current laws that require students to attend school in their country of residence or financing schooling for out-of-country students etc.

Yet, schooling beyond borders might be a new way of addressing quality education in a global effort. Further access to schooling could be provided for students in countries where resources are insufficient for all or schooling is interrupted due to environmental, economic or social reasons. Countries that base their national development on immigration could offer remote primary and secondary schooling for children of future immigrants. Vice versa, emigrants could still participate in schooling of their country of origin to understand and maintain their native language, heritage and culture.

An education that would connect people, provide knowledge and global perspectives could enhance the critical thinking of those who participate in these opportunities. We all understand that sustainable change needs more than just knowledge about facts. Schooling that brings together learners from various backgrounds could lead to an emotional exposure and newly found compassion for the other. This transformative learning experience, inherent in ESD and global citizenship, could bring forward the future leaders that make the difference and help creating the sustainable future we all hope for.

[1] https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[2] https://en.unesco.org/news/unescos-next-normal-campaign [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[3] https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000374561 [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[4] https://undocs.org/en/A/RES/74/223 [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[5] https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000374802 [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[6] https://coil.suny.edu/ [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[7] https://yorkinternational.yorku.ca/gnl-2/ [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[8] https://aspnet.unesco.org/en-us/Pages/default.aspx [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability was first published in spring 1996, in the heady post-1992 UN World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) days. After this ‘Rio Earth Summit’, Local governments in the UK and around the world were literally scrambling to understand the policy and planning implications of Local Agenda 21, and both academics and practitioners realized there was a need to collaborate in new and creative ways, turning theory into practice, and improving/generating theory through practice. Local Environment was born out of this local sustainability mandate from the UN.

In our first Editorial, my co-founder Bob Evans and I wrote:

“However much some would wish it otherwise, the environmental debate is as reflective of social and political inequality, and is as fundamentally conflictual as any other, and there is unlikely to be environmental quality, howsoever measured, without a much greater degree of social equality. This applies both within and between nations, and globally.”

In this we were signaling what we called at the time The New Environmental Agenda – the niche that Local Environment would always occupy: an exploration of the inextricable policy and planning linkages between the simultaneous achievement of environmental quality and human/social equality, or more broadly, between what was then largely environmentally oriented sustainability agenda, and the political project of environmental justice. Our framing of this nexus between the two concepts and their respective social movements developed into the increasingly influential policy and planning goal of just sustainabilities:

“the need to ensure a better quality of life for all, now, and into the future, in a just and equitable manner, whilst living within the limits of supporting ecosystems.”

To achieve the fullest potential of just sustainabilities, four conditions need to be met, not individually, but simultaneously:

1. Improving people’s quality of life and wellbeing;
   2. Meeting the needs of both present and future generations (intra- and intergenerational equity);
   3. Ensuring justice and equity in terms of recognition, process, procedure and outcome;
2. Recognizing ecosystem limits and the need to live within them.

In September 2015, the United Nations Assembly formally adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), superseding the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), to be implemented by 2030. In October 2016, the UN HABITAT III Conference in Quito launched the New Urban Agenda (NUA) which seeks to inform urban policy and practice in the context of global sustainability and resilience. While national governments were responsible for developing and negotiating the NUA objectives, city and local governments will play a focal role in leading their coordination, management implementation.

Both the SDGs and NUA are reflective of, and build on, the four conditions of just sustainabilities, and are therefore central to the mission of Local Environment. Of the 17 SDGs, all fit the concept of just sustainabilities in that they acknowledge the links between environmental quality and human equality; that stopping poverty must be linked with strategies to improve gender equality, people’s health and education, to reduce inequality, and encourage economic growth – at the same time tackling climate change and working to preserve our natural capital.

But if there were one SDG that could be seen as the ‘home’ of Local Environment, it would be the ‘urban goal’, SDG 11 which hailed the NUA. It requires that we “make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”. Clearly, urban policy and planning is critical to the urban goal. It defines an explicitly urban planning target, 11.3: “By 2030, enhance inclusive and sustainable urbanization and capacity for participatory, integrated and sustainable human settlement planning and management in all countries.”

Since the early days, Local Environment has maintained its focus, preceding both the SDGs and the NUA. In our Aims and Scope:

“Our focus is specifically on sustainability planning, policy and politics in relation to theoretical, conceptual and empirical studies at the nexus of equity, justice and the local environment. It is an inclusive forum for diverse constituencies and perspectives to engage in a critical examination, evaluation and discussion of the environmental, social and economic policies, processes and strategies which will be needed in movement towards social justice and sustainability – “Just Sustainabilities” – at local, regional, national and global scales.”

Consequently, the scholarship we have published over the past 24 years, and will continue to publish, is pivotal to tackling the all of the SDGs whilst also shaping the developing NUA.

Julian Agyeman

Editor-in-Chief

Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability

Visit the journal for the latest issue of Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability here or follow the links below to browse some of the journal’s recent OA articles.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13549839.2018.1463978

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13549839.2019.1628730

The imperative to reduce inequalities and leave no one behind infuses all the United Nations Social Development Goals (SDGs), including those with a focus on sexual and reproductive health (SRH). Universal access to SRH services and rights is needed to ensure healthy lives and well-being (SDG 3) and to contribute to gender equality (SDG 5). Achieving SRH and rights for all is also expected to positively impact on sustainable development and the environment and contribute to fairer communities and societies (Ghebreyesus and Kanem 2018). The aspiration is to reach the entire population and, in particular, poor, marginalised and vulnerable populations with comprehensive good quality services as well as to make sure that every individual can exercise “the right to make decisions that govern their bodies, free from stigma, discrimination, and coercion” (Starrs et al 2018, p. 2642).

The policy and programmatic shift required to realise this pledge of universal access to SRH services and rights is, however, significant, since it entails interrogating and addressing the factors that keep uneven social and economic development in place. Here we ponder on the influences that shape and place limits on equality and universal SRH and rights in Southeast Asia and on what it would take to tackle them. We identify three key drivers of disparity and exclusion that contribute to unequal SRH outcomes and demand urgent action if justice in and through sexual and reproductive health is to be achieved: the maldistribution of wealth and wellbeing; entrenched patriarchy; and growing rise of authoritarianism and populism.

Maldistribution of wealth and wellbeing

In recent decades, countries in Southeast Asia have enjoyed economic growth through economic liberalisation and integration in the global economy. This macro-economic success has brought with it significant social and environmental costs and has consistently failed to lead to ‘shared prosperity’ trickling down to the neediest. Disparities across and within countries remain striking, with a recent SDG progress report pointing to Southeast Asia as the only sub-region within Asia Pacific with widening in-country inequalities (UNESCAP 2018).

Although income levels do not necessarily translate into health outcomes, a close correlation exists between them in this region, where the more advantaged countries have significantly better well-being indicators when compared to the less advantaged ones. For instance, in 2017, average life expectancy in Singapore, Brunei Darussalam and Thailand was on average ten years longer than that in Myanmar, Cambodia and Lao PDR (ASEAN 2018). Moreover, sub-national disparities are rife.  Poor people are at a greater risk of dying from preventable diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria and poor women from unwanted pregnancy than their richer counterparts. Across the region, infant and maternal mortality rates are higher in rural areas, especially in remote locations. Similarly, girls living in the countryside – with less education and from poorer households – are more likely to be married or engaged early and at increased risk of early pregnancy, STIs and gender-based violence.

Health divides reveal large inequalities in access to health personnel, equipment and services. Public spending on health remains low, with governments advancing privatisation and marketisation of health care at the cost of public provision. A mix of social health insurance is offered to the poor for limited services. In many countries there exists “a two-tier health care system, with deluxe priority care for the better off and a rump, underfunded public sector for the rest’” (Ormond, Mun and Khoon 2014, p. 3).  Even when national health schemes increase affordability, such as in Thailand, the quality of care offered to lower-income and migrant patients – when they have access – is significantly poorer than that available to their wealthier counterparts.

Privatisation impacts on access to SRH supplies and services, standards of care and SRH outcomes. The cost of reproductive health services in private facilities is generally higher than in public facilities. In low-resource countries such as Laos and Cambodia, their use is prohibitive or implies burdensome, if not catastrophic, out of pocket expenses. Existing universal health care (where available) is no panacea either, as in most countries it only covers basic mother-and-child care. Furthermore, resource allocation frequently ignores groups deemed not to be entitled to SRH services on gender and moral grounds – for example, young people, unmarried women and LGBTIQ persons – leaving them dependent on private practitioners irrespective of their economic status.

Patriarchy and Populism

Patriarchy is entrenched in Southeast Asia even if there is much talk about women’s empowerment and leadership in national plans. Culturally diverse countries subscribe to the same overarching discourse of ‘Asian values’, framing women as subservient to men as household heads, including on sexual and reproductive matters. This social construction of a heteronormative ‘ideal’ continues to be seen as natural despite the growing reality of women-headed, single-person, same sex and separated families and the different roles women have always played at home and in society.

Time and again, governments fail to take into account women’s autonomy, needs and choices. Positions vary from pro-natalist stances for religious or demographic reasons in the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore, to the enforcement of family planning programmes using long-term contraceptives as in Indonesia and Vietnam. Decisions are further entrusted to the couple, if not the male partner, rather than the individual woman. As normative values locate sexuality and reproduction within the family, SRH education and services are not provided to single women and adolescents. The social fear of girls being sexually active and pregnant outside of wedlock contributes to early marriage and lack of educational opportunities. Maternal mortality is a persistent problem with deaths per 100,000 live births as high as 357 in Laos, 305 in Indonesia, 221 in the Philippines, 190 in Myanmar, 180 in Cambodia and an average of 197 regionally in 2015 (ASEAN 2017).

Skewed gender values have also shaped the HIV epidemic and national responses to it, with women largely ignored in prevention efforts when not sex workers. Efforts to control women and their sexuality manifest themselves in a multitude of violent and harmful practices from female genital mutilation, to sex selection. Intimate partner violence is pervasive, and rape continues to be condoned as men’s sexual entitlement (and thus not needing a woman’s consent) and as a ‘deserved’ punishment for deviant women or weapon of war. Most countries have laws to criminalise violence against women, but protection does not extend to unmarried couples and gender and sexual minorities. Nor does it include all forms of violence, such as sexual harassment and marital rape.

The attainment of economic and gender inclusion is even more challenged because of the rise of authoritarianism and of nationalist and religious populism throughout the region. This puts at risk the tenuous progress achieved by women’s groups and civil society in the 1980s and 1990s with the emergence of human-right based discourses and movements stressing women’s rights, SRH rights and, more recently, LBGTQI rights. Democratic forces that at the time seemed to have punctured, at least in parts of Southeast Asia, the dominance of centralised regimes, are experiencing a backlash. Referring back to timeworn justifications of stability, development and traditional values, governments are clamping down with greater intensity on freedom of association, speech and information, and are curtailing civic space. Pressure on civil society and progressive standpoints is further placed by the numerous fundamentalist and nationalist groups that have proliferated in recent years. In such a constraining climate, contestation over SRH and rights, gender equality and sexual diversity is becoming more intense.

Technical Know-how is Not Enough

Considering the regressive trends engulfing the region and the nature of the underlying drivers of inequity in development and SRH and rights, it is reasonable to assume that these cannot be addressed simply by adding investments and technical know-how or expanding access to services.   Instead, they require an approach that champions social change. A paradigm shift is required in the way we approach the SDGs and tackle SRH problems and their underlying causes.  This implies moving: 1) from creating opportunities for the left behind to ‘shared prosperity’ and redistribution across socio-economic groups; 2) from a technical to an empowering approach to addressing patriarchy and heteronormativity; and 3) from a developmental to a political framework for ‘inclusive societies’ to promoting and ensuring basic freedoms and respect of human rights.

More particularly, a more equitable distribution of wealth and wellbeing requires an overhaul of the economic system away from endless growth and consumerism to greater equity and equality. Alternative economic models that aim for “good lives for all within the limits of one planet” (Peck 2013, para 20) require ending perverse subsidies, land reform, community land trusts, unconditional basic incomes, and cap-and-share systems. Fiscal redistribution mechanisms including inheritance and progressive taxes and greater spending on social protection and transfers to the poorest are needed, alongside tax compliance by the rich. For the SDGs not to be perceived as ‘bluewash’, a system reboot of corporate practices beyond public-private partnerships and social corporate responsibility (CSR) will have to occur if business is to become more accountable to society and the environment (Peck 2017).

In the health sector, efforts should be made to challenge the progressive privatisation and commodification of health, reclaiming health as a public and not a private good. Governments need to increase public spending and provide greater regulatory oversight to keep corporate providers in check. New public systems and schemes are required that prioritise care according to need rather than capacity to pay. Prevention and promotion need to be placed at the centre of public health, which implies an allocation of financial and human resources away from treatment and hospital-centred care. In the push for universal health care, gender and socio-economic equity should be consciously built in and comprehensive SRH services should be made a number one priority in health financing and provision.

This implies working to challenge patriarchy in all its manifestations. Policy and programmes need to recognise that women’s empowerment in the public as well as in the domestic sphere is a precondition for attaining SRH and rights.  Too many programmes and interventions are of a technical rather than a transformative nature, shying away from a feminist analysis of the power structures at stake, and settling for some form of paternalist protectionism. Change should also come to development programmes addressing women as yet one more vulnerable group classified together with many other vulnerable groups, even though they make up more than half of humanity. The deconstruction of the entrenched patriarchal-heteronormative paradigm should be a priority for SRH struggles, and more needs to be done to normalise men’s work and role at home, as well as respect for gender and sexual minorities. States across Southeast Asia should be held accountable for the advancement of women beyond the level of rhetoric.

The upholding of women’s SRH and other rights requires a full rejection of ethnic and religious populism, fundamentalism, radicalism and of the politicisation of religion. For each and every one of us, the current global and regional context requires taking a position, breaking the silence and becoming vocal in defence of gender, sexuality, religious and ethnic diversity and human rights.

Moving from a developmental, to a political perspective for inclusive societies, implies reclaiming civic space for alternative voices and action. In all of this work, the SDGs can no longer be framed as apolitical.  Rather, states should be scrutinised and held accountable for their actions towards women, SDG commitments and all of those who are marginalised and ignored (Sriskandarajah 2017).

From this, it may be concluded that a structural approach to bringing justice to and through SRH must address the root causes of social exclusion and promote diversity.  In doing so, it must question the current economic order, patriarchy and other divisive power relations, promote human rights and support civil society. Only through a transformative approach will it be possible to move beyond the rhetoric of SDG aspirations and change society in such a way that indeed no-one is left behind.

****

This article is based on a paper by Rosalia Sciortino entitled Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights for All in Southeast Asia: More than SDGs aspirations,  published in Culture, Health & Sexuality

Rosalia Sciortino is an Associate Professor in the Institute for Population and Social Research (IPSR) at Mahidol University founder and Director of SEA Junction (www.seajunction.org) in Bangkok, Thailand.

 Peter Aggleton holds professorial positions at UNSW Sydney, The Australian National University in Canberra and UCL in London. 

Without a doubt, entrepreneurship is vital to achieving United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 4 and 8. SGD 4 is to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education that promotes lifelong learning opportunities for all. Specifically, SDG target 4.4 aims to substantially increase the number of young persons and adults who have the relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment and decent jobs and entrepreneurship. SDG 8 is meant to promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all. As highlighted in our recent article[1], our initial research shows that entrepreneurial ecosystems are a critical means by which social and economic goals are achieved. Thus, nurturing and promoting vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystems has become an assumed goal of most government and communities globally.  In this paper, an entrepreneurial ecosystem is defined as “a set of interdependent actors and factors coordinated in such a way that they enable productive entrepreneurship within a particular territory”[2].

Silicon Valley is one of the most important locations in the United States of America, associated with a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem, and it did not “grow overnight.” It took about half a century to achieve that status through regional geographic, social, cultural and institutional evolutionary factors.  Several generations of successful companies grew, matured and spread across the world by following the path discovered by entrepreneurs such as Moore and Noyce in the Silicon Valley[3]. The exploits of these pioneers generated a formidable entrepreneurial compounding effect called the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Global companies such as Facebook, Google, and Uber benefited from the compounding effects created by such giants from past generations to grow their businesses.

A similar history was repeated in China. First-generation Chinese technology companies such as Tencent and Alibaba[4] became the indispensable cornerstones for the emergence of the Chinese entrepreneurial ecosystem. Currently, there are an observed increased number of technology start-ups and a rise of new entrepreneurship hubs all over the world, including Tel Aviv, Singapore, London, and Berlin[5].

What makes a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem? Among others, a thriving ecosystem has the following key elements:

1. A dynamic interaction and interdependence between individual actors and communities to “achieve something together that lies beyond and greater than the effective scope and capabilities of any individual actor.” This (un)conscious shared purpose promotes and strengthens resource efficiency.
2. The recognition that internal social constructions and cultural values generate entrepreneurial action, which in turn drive economic development and revitalization at local, regional and state levels.
3. Entrepreneurial ecosystems foster macro-level resilience within the context of entrepreneurial failure, recovery, and transformation. In this regard, failure and recovery become a rite of passage.
4. Resilient, entrepreneurial ecosystems practiced with complexity theory enable businesspeople to practice entrepreneurship sustainably as envisaged in SDGs 4 and 8.

The lessons distilled from the cases cited in the US, Europe and China above are similar to those co-created by the Kwawu people in Ghana. The Kwawu complex, adaptive and resilient entrepreneurial ecosystems consist of eight (8) inter-related elements. These are a durable enabling entrepreneurial culture, learning-by-observing, doing, adopting, adapting, replicating, spiriting and social inclusion. Each of these elements will now be summarized.

Enabling Entrepreneurial Culture: An enabling entrepreneurial culture within this context is the affirmative sense of empowering individuals to become successful entrepreneurs. The community has quality mentors, who are a network of successful entrepreneurs that offer entrepreneurial mentoring. Start-up capital is usually generated within these trusted networks. The entrepreneurial cultural outcomes they cherish include: created wealth, trusting relations, imaginative and inspired thinking, less wastefulness and the ability to “sniff” business opportunities. Even though entrepreneurship is driven by the “self”, the community also value cooperation and collaboration with business associates.

Learning-by-Observing: From childhood, the Kwawu observe the traits, personas, behaviours and mannerisms of their entrepreneurial parents, uncles, aunties, and other close associates and attempt to do likewise later on in life. Factors that encourage the inclination towards developing by observing include:

• The availability of parents and close associations who are seen to be warm, nurturing, and who reward entrepreneurial behaviour.
• Successful entrepreneurs who are wealthy and admired and have high social status.
• Community leaders who inspire entrepreneurial confidence.

Development-by-Doing: “Development-by-doing” is realised through putting observed behaviour into practice to achieve detectable levels of excellence. Development by doing is complemented by coaching from close associates to accomplish a shared agenda of successful entrepreneurial development.

Learning-by-Adopting: This encompasses the informed selection and acceptance of other peoples tested entrepreneurial ethos as theirs. The Kwawus do this by deliberately choosing to embrace the philosophy of self and personal responsibility without abandoning group interactions. They also embrace the ethos of constant and consistent learning from, and packaging themselves after, successful pace setters and the adopting of new technologies, products and service.

Learning-by-Adapting: Developing-by-adapting the way business is done in response to changing business circumstances and environment (for examples, changes in social, political and economic conditions as well as the emergence of new technologies). This sort of development is done to mitigate undesirable impacts of past decisions and business environment and explore new ways of making better decisions and improving outcomes. The adaptation involves cooperation and collaboration with business associates and at both formal and informal gatherings that encourage individual input and self-achievements.

Learning-by-Replication: Replication refers to a situation where tested and established business strategies are tried elsewhere in a new geographical area or a new market, or a new set of customers. Replication often leads to the learners setting up new businesses or trading systems where the ability which has already been acquired is used to set up expanded or new companies.

Learning-by-Spiriting: Spiriting, in this context, connotes dispensing wisdom and “grey hair” services. It is about incarnating one’s self into individuals and the community by descending into the system to give birth to one’s entrepreneurial kind. Spiritors are holders and the embodiment of entrepreneurial wisdom. The most desired future of Spiritors includes valuing and exploiting future socio-economic-environmental ideals, grooming future holders of the vision and collaborating with current vision bearers to build businesses.

Social inclusion: It is the character and atmosphere that holds the elements of entrepreneurship development together. Social inclusion provides the required energy and conditions for mutual sustainability. This is achieved by welcoming, accommodating, nurturing and interacting with many different peoples and cultures (internal and external stakeholders) for mutual benefits and sustainability.

Contributions to sustainable management and development theory and practice 

The model and learning derived from the Kwawu entrepreneurial ecosystem can be used to achieve at least three things:

1. “Absorb” entrepreneurial disturbances such as those caused by the current pandemic, and the system adjusted so that it responds to these disturbances positively.
2. Analyse entrepreneurial interactions and identify business model innovations at local, national and regional levels and craft policy innovations at all levels.
3. Research how competition, cooperation, and collaboration among businesses affect the compound effect and shared value creation.

[1] Anuwa-Amarh, E., Hinske, C., Bamfo-Debrah, N. K., Sefa, D., Amarh, S., & Nassam, S. (2020). 26 The Kwawu resilient entrepreneurial ecosystem s. Sustainable Development and Resource Productivity, 317.

[2] Stam, F. C., & Spigel, B. (2016). Entrepreneurial ecosystems. USE Discussion paper series, 16(13).

[3] Berlin, L. (2010). Robert Noyce, Silicon Valley, and the Teamwork Behind the High-Technology Revolution. OAH Magazine of History, 24(1), 33-36.

[4] Jia, K., Kenney, M., Mattila, J., & Seppala, T. (2018). The application of artificial intelligence at Chinese digital platform giants: Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent. ETLA reports, (81).

[5] Fuerlinger, G., Fandl, U., & Funke, T. (2015). The role of the state in the entrepreneurship ecosystem: insights from Germany. Triple Helix, 2(1), 1-26.

Environmental Hazards: Human and Policy Dimensions is an interdisciplinary and international research journal that addresses the human and policy dimensions of hazards. As is well-known, the journal addresses the full range of hazardous events, from extreme geological, hydrological, atmospheric and biological events, such as earthquakes, floods, storms and epidemics, to technological failures and malfunctions, such as industrial explosions, fires and toxic material releases.

With a genuinely international perspective, we are able to highlight issues of human exposure, vulnerability, awareness, response and risk. The role of hazards in affecting development, and issues of efficiency, social justice and sustainability are also explored in the journal. Well-known conventional hazards receive extensive coverage, but so do new forms of hazard, emerging risk management institutions and restructuring of ideas about hazards, including their role in human affairs.

Important to ideas, policies and practices regarding hazard reduction globally in this context has been the development of the UN SDGs. These set targets for specific goals and their objectives, and the relationship with hazards and hazard reduction is easily appreciated. Almost all 17 of the goals are relevant to research on environmental hazards, but some are perhaps more relevant than others. Thus, SDG 1 (No Poverty), SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 3 (Good Health and Wellbeing) and SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation) directly relate to our concern for hazard victims, where these are serious threats to communities during and after hazard events. We take increasingly seriously the distributional and related issues, such as SDG 5 (Gender Equality) and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequality).

Governance-related issues also feature strongly in our publication record, reflecting and reinforcing Goals such as SDG 16 (Peace and Justice Strong Institutions) and SDG 17 (Partnerships to Achieve the Goal). More contextual but no less important are SDG 13 (Climate Action), SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) and SDG 15 (Life on Land). What the journal seeks to do, taking an international perspective, is to link particular circumstances in a range of places to modern ideas, including in the SDGs, about hazard exposure, vulnerability reduction and the promotion of community resilience. The SDGs provide a challenging backdrop to that effort, and it is likely in future that more papers will be accepted that explicitly address the relationship between these goals and particular hazards in specific locations. This is not something that we require but will be useful as a way of monitoring the development of ideas and practices with respect to these Goals, and their evolution over time.

Visit the journal for the latest issue of Environmental Hazards: Human and Policy Dimensions here or follow the links below to browse some of the journal’s recent OA articles.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17477891.2021.1912694?src=

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17477891.2021.1898926?src=

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17477891.2020.1771250?src=

By Katrin Kohl & Charles Hopkins, York University, Canada

SDG 4 Quality Education

“I am off to school, see you later!” she shouts, turns her computer on and closes the door. Many families have become used to the new routine of remote learning in 2020. At the height of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, over 80 % of the world´s students from more than 170 countries[1] were at home and often only returned briefly to the physical space of school at the beginning of the academic year 2020/21. Students in 40 countries found themselves back at learning remotely in early 2021.

Children and youth in primary and secondary education adapted to a new reality where access to the internet with the technical infrastructure available for teachers and students to offer and participate in remote learning became crucial. Higher education teachers and students similarly pivoted to remote learning and developed new ways of teaching and studying.

For many, this new way of remote learning has become a Next Normal[2], yet it is a world of extremes. We are facing enormous opportunity, but exclusion at the same time. UNESCO states that approximately half of the world´s students, most of them from the poorer countries[3], did not have access to remote learning activities in 2020. While this number exposed a dire need to create equitable access for all, many government started to improve their infrastructure for students to secure the path towards quality education as stated in SDG 4 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

There is momentum to think outside the box when building the necessary learning infrastructure and further developing the concepts of remote learning. Quality Education as called for by the United Nations is both a singular goal but also a key enabler of all of the other SDGs[4]. At the core of such quality education are the guiding principles of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and global citizenship. Both concepts refer to ways of empowering learners with knowledge, skills, values and attitudes to take informed decisions and become engaged citizens to promote sustainable development[5]. Expanding the classroom through learning together in local and global communities can help to build human connections that create partnership between people for the planet.

Remote learning has come to stay. Many school systems will integrate remote learning into their long-term portfolio to serve in times of short-term interruptions or as a new stream of learning for those students who have come to prefer or thrive in the virtual classroom. With ESD and global citizenship properly integrated into these new opportunities, remote learning can achieve more than being just another form of delivering the curriculum.

As higher education has demonstrated in the last year, teaching and learning can overcome borders and – despite the lack of in-person interaction and hands-on learning – still create valuable experience. Since international students could not travel, they joined programmes in other countries, time zones and languages online. Concepts, such as Collaborative Online Intercultural Learning (COIL)[6] or Globally Networked Learning (GNL)[7], showed the positive impact of students from different regions, languages and backgrounds, continuously learning together.

With primary and secondary education also arriving in the virtual space, there is opportunity to connect schools in similar ways and broadening learning horizons by overcoming borders. Primary and secondary school students can now not only connect to students in other regions but even (partially) participate in an education outside of their current country of residence. Several levels of educating children and youth in more connected ways could be imagined, such as:

1. Learning opportunities for specific subjects or themes through remote learning: language learning, learning about history of a region, arts and culture education.
2. Learning opportunities with cross-curriculum and cross-region teaching: curricula themes, relevant to both regions, could be taught in a partner approach of teachers and in mixed student groups.
3. Remotely attending a school in a different region: If comprehensive remote teaching is offered in school systems, it is an option for students to participate in a complete education programme outside their own region.

Global school networks could provide a basis for connecting schools to each other, e.g. the UNESCO-associated schools network (ASPnet)[8], comprised of more than 11,000 schools in 180 countries. Such networks already follow common objectives, while content and delivery could be contextualized in each region.

However, there are considerable challenges to overcome, such as the languages of instruction, time zones, cultural differences, current laws that require students to attend school in their country of residence or financing schooling for out-of-country students etc.

Yet, schooling beyond borders might be a new way of addressing quality education in a global effort. Further access to schooling could be provided for students in countries where resources are insufficient for all or schooling is interrupted due to environmental, economic or social reasons. Countries that base their national development on immigration could offer remote primary and secondary schooling for children of future immigrants. Vice versa, emigrants could still participate in schooling of their country of origin to understand and maintain their native language, heritage and culture.

An education that would connect people, provide knowledge and global perspectives could enhance the critical thinking of those who participate in these opportunities. We all understand that sustainable change needs more than just knowledge about facts. Schooling that brings together learners from various backgrounds could lead to an emotional exposure and newly found compassion for the other. This transformative learning experience, inherent in ESD and global citizenship, could bring forward the future leaders that make the difference and help creating the sustainable future we all hope for.

[1] https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[2] https://en.unesco.org/news/unescos-next-normal-campaign [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[3] https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000374561 [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[4] https://undocs.org/en/A/RES/74/223 [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[5] https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000374802 [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[6] https://coil.suny.edu/ [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[7] https://yorkinternational.yorku.ca/gnl-2/ [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[8] https://aspnet.unesco.org/en-us/Pages/default.aspx [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability was first published in spring 1996, in the heady post-1992 UN World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) days. After this ‘Rio Earth Summit’, Local governments in the UK and around the world were literally scrambling to understand the policy and planning implications of Local Agenda 21, and both academics and practitioners realized there was a need to collaborate in new and creative ways, turning theory into practice, and improving/generating theory through practice. Local Environment was born out of this local sustainability mandate from the UN.

In our first Editorial, my co-founder Bob Evans and I wrote:

“However much some would wish it otherwise, the environmental debate is as reflective of social and political inequality, and is as fundamentally conflictual as any other, and there is unlikely to be environmental quality, howsoever measured, without a much greater degree of social equality. This applies both within and between nations, and globally.”

In this we were signaling what we called at the time The New Environmental Agenda – the niche that Local Environment would always occupy: an exploration of the inextricable policy and planning linkages between the simultaneous achievement of environmental quality and human/social equality, or more broadly, between what was then largely environmentally oriented sustainability agenda, and the political project of environmental justice. Our framing of this nexus between the two concepts and their respective social movements developed into the increasingly influential policy and planning goal of just sustainabilities:

“the need to ensure a better quality of life for all, now, and into the future, in a just and equitable manner, whilst living within the limits of supporting ecosystems.”

To achieve the fullest potential of just sustainabilities, four conditions need to be met, not individually, but simultaneously:

1. Improving people’s quality of life and wellbeing;
   2. Meeting the needs of both present and future generations (intra- and intergenerational equity);
   3. Ensuring justice and equity in terms of recognition, process, procedure and outcome;
2. Recognizing ecosystem limits and the need to live within them.

In September 2015, the United Nations Assembly formally adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), superseding the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), to be implemented by 2030. In October 2016, the UN HABITAT III Conference in Quito launched the New Urban Agenda (NUA) which seeks to inform urban policy and practice in the context of global sustainability and resilience. While national governments were responsible for developing and negotiating the NUA objectives, city and local governments will play a focal role in leading their coordination, management implementation.

Both the SDGs and NUA are reflective of, and build on, the four conditions of just sustainabilities, and are therefore central to the mission of Local Environment. Of the 17 SDGs, all fit the concept of just sustainabilities in that they acknowledge the links between environmental quality and human equality; that stopping poverty must be linked with strategies to improve gender equality, people’s health and education, to reduce inequality, and encourage economic growth – at the same time tackling climate change and working to preserve our natural capital.

But if there were one SDG that could be seen as the ‘home’ of Local Environment, it would be the ‘urban goal’, SDG 11 which hailed the NUA. It requires that we “make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”. Clearly, urban policy and planning is critical to the urban goal. It defines an explicitly urban planning target, 11.3: “By 2030, enhance inclusive and sustainable urbanization and capacity for participatory, integrated and sustainable human settlement planning and management in all countries.”

Since the early days, Local Environment has maintained its focus, preceding both the SDGs and the NUA. In our Aims and Scope:

“Our focus is specifically on sustainability planning, policy and politics in relation to theoretical, conceptual and empirical studies at the nexus of equity, justice and the local environment. It is an inclusive forum for diverse constituencies and perspectives to engage in a critical examination, evaluation and discussion of the environmental, social and economic policies, processes and strategies which will be needed in movement towards social justice and sustainability – “Just Sustainabilities” – at local, regional, national and global scales.”

Consequently, the scholarship we have published over the past 24 years, and will continue to publish, is pivotal to tackling the all of the SDGs whilst also shaping the developing NUA.

Julian Agyeman

Editor-in-Chief

Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability

Visit the journal for the latest issue of Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability here or follow the links below to browse some of the journal’s recent OA articles.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13549839.2018.1463978

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13549839.2019.1628730

The imperative to reduce inequalities and leave no one behind infuses all the United Nations Social Development Goals (SDGs), including those with a focus on sexual and reproductive health (SRH). Universal access to SRH services and rights is needed to ensure healthy lives and well-being (SDG 3) and to contribute to gender equality (SDG 5). Achieving SRH and rights for all is also expected to positively impact on sustainable development and the environment and contribute to fairer communities and societies (Ghebreyesus and Kanem 2018). The aspiration is to reach the entire population and, in particular, poor, marginalised and vulnerable populations with comprehensive good quality services as well as to make sure that every individual can exercise “the right to make decisions that govern their bodies, free from stigma, discrimination, and coercion” (Starrs et al 2018, p. 2642).

The policy and programmatic shift required to realise this pledge of universal access to SRH services and rights is, however, significant, since it entails interrogating and addressing the factors that keep uneven social and economic development in place. Here we ponder on the influences that shape and place limits on equality and universal SRH and rights in Southeast Asia and on what it would take to tackle them. We identify three key drivers of disparity and exclusion that contribute to unequal SRH outcomes and demand urgent action if justice in and through sexual and reproductive health is to be achieved: the maldistribution of wealth and wellbeing; entrenched patriarchy; and growing rise of authoritarianism and populism.

Maldistribution of wealth and wellbeing

In recent decades, countries in Southeast Asia have enjoyed economic growth through economic liberalisation and integration in the global economy. This macro-economic success has brought with it significant social and environmental costs and has consistently failed to lead to ‘shared prosperity’ trickling down to the neediest. Disparities across and within countries remain striking, with a recent SDG progress report pointing to Southeast Asia as the only sub-region within Asia Pacific with widening in-country inequalities (UNESCAP 2018).

Although income levels do not necessarily translate into health outcomes, a close correlation exists between them in this region, where the more advantaged countries have significantly better well-being indicators when compared to the less advantaged ones. For instance, in 2017, average life expectancy in Singapore, Brunei Darussalam and Thailand was on average ten years longer than that in Myanmar, Cambodia and Lao PDR (ASEAN 2018). Moreover, sub-national disparities are rife.  Poor people are at a greater risk of dying from preventable diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria and poor women from unwanted pregnancy than their richer counterparts. Across the region, infant and maternal mortality rates are higher in rural areas, especially in remote locations. Similarly, girls living in the countryside – with less education and from poorer households – are more likely to be married or engaged early and at increased risk of early pregnancy, STIs and gender-based violence.

Health divides reveal large inequalities in access to health personnel, equipment and services. Public spending on health remains low, with governments advancing privatisation and marketisation of health care at the cost of public provision. A mix of social health insurance is offered to the poor for limited services. In many countries there exists “a two-tier health care system, with deluxe priority care for the better off and a rump, underfunded public sector for the rest’” (Ormond, Mun and Khoon 2014, p. 3).  Even when national health schemes increase affordability, such as in Thailand, the quality of care offered to lower-income and migrant patients – when they have access – is significantly poorer than that available to their wealthier counterparts.

Privatisation impacts on access to SRH supplies and services, standards of care and SRH outcomes. The cost of reproductive health services in private facilities is generally higher than in public facilities. In low-resource countries such as Laos and Cambodia, their use is prohibitive or implies burdensome, if not catastrophic, out of pocket expenses. Existing universal health care (where available) is no panacea either, as in most countries it only covers basic mother-and-child care. Furthermore, resource allocation frequently ignores groups deemed not to be entitled to SRH services on gender and moral grounds – for example, young people, unmarried women and LGBTIQ persons – leaving them dependent on private practitioners irrespective of their economic status.

Patriarchy and Populism

Patriarchy is entrenched in Southeast Asia even if there is much talk about women’s empowerment and leadership in national plans. Culturally diverse countries subscribe to the same overarching discourse of ‘Asian values’, framing women as subservient to men as household heads, including on sexual and reproductive matters. This social construction of a heteronormative ‘ideal’ continues to be seen as natural despite the growing reality of women-headed, single-person, same sex and separated families and the different roles women have always played at home and in society.

Time and again, governments fail to take into account women’s autonomy, needs and choices. Positions vary from pro-natalist stances for religious or demographic reasons in the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore, to the enforcement of family planning programmes using long-term contraceptives as in Indonesia and Vietnam. Decisions are further entrusted to the couple, if not the male partner, rather than the individual woman. As normative values locate sexuality and reproduction within the family, SRH education and services are not provided to single women and adolescents. The social fear of girls being sexually active and pregnant outside of wedlock contributes to early marriage and lack of educational opportunities. Maternal mortality is a persistent problem with deaths per 100,000 live births as high as 357 in Laos, 305 in Indonesia, 221 in the Philippines, 190 in Myanmar, 180 in Cambodia and an average of 197 regionally in 2015 (ASEAN 2017).

Skewed gender values have also shaped the HIV epidemic and national responses to it, with women largely ignored in prevention efforts when not sex workers. Efforts to control women and their sexuality manifest themselves in a multitude of violent and harmful practices from female genital mutilation, to sex selection. Intimate partner violence is pervasive, and rape continues to be condoned as men’s sexual entitlement (and thus not needing a woman’s consent) and as a ‘deserved’ punishment for deviant women or weapon of war. Most countries have laws to criminalise violence against women, but protection does not extend to unmarried couples and gender and sexual minorities. Nor does it include all forms of violence, such as sexual harassment and marital rape.

The attainment of economic and gender inclusion is even more challenged because of the rise of authoritarianism and of nationalist and religious populism throughout the region. This puts at risk the tenuous progress achieved by women’s groups and civil society in the 1980s and 1990s with the emergence of human-right based discourses and movements stressing women’s rights, SRH rights and, more recently, LBGTQI rights. Democratic forces that at the time seemed to have punctured, at least in parts of Southeast Asia, the dominance of centralised regimes, are experiencing a backlash. Referring back to timeworn justifications of stability, development and traditional values, governments are clamping down with greater intensity on freedom of association, speech and information, and are curtailing civic space. Pressure on civil society and progressive standpoints is further placed by the numerous fundamentalist and nationalist groups that have proliferated in recent years. In such a constraining climate, contestation over SRH and rights, gender equality and sexual diversity is becoming more intense.

Technical Know-how is Not Enough

Considering the regressive trends engulfing the region and the nature of the underlying drivers of inequity in development and SRH and rights, it is reasonable to assume that these cannot be addressed simply by adding investments and technical know-how or expanding access to services.   Instead, they require an approach that champions social change. A paradigm shift is required in the way we approach the SDGs and tackle SRH problems and their underlying causes.  This implies moving: 1) from creating opportunities for the left behind to ‘shared prosperity’ and redistribution across socio-economic groups; 2) from a technical to an empowering approach to addressing patriarchy and heteronormativity; and 3) from a developmental to a political framework for ‘inclusive societies’ to promoting and ensuring basic freedoms and respect of human rights.

More particularly, a more equitable distribution of wealth and wellbeing requires an overhaul of the economic system away from endless growth and consumerism to greater equity and equality. Alternative economic models that aim for “good lives for all within the limits of one planet” (Peck 2013, para 20) require ending perverse subsidies, land reform, community land trusts, unconditional basic incomes, and cap-and-share systems. Fiscal redistribution mechanisms including inheritance and progressive taxes and greater spending on social protection and transfers to the poorest are needed, alongside tax compliance by the rich. For the SDGs not to be perceived as ‘bluewash’, a system reboot of corporate practices beyond public-private partnerships and social corporate responsibility (CSR) will have to occur if business is to become more accountable to society and the environment (Peck 2017).

In the health sector, efforts should be made to challenge the progressive privatisation and commodification of health, reclaiming health as a public and not a private good. Governments need to increase public spending and provide greater regulatory oversight to keep corporate providers in check. New public systems and schemes are required that prioritise care according to need rather than capacity to pay. Prevention and promotion need to be placed at the centre of public health, which implies an allocation of financial and human resources away from treatment and hospital-centred care. In the push for universal health care, gender and socio-economic equity should be consciously built in and comprehensive SRH services should be made a number one priority in health financing and provision.

This implies working to challenge patriarchy in all its manifestations. Policy and programmes need to recognise that women’s empowerment in the public as well as in the domestic sphere is a precondition for attaining SRH and rights.  Too many programmes and interventions are of a technical rather than a transformative nature, shying away from a feminist analysis of the power structures at stake, and settling for some form of paternalist protectionism. Change should also come to development programmes addressing women as yet one more vulnerable group classified together with many other vulnerable groups, even though they make up more than half of humanity. The deconstruction of the entrenched patriarchal-heteronormative paradigm should be a priority for SRH struggles, and more needs to be done to normalise men’s work and role at home, as well as respect for gender and sexual minorities. States across Southeast Asia should be held accountable for the advancement of women beyond the level of rhetoric.

The upholding of women’s SRH and other rights requires a full rejection of ethnic and religious populism, fundamentalism, radicalism and of the politicisation of religion. For each and every one of us, the current global and regional context requires taking a position, breaking the silence and becoming vocal in defence of gender, sexuality, religious and ethnic diversity and human rights.

Moving from a developmental, to a political perspective for inclusive societies, implies reclaiming civic space for alternative voices and action. In all of this work, the SDGs can no longer be framed as apolitical.  Rather, states should be scrutinised and held accountable for their actions towards women, SDG commitments and all of those who are marginalised and ignored (Sriskandarajah 2017).

From this, it may be concluded that a structural approach to bringing justice to and through SRH must address the root causes of social exclusion and promote diversity.  In doing so, it must question the current economic order, patriarchy and other divisive power relations, promote human rights and support civil society. Only through a transformative approach will it be possible to move beyond the rhetoric of SDG aspirations and change society in such a way that indeed no-one is left behind.

****

This article is based on a paper by Rosalia Sciortino entitled Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights for All in Southeast Asia: More than SDGs aspirations,  published in Culture, Health & Sexuality

Rosalia Sciortino is an Associate Professor in the Institute for Population and Social Research (IPSR) at Mahidol University founder and Director of SEA Junction (www.seajunction.org) in Bangkok, Thailand.

 Peter Aggleton holds professorial positions at UNSW Sydney, The Australian National University in Canberra and UCL in London. 

Without a doubt, entrepreneurship is vital to achieving United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 4 and 8. SGD 4 is to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education that promotes lifelong learning opportunities for all. Specifically, SDG target 4.4 aims to substantially increase the number of young persons and adults who have the relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment and decent jobs and entrepreneurship. SDG 8 is meant to promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all. As highlighted in our recent article[1], our initial research shows that entrepreneurial ecosystems are a critical means by which social and economic goals are achieved. Thus, nurturing and promoting vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystems has become an assumed goal of most government and communities globally.  In this paper, an entrepreneurial ecosystem is defined as “a set of interdependent actors and factors coordinated in such a way that they enable productive entrepreneurship within a particular territory”[2].

Silicon Valley is one of the most important locations in the United States of America, associated with a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem, and it did not “grow overnight.” It took about half a century to achieve that status through regional geographic, social, cultural and institutional evolutionary factors.  Several generations of successful companies grew, matured and spread across the world by following the path discovered by entrepreneurs such as Moore and Noyce in the Silicon Valley[3]. The exploits of these pioneers generated a formidable entrepreneurial compounding effect called the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Global companies such as Facebook, Google, and Uber benefited from the compounding effects created by such giants from past generations to grow their businesses.

A similar history was repeated in China. First-generation Chinese technology companies such as Tencent and Alibaba[4] became the indispensable cornerstones for the emergence of the Chinese entrepreneurial ecosystem. Currently, there are an observed increased number of technology start-ups and a rise of new entrepreneurship hubs all over the world, including Tel Aviv, Singapore, London, and Berlin[5].

What makes a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem? Among others, a thriving ecosystem has the following key elements:

1. A dynamic interaction and interdependence between individual actors and communities to “achieve something together that lies beyond and greater than the effective scope and capabilities of any individual actor.” This (un)conscious shared purpose promotes and strengthens resource efficiency.
2. The recognition that internal social constructions and cultural values generate entrepreneurial action, which in turn drive economic development and revitalization at local, regional and state levels.
3. Entrepreneurial ecosystems foster macro-level resilience within the context of entrepreneurial failure, recovery, and transformation. In this regard, failure and recovery become a rite of passage.
4. Resilient, entrepreneurial ecosystems practiced with complexity theory enable businesspeople to practice entrepreneurship sustainably as envisaged in SDGs 4 and 8.

The lessons distilled from the cases cited in the US, Europe and China above are similar to those co-created by the Kwawu people in Ghana. The Kwawu complex, adaptive and resilient entrepreneurial ecosystems consist of eight (8) inter-related elements. These are a durable enabling entrepreneurial culture, learning-by-observing, doing, adopting, adapting, replicating, spiriting and social inclusion. Each of these elements will now be summarized.

Enabling Entrepreneurial Culture: An enabling entrepreneurial culture within this context is the affirmative sense of empowering individuals to become successful entrepreneurs. The community has quality mentors, who are a network of successful entrepreneurs that offer entrepreneurial mentoring. Start-up capital is usually generated within these trusted networks. The entrepreneurial cultural outcomes they cherish include: created wealth, trusting relations, imaginative and inspired thinking, less wastefulness and the ability to “sniff” business opportunities. Even though entrepreneurship is driven by the “self”, the community also value cooperation and collaboration with business associates.

Learning-by-Observing: From childhood, the Kwawu observe the traits, personas, behaviours and mannerisms of their entrepreneurial parents, uncles, aunties, and other close associates and attempt to do likewise later on in life. Factors that encourage the inclination towards developing by observing include:

• The availability of parents and close associations who are seen to be warm, nurturing, and who reward entrepreneurial behaviour.
• Successful entrepreneurs who are wealthy and admired and have high social status.
• Community leaders who inspire entrepreneurial confidence.

Development-by-Doing: “Development-by-doing” is realised through putting observed behaviour into practice to achieve detectable levels of excellence. Development by doing is complemented by coaching from close associates to accomplish a shared agenda of successful entrepreneurial development.

Learning-by-Adopting: This encompasses the informed selection and acceptance of other peoples tested entrepreneurial ethos as theirs. The Kwawus do this by deliberately choosing to embrace the philosophy of self and personal responsibility without abandoning group interactions. They also embrace the ethos of constant and consistent learning from, and packaging themselves after, successful pace setters and the adopting of new technologies, products and service.

Learning-by-Adapting: Developing-by-adapting the way business is done in response to changing business circumstances and environment (for examples, changes in social, political and economic conditions as well as the emergence of new technologies). This sort of development is done to mitigate undesirable impacts of past decisions and business environment and explore new ways of making better decisions and improving outcomes. The adaptation involves cooperation and collaboration with business associates and at both formal and informal gatherings that encourage individual input and self-achievements.

Learning-by-Replication: Replication refers to a situation where tested and established business strategies are tried elsewhere in a new geographical area or a new market, or a new set of customers. Replication often leads to the learners setting up new businesses or trading systems where the ability which has already been acquired is used to set up expanded or new companies.

Learning-by-Spiriting: Spiriting, in this context, connotes dispensing wisdom and “grey hair” services. It is about incarnating one’s self into individuals and the community by descending into the system to give birth to one’s entrepreneurial kind. Spiritors are holders and the embodiment of entrepreneurial wisdom. The most desired future of Spiritors includes valuing and exploiting future socio-economic-environmental ideals, grooming future holders of the vision and collaborating with current vision bearers to build businesses.

Social inclusion: It is the character and atmosphere that holds the elements of entrepreneurship development together. Social inclusion provides the required energy and conditions for mutual sustainability. This is achieved by welcoming, accommodating, nurturing and interacting with many different peoples and cultures (internal and external stakeholders) for mutual benefits and sustainability.

Contributions to sustainable management and development theory and practice 

The model and learning derived from the Kwawu entrepreneurial ecosystem can be used to achieve at least three things:

1. “Absorb” entrepreneurial disturbances such as those caused by the current pandemic, and the system adjusted so that it responds to these disturbances positively.
2. Analyse entrepreneurial interactions and identify business model innovations at local, national and regional levels and craft policy innovations at all levels.
3. Research how competition, cooperation, and collaboration among businesses affect the compound effect and shared value creation.

[1] Anuwa-Amarh, E., Hinske, C., Bamfo-Debrah, N. K., Sefa, D., Amarh, S., & Nassam, S. (2020). 26 The Kwawu resilient entrepreneurial ecosystem s. Sustainable Development and Resource Productivity, 317.

[2] Stam, F. C., & Spigel, B. (2016). Entrepreneurial ecosystems. USE Discussion paper series, 16(13).

[3] Berlin, L. (2010). Robert Noyce, Silicon Valley, and the Teamwork Behind the High-Technology Revolution. OAH Magazine of History, 24(1), 33-36.

[4] Jia, K., Kenney, M., Mattila, J., & Seppala, T. (2018). The application of artificial intelligence at Chinese digital platform giants: Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent. ETLA reports, (81).

[5] Fuerlinger, G., Fandl, U., & Funke, T. (2015). The role of the state in the entrepreneurship ecosystem: insights from Germany. Triple Helix, 2(1), 1-26.

Environmental Hazards: Human and Policy Dimensions is an interdisciplinary and international research journal that addresses the human and policy dimensions of hazards. As is well-known, the journal addresses the full range of hazardous events, from extreme geological, hydrological, atmospheric and biological events, such as earthquakes, floods, storms and epidemics, to technological failures and malfunctions, such as industrial explosions, fires and toxic material releases.

With a genuinely international perspective, we are able to highlight issues of human exposure, vulnerability, awareness, response and risk. The role of hazards in affecting development, and issues of efficiency, social justice and sustainability are also explored in the journal. Well-known conventional hazards receive extensive coverage, but so do new forms of hazard, emerging risk management institutions and restructuring of ideas about hazards, including their role in human affairs.

Important to ideas, policies and practices regarding hazard reduction globally in this context has been the development of the UN SDGs. These set targets for specific goals and their objectives, and the relationship with hazards and hazard reduction is easily appreciated. Almost all 17 of the goals are relevant to research on environmental hazards, but some are perhaps more relevant than others. Thus, SDG 1 (No Poverty), SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 3 (Good Health and Wellbeing) and SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation) directly relate to our concern for hazard victims, where these are serious threats to communities during and after hazard events. We take increasingly seriously the distributional and related issues, such as SDG 5 (Gender Equality) and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequality).

Governance-related issues also feature strongly in our publication record, reflecting and reinforcing Goals such as SDG 16 (Peace and Justice Strong Institutions) and SDG 17 (Partnerships to Achieve the Goal). More contextual but no less important are SDG 13 (Climate Action), SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) and SDG 15 (Life on Land). What the journal seeks to do, taking an international perspective, is to link particular circumstances in a range of places to modern ideas, including in the SDGs, about hazard exposure, vulnerability reduction and the promotion of community resilience. The SDGs provide a challenging backdrop to that effort, and it is likely in future that more papers will be accepted that explicitly address the relationship between these goals and particular hazards in specific locations. This is not something that we require but will be useful as a way of monitoring the development of ideas and practices with respect to these Goals, and their evolution over time.

Visit the journal for the latest issue of Environmental Hazards: Human and Policy Dimensions here or follow the links below to browse some of the journal’s recent OA articles.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17477891.2021.1912694?src=

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17477891.2021.1898926?src=

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17477891.2020.1771250?src=

By Katrin Kohl & Charles Hopkins, York University, Canada

SDG 4 Quality Education

“I am off to school, see you later!” she shouts, turns her computer on and closes the door. Many families have become used to the new routine of remote learning in 2020. At the height of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, over 80 % of the world´s students from more than 170 countries[1] were at home and often only returned briefly to the physical space of school at the beginning of the academic year 2020/21. Students in 40 countries found themselves back at learning remotely in early 2021.

Children and youth in primary and secondary education adapted to a new reality where access to the internet with the technical infrastructure available for teachers and students to offer and participate in remote learning became crucial. Higher education teachers and students similarly pivoted to remote learning and developed new ways of teaching and studying.

For many, this new way of remote learning has become a Next Normal[2], yet it is a world of extremes. We are facing enormous opportunity, but exclusion at the same time. UNESCO states that approximately half of the world´s students, most of them from the poorer countries[3], did not have access to remote learning activities in 2020. While this number exposed a dire need to create equitable access for all, many government started to improve their infrastructure for students to secure the path towards quality education as stated in SDG 4 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

There is momentum to think outside the box when building the necessary learning infrastructure and further developing the concepts of remote learning. Quality Education as called for by the United Nations is both a singular goal but also a key enabler of all of the other SDGs[4]. At the core of such quality education are the guiding principles of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and global citizenship. Both concepts refer to ways of empowering learners with knowledge, skills, values and attitudes to take informed decisions and become engaged citizens to promote sustainable development[5]. Expanding the classroom through learning together in local and global communities can help to build human connections that create partnership between people for the planet.

Remote learning has come to stay. Many school systems will integrate remote learning into their long-term portfolio to serve in times of short-term interruptions or as a new stream of learning for those students who have come to prefer or thrive in the virtual classroom. With ESD and global citizenship properly integrated into these new opportunities, remote learning can achieve more than being just another form of delivering the curriculum.

As higher education has demonstrated in the last year, teaching and learning can overcome borders and – despite the lack of in-person interaction and hands-on learning – still create valuable experience. Since international students could not travel, they joined programmes in other countries, time zones and languages online. Concepts, such as Collaborative Online Intercultural Learning (COIL)[6] or Globally Networked Learning (GNL)[7], showed the positive impact of students from different regions, languages and backgrounds, continuously learning together.

With primary and secondary education also arriving in the virtual space, there is opportunity to connect schools in similar ways and broadening learning horizons by overcoming borders. Primary and secondary school students can now not only connect to students in other regions but even (partially) participate in an education outside of their current country of residence. Several levels of educating children and youth in more connected ways could be imagined, such as:

1. Learning opportunities for specific subjects or themes through remote learning: language learning, learning about history of a region, arts and culture education.
2. Learning opportunities with cross-curriculum and cross-region teaching: curricula themes, relevant to both regions, could be taught in a partner approach of teachers and in mixed student groups.
3. Remotely attending a school in a different region: If comprehensive remote teaching is offered in school systems, it is an option for students to participate in a complete education programme outside their own region.

Global school networks could provide a basis for connecting schools to each other, e.g. the UNESCO-associated schools network (ASPnet)[8], comprised of more than 11,000 schools in 180 countries. Such networks already follow common objectives, while content and delivery could be contextualized in each region.

However, there are considerable challenges to overcome, such as the languages of instruction, time zones, cultural differences, current laws that require students to attend school in their country of residence or financing schooling for out-of-country students etc.

Yet, schooling beyond borders might be a new way of addressing quality education in a global effort. Further access to schooling could be provided for students in countries where resources are insufficient for all or schooling is interrupted due to environmental, economic or social reasons. Countries that base their national development on immigration could offer remote primary and secondary schooling for children of future immigrants. Vice versa, emigrants could still participate in schooling of their country of origin to understand and maintain their native language, heritage and culture.

An education that would connect people, provide knowledge and global perspectives could enhance the critical thinking of those who participate in these opportunities. We all understand that sustainable change needs more than just knowledge about facts. Schooling that brings together learners from various backgrounds could lead to an emotional exposure and newly found compassion for the other. This transformative learning experience, inherent in ESD and global citizenship, could bring forward the future leaders that make the difference and help creating the sustainable future we all hope for.

[1] https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[2] https://en.unesco.org/news/unescos-next-normal-campaign [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[3] https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000374561 [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[4] https://undocs.org/en/A/RES/74/223 [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[5] https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000374802 [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[6] https://coil.suny.edu/ [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[7] https://yorkinternational.yorku.ca/gnl-2/ [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[8] https://aspnet.unesco.org/en-us/Pages/default.aspx [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability was first published in spring 1996, in the heady post-1992 UN World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) days. After this ‘Rio Earth Summit’, Local governments in the UK and around the world were literally scrambling to understand the policy and planning implications of Local Agenda 21, and both academics and practitioners realized there was a need to collaborate in new and creative ways, turning theory into practice, and improving/generating theory through practice. Local Environment was born out of this local sustainability mandate from the UN.

In our first Editorial, my co-founder Bob Evans and I wrote:

“However much some would wish it otherwise, the environmental debate is as reflective of social and political inequality, and is as fundamentally conflictual as any other, and there is unlikely to be environmental quality, howsoever measured, without a much greater degree of social equality. This applies both within and between nations, and globally.”

In this we were signaling what we called at the time The New Environmental Agenda – the niche that Local Environment would always occupy: an exploration of the inextricable policy and planning linkages between the simultaneous achievement of environmental quality and human/social equality, or more broadly, between what was then largely environmentally oriented sustainability agenda, and the political project of environmental justice. Our framing of this nexus between the two concepts and their respective social movements developed into the increasingly influential policy and planning goal of just sustainabilities:

“the need to ensure a better quality of life for all, now, and into the future, in a just and equitable manner, whilst living within the limits of supporting ecosystems.”

To achieve the fullest potential of just sustainabilities, four conditions need to be met, not individually, but simultaneously:

1. Improving people’s quality of life and wellbeing;
   2. Meeting the needs of both present and future generations (intra- and intergenerational equity);
   3. Ensuring justice and equity in terms of recognition, process, procedure and outcome;
2. Recognizing ecosystem limits and the need to live within them.

In September 2015, the United Nations Assembly formally adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), superseding the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), to be implemented by 2030. In October 2016, the UN HABITAT III Conference in Quito launched the New Urban Agenda (NUA) which seeks to inform urban policy and practice in the context of global sustainability and resilience. While national governments were responsible for developing and negotiating the NUA objectives, city and local governments will play a focal role in leading their coordination, management implementation.

Both the SDGs and NUA are reflective of, and build on, the four conditions of just sustainabilities, and are therefore central to the mission of Local Environment. Of the 17 SDGs, all fit the concept of just sustainabilities in that they acknowledge the links between environmental quality and human equality; that stopping poverty must be linked with strategies to improve gender equality, people’s health and education, to reduce inequality, and encourage economic growth – at the same time tackling climate change and working to preserve our natural capital.

But if there were one SDG that could be seen as the ‘home’ of Local Environment, it would be the ‘urban goal’, SDG 11 which hailed the NUA. It requires that we “make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”. Clearly, urban policy and planning is critical to the urban goal. It defines an explicitly urban planning target, 11.3: “By 2030, enhance inclusive and sustainable urbanization and capacity for participatory, integrated and sustainable human settlement planning and management in all countries.”

Since the early days, Local Environment has maintained its focus, preceding both the SDGs and the NUA. In our Aims and Scope:

“Our focus is specifically on sustainability planning, policy and politics in relation to theoretical, conceptual and empirical studies at the nexus of equity, justice and the local environment. It is an inclusive forum for diverse constituencies and perspectives to engage in a critical examination, evaluation and discussion of the environmental, social and economic policies, processes and strategies which will be needed in movement towards social justice and sustainability – “Just Sustainabilities” – at local, regional, national and global scales.”

Consequently, the scholarship we have published over the past 24 years, and will continue to publish, is pivotal to tackling the all of the SDGs whilst also shaping the developing NUA.

Julian Agyeman

Editor-in-Chief

Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability

Visit the journal for the latest issue of Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability here or follow the links below to browse some of the journal’s recent OA articles.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13549839.2018.1463978

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13549839.2019.1628730

The imperative to reduce inequalities and leave no one behind infuses all the United Nations Social Development Goals (SDGs), including those with a focus on sexual and reproductive health (SRH). Universal access to SRH services and rights is needed to ensure healthy lives and well-being (SDG 3) and to contribute to gender equality (SDG 5). Achieving SRH and rights for all is also expected to positively impact on sustainable development and the environment and contribute to fairer communities and societies (Ghebreyesus and Kanem 2018). The aspiration is to reach the entire population and, in particular, poor, marginalised and vulnerable populations with comprehensive good quality services as well as to make sure that every individual can exercise “the right to make decisions that govern their bodies, free from stigma, discrimination, and coercion” (Starrs et al 2018, p. 2642).

The policy and programmatic shift required to realise this pledge of universal access to SRH services and rights is, however, significant, since it entails interrogating and addressing the factors that keep uneven social and economic development in place. Here we ponder on the influences that shape and place limits on equality and universal SRH and rights in Southeast Asia and on what it would take to tackle them. We identify three key drivers of disparity and exclusion that contribute to unequal SRH outcomes and demand urgent action if justice in and through sexual and reproductive health is to be achieved: the maldistribution of wealth and wellbeing; entrenched patriarchy; and growing rise of authoritarianism and populism.

Maldistribution of wealth and wellbeing

In recent decades, countries in Southeast Asia have enjoyed economic growth through economic liberalisation and integration in the global economy. This macro-economic success has brought with it significant social and environmental costs and has consistently failed to lead to ‘shared prosperity’ trickling down to the neediest. Disparities across and within countries remain striking, with a recent SDG progress report pointing to Southeast Asia as the only sub-region within Asia Pacific with widening in-country inequalities (UNESCAP 2018).

Although income levels do not necessarily translate into health outcomes, a close correlation exists between them in this region, where the more advantaged countries have significantly better well-being indicators when compared to the less advantaged ones. For instance, in 2017, average life expectancy in Singapore, Brunei Darussalam and Thailand was on average ten years longer than that in Myanmar, Cambodia and Lao PDR (ASEAN 2018). Moreover, sub-national disparities are rife.  Poor people are at a greater risk of dying from preventable diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria and poor women from unwanted pregnancy than their richer counterparts. Across the region, infant and maternal mortality rates are higher in rural areas, especially in remote locations. Similarly, girls living in the countryside – with less education and from poorer households – are more likely to be married or engaged early and at increased risk of early pregnancy, STIs and gender-based violence.

Health divides reveal large inequalities in access to health personnel, equipment and services. Public spending on health remains low, with governments advancing privatisation and marketisation of health care at the cost of public provision. A mix of social health insurance is offered to the poor for limited services. In many countries there exists “a two-tier health care system, with deluxe priority care for the better off and a rump, underfunded public sector for the rest’” (Ormond, Mun and Khoon 2014, p. 3).  Even when national health schemes increase affordability, such as in Thailand, the quality of care offered to lower-income and migrant patients – when they have access – is significantly poorer than that available to their wealthier counterparts.

Privatisation impacts on access to SRH supplies and services, standards of care and SRH outcomes. The cost of reproductive health services in private facilities is generally higher than in public facilities. In low-resource countries such as Laos and Cambodia, their use is prohibitive or implies burdensome, if not catastrophic, out of pocket expenses. Existing universal health care (where available) is no panacea either, as in most countries it only covers basic mother-and-child care. Furthermore, resource allocation frequently ignores groups deemed not to be entitled to SRH services on gender and moral grounds – for example, young people, unmarried women and LGBTIQ persons – leaving them dependent on private practitioners irrespective of their economic status.

Patriarchy and Populism

Patriarchy is entrenched in Southeast Asia even if there is much talk about women’s empowerment and leadership in national plans. Culturally diverse countries subscribe to the same overarching discourse of ‘Asian values’, framing women as subservient to men as household heads, including on sexual and reproductive matters. This social construction of a heteronormative ‘ideal’ continues to be seen as natural despite the growing reality of women-headed, single-person, same sex and separated families and the different roles women have always played at home and in society.

Time and again, governments fail to take into account women’s autonomy, needs and choices. Positions vary from pro-natalist stances for religious or demographic reasons in the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore, to the enforcement of family planning programmes using long-term contraceptives as in Indonesia and Vietnam. Decisions are further entrusted to the couple, if not the male partner, rather than the individual woman. As normative values locate sexuality and reproduction within the family, SRH education and services are not provided to single women and adolescents. The social fear of girls being sexually active and pregnant outside of wedlock contributes to early marriage and lack of educational opportunities. Maternal mortality is a persistent problem with deaths per 100,000 live births as high as 357 in Laos, 305 in Indonesia, 221 in the Philippines, 190 in Myanmar, 180 in Cambodia and an average of 197 regionally in 2015 (ASEAN 2017).

Skewed gender values have also shaped the HIV epidemic and national responses to it, with women largely ignored in prevention efforts when not sex workers. Efforts to control women and their sexuality manifest themselves in a multitude of violent and harmful practices from female genital mutilation, to sex selection. Intimate partner violence is pervasive, and rape continues to be condoned as men’s sexual entitlement (and thus not needing a woman’s consent) and as a ‘deserved’ punishment for deviant women or weapon of war. Most countries have laws to criminalise violence against women, but protection does not extend to unmarried couples and gender and sexual minorities. Nor does it include all forms of violence, such as sexual harassment and marital rape.

The attainment of economic and gender inclusion is even more challenged because of the rise of authoritarianism and of nationalist and religious populism throughout the region. This puts at risk the tenuous progress achieved by women’s groups and civil society in the 1980s and 1990s with the emergence of human-right based discourses and movements stressing women’s rights, SRH rights and, more recently, LBGTQI rights. Democratic forces that at the time seemed to have punctured, at least in parts of Southeast Asia, the dominance of centralised regimes, are experiencing a backlash. Referring back to timeworn justifications of stability, development and traditional values, governments are clamping down with greater intensity on freedom of association, speech and information, and are curtailing civic space. Pressure on civil society and progressive standpoints is further placed by the numerous fundamentalist and nationalist groups that have proliferated in recent years. In such a constraining climate, contestation over SRH and rights, gender equality and sexual diversity is becoming more intense.

Technical Know-how is Not Enough

Considering the regressive trends engulfing the region and the nature of the underlying drivers of inequity in development and SRH and rights, it is reasonable to assume that these cannot be addressed simply by adding investments and technical know-how or expanding access to services.   Instead, they require an approach that champions social change. A paradigm shift is required in the way we approach the SDGs and tackle SRH problems and their underlying causes.  This implies moving: 1) from creating opportunities for the left behind to ‘shared prosperity’ and redistribution across socio-economic groups; 2) from a technical to an empowering approach to addressing patriarchy and heteronormativity; and 3) from a developmental to a political framework for ‘inclusive societies’ to promoting and ensuring basic freedoms and respect of human rights.

More particularly, a more equitable distribution of wealth and wellbeing requires an overhaul of the economic system away from endless growth and consumerism to greater equity and equality. Alternative economic models that aim for “good lives for all within the limits of one planet” (Peck 2013, para 20) require ending perverse subsidies, land reform, community land trusts, unconditional basic incomes, and cap-and-share systems. Fiscal redistribution mechanisms including inheritance and progressive taxes and greater spending on social protection and transfers to the poorest are needed, alongside tax compliance by the rich. For the SDGs not to be perceived as ‘bluewash’, a system reboot of corporate practices beyond public-private partnerships and social corporate responsibility (CSR) will have to occur if business is to become more accountable to society and the environment (Peck 2017).

In the health sector, efforts should be made to challenge the progressive privatisation and commodification of health, reclaiming health as a public and not a private good. Governments need to increase public spending and provide greater regulatory oversight to keep corporate providers in check. New public systems and schemes are required that prioritise care according to need rather than capacity to pay. Prevention and promotion need to be placed at the centre of public health, which implies an allocation of financial and human resources away from treatment and hospital-centred care. In the push for universal health care, gender and socio-economic equity should be consciously built in and comprehensive SRH services should be made a number one priority in health financing and provision.

This implies working to challenge patriarchy in all its manifestations. Policy and programmes need to recognise that women’s empowerment in the public as well as in the domestic sphere is a precondition for attaining SRH and rights.  Too many programmes and interventions are of a technical rather than a transformative nature, shying away from a feminist analysis of the power structures at stake, and settling for some form of paternalist protectionism. Change should also come to development programmes addressing women as yet one more vulnerable group classified together with many other vulnerable groups, even though they make up more than half of humanity. The deconstruction of the entrenched patriarchal-heteronormative paradigm should be a priority for SRH struggles, and more needs to be done to normalise men’s work and role at home, as well as respect for gender and sexual minorities. States across Southeast Asia should be held accountable for the advancement of women beyond the level of rhetoric.

The upholding of women’s SRH and other rights requires a full rejection of ethnic and religious populism, fundamentalism, radicalism and of the politicisation of religion. For each and every one of us, the current global and regional context requires taking a position, breaking the silence and becoming vocal in defence of gender, sexuality, religious and ethnic diversity and human rights.

Moving from a developmental, to a political perspective for inclusive societies, implies reclaiming civic space for alternative voices and action. In all of this work, the SDGs can no longer be framed as apolitical.  Rather, states should be scrutinised and held accountable for their actions towards women, SDG commitments and all of those who are marginalised and ignored (Sriskandarajah 2017).

From this, it may be concluded that a structural approach to bringing justice to and through SRH must address the root causes of social exclusion and promote diversity.  In doing so, it must question the current economic order, patriarchy and other divisive power relations, promote human rights and support civil society. Only through a transformative approach will it be possible to move beyond the rhetoric of SDG aspirations and change society in such a way that indeed no-one is left behind.

****

This article is based on a paper by Rosalia Sciortino entitled Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights for All in Southeast Asia: More than SDGs aspirations,  published in Culture, Health & Sexuality

Rosalia Sciortino is an Associate Professor in the Institute for Population and Social Research (IPSR) at Mahidol University founder and Director of SEA Junction (www.seajunction.org) in Bangkok, Thailand.

 Peter Aggleton holds professorial positions at UNSW Sydney, The Australian National University in Canberra and UCL in London. 

Without a doubt, entrepreneurship is vital to achieving United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 4 and 8. SGD 4 is to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education that promotes lifelong learning opportunities for all. Specifically, SDG target 4.4 aims to substantially increase the number of young persons and adults who have the relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment and decent jobs and entrepreneurship. SDG 8 is meant to promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all. As highlighted in our recent article[1], our initial research shows that entrepreneurial ecosystems are a critical means by which social and economic goals are achieved. Thus, nurturing and promoting vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystems has become an assumed goal of most government and communities globally.  In this paper, an entrepreneurial ecosystem is defined as “a set of interdependent actors and factors coordinated in such a way that they enable productive entrepreneurship within a particular territory”[2].

Silicon Valley is one of the most important locations in the United States of America, associated with a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem, and it did not “grow overnight.” It took about half a century to achieve that status through regional geographic, social, cultural and institutional evolutionary factors.  Several generations of successful companies grew, matured and spread across the world by following the path discovered by entrepreneurs such as Moore and Noyce in the Silicon Valley[3]. The exploits of these pioneers generated a formidable entrepreneurial compounding effect called the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Global companies such as Facebook, Google, and Uber benefited from the compounding effects created by such giants from past generations to grow their businesses.

A similar history was repeated in China. First-generation Chinese technology companies such as Tencent and Alibaba[4] became the indispensable cornerstones for the emergence of the Chinese entrepreneurial ecosystem. Currently, there are an observed increased number of technology start-ups and a rise of new entrepreneurship hubs all over the world, including Tel Aviv, Singapore, London, and Berlin[5].

What makes a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem? Among others, a thriving ecosystem has the following key elements:

1. A dynamic interaction and interdependence between individual actors and communities to “achieve something together that lies beyond and greater than the effective scope and capabilities of any individual actor.” This (un)conscious shared purpose promotes and strengthens resource efficiency.
2. The recognition that internal social constructions and cultural values generate entrepreneurial action, which in turn drive economic development and revitalization at local, regional and state levels.
3. Entrepreneurial ecosystems foster macro-level resilience within the context of entrepreneurial failure, recovery, and transformation. In this regard, failure and recovery become a rite of passage.
4. Resilient, entrepreneurial ecosystems practiced with complexity theory enable businesspeople to practice entrepreneurship sustainably as envisaged in SDGs 4 and 8.

The lessons distilled from the cases cited in the US, Europe and China above are similar to those co-created by the Kwawu people in Ghana. The Kwawu complex, adaptive and resilient entrepreneurial ecosystems consist of eight (8) inter-related elements. These are a durable enabling entrepreneurial culture, learning-by-observing, doing, adopting, adapting, replicating, spiriting and social inclusion. Each of these elements will now be summarized.

Enabling Entrepreneurial Culture: An enabling entrepreneurial culture within this context is the affirmative sense of empowering individuals to become successful entrepreneurs. The community has quality mentors, who are a network of successful entrepreneurs that offer entrepreneurial mentoring. Start-up capital is usually generated within these trusted networks. The entrepreneurial cultural outcomes they cherish include: created wealth, trusting relations, imaginative and inspired thinking, less wastefulness and the ability to “sniff” business opportunities. Even though entrepreneurship is driven by the “self”, the community also value cooperation and collaboration with business associates.

Learning-by-Observing: From childhood, the Kwawu observe the traits, personas, behaviours and mannerisms of their entrepreneurial parents, uncles, aunties, and other close associates and attempt to do likewise later on in life. Factors that encourage the inclination towards developing by observing include:

• The availability of parents and close associations who are seen to be warm, nurturing, and who reward entrepreneurial behaviour.
• Successful entrepreneurs who are wealthy and admired and have high social status.
• Community leaders who inspire entrepreneurial confidence.

Development-by-Doing: “Development-by-doing” is realised through putting observed behaviour into practice to achieve detectable levels of excellence. Development by doing is complemented by coaching from close associates to accomplish a shared agenda of successful entrepreneurial development.

Learning-by-Adopting: This encompasses the informed selection and acceptance of other peoples tested entrepreneurial ethos as theirs. The Kwawus do this by deliberately choosing to embrace the philosophy of self and personal responsibility without abandoning group interactions. They also embrace the ethos of constant and consistent learning from, and packaging themselves after, successful pace setters and the adopting of new technologies, products and service.

Learning-by-Adapting: Developing-by-adapting the way business is done in response to changing business circumstances and environment (for examples, changes in social, political and economic conditions as well as the emergence of new technologies). This sort of development is done to mitigate undesirable impacts of past decisions and business environment and explore new ways of making better decisions and improving outcomes. The adaptation involves cooperation and collaboration with business associates and at both formal and informal gatherings that encourage individual input and self-achievements.

Learning-by-Replication: Replication refers to a situation where tested and established business strategies are tried elsewhere in a new geographical area or a new market, or a new set of customers. Replication often leads to the learners setting up new businesses or trading systems where the ability which has already been acquired is used to set up expanded or new companies.

Learning-by-Spiriting: Spiriting, in this context, connotes dispensing wisdom and “grey hair” services. It is about incarnating one’s self into individuals and the community by descending into the system to give birth to one’s entrepreneurial kind. Spiritors are holders and the embodiment of entrepreneurial wisdom. The most desired future of Spiritors includes valuing and exploiting future socio-economic-environmental ideals, grooming future holders of the vision and collaborating with current vision bearers to build businesses.

Social inclusion: It is the character and atmosphere that holds the elements of entrepreneurship development together. Social inclusion provides the required energy and conditions for mutual sustainability. This is achieved by welcoming, accommodating, nurturing and interacting with many different peoples and cultures (internal and external stakeholders) for mutual benefits and sustainability.

Contributions to sustainable management and development theory and practice 

The model and learning derived from the Kwawu entrepreneurial ecosystem can be used to achieve at least three things:

1. “Absorb” entrepreneurial disturbances such as those caused by the current pandemic, and the system adjusted so that it responds to these disturbances positively.
2. Analyse entrepreneurial interactions and identify business model innovations at local, national and regional levels and craft policy innovations at all levels.
3. Research how competition, cooperation, and collaboration among businesses affect the compound effect and shared value creation.

[1] Anuwa-Amarh, E., Hinske, C., Bamfo-Debrah, N. K., Sefa, D., Amarh, S., & Nassam, S. (2020). 26 The Kwawu resilient entrepreneurial ecosystem s. Sustainable Development and Resource Productivity, 317.

[2] Stam, F. C., & Spigel, B. (2016). Entrepreneurial ecosystems. USE Discussion paper series, 16(13).

[3] Berlin, L. (2010). Robert Noyce, Silicon Valley, and the Teamwork Behind the High-Technology Revolution. OAH Magazine of History, 24(1), 33-36.

[4] Jia, K., Kenney, M., Mattila, J., & Seppala, T. (2018). The application of artificial intelligence at Chinese digital platform giants: Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent. ETLA reports, (81).

[5] Fuerlinger, G., Fandl, U., & Funke, T. (2015). The role of the state in the entrepreneurship ecosystem: insights from Germany. Triple Helix, 2(1), 1-26.

Environmental Hazards: Human and Policy Dimensions is an interdisciplinary and international research journal that addresses the human and policy dimensions of hazards. As is well-known, the journal addresses the full range of hazardous events, from extreme geological, hydrological, atmospheric and biological events, such as earthquakes, floods, storms and epidemics, to technological failures and malfunctions, such as industrial explosions, fires and toxic material releases.

With a genuinely international perspective, we are able to highlight issues of human exposure, vulnerability, awareness, response and risk. The role of hazards in affecting development, and issues of efficiency, social justice and sustainability are also explored in the journal. Well-known conventional hazards receive extensive coverage, but so do new forms of hazard, emerging risk management institutions and restructuring of ideas about hazards, including their role in human affairs.

Important to ideas, policies and practices regarding hazard reduction globally in this context has been the development of the UN SDGs. These set targets for specific goals and their objectives, and the relationship with hazards and hazard reduction is easily appreciated. Almost all 17 of the goals are relevant to research on environmental hazards, but some are perhaps more relevant than others. Thus, SDG 1 (No Poverty), SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 3 (Good Health and Wellbeing) and SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation) directly relate to our concern for hazard victims, where these are serious threats to communities during and after hazard events. We take increasingly seriously the distributional and related issues, such as SDG 5 (Gender Equality) and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequality).

Governance-related issues also feature strongly in our publication record, reflecting and reinforcing Goals such as SDG 16 (Peace and Justice Strong Institutions) and SDG 17 (Partnerships to Achieve the Goal). More contextual but no less important are SDG 13 (Climate Action), SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) and SDG 15 (Life on Land). What the journal seeks to do, taking an international perspective, is to link particular circumstances in a range of places to modern ideas, including in the SDGs, about hazard exposure, vulnerability reduction and the promotion of community resilience. The SDGs provide a challenging backdrop to that effort, and it is likely in future that more papers will be accepted that explicitly address the relationship between these goals and particular hazards in specific locations. This is not something that we require but will be useful as a way of monitoring the development of ideas and practices with respect to these Goals, and their evolution over time.

Visit the journal for the latest issue of Environmental Hazards: Human and Policy Dimensions here or follow the links below to browse some of the journal’s recent OA articles.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17477891.2021.1912694?src=

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17477891.2021.1898926?src=

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17477891.2020.1771250?src=

By Katrin Kohl & Charles Hopkins, York University, Canada

SDG 4 Quality Education

“I am off to school, see you later!” she shouts, turns her computer on and closes the door. Many families have become used to the new routine of remote learning in 2020. At the height of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, over 80 % of the world´s students from more than 170 countries[1] were at home and often only returned briefly to the physical space of school at the beginning of the academic year 2020/21. Students in 40 countries found themselves back at learning remotely in early 2021.

Children and youth in primary and secondary education adapted to a new reality where access to the internet with the technical infrastructure available for teachers and students to offer and participate in remote learning became crucial. Higher education teachers and students similarly pivoted to remote learning and developed new ways of teaching and studying.

For many, this new way of remote learning has become a Next Normal[2], yet it is a world of extremes. We are facing enormous opportunity, but exclusion at the same time. UNESCO states that approximately half of the world´s students, most of them from the poorer countries[3], did not have access to remote learning activities in 2020. While this number exposed a dire need to create equitable access for all, many government started to improve their infrastructure for students to secure the path towards quality education as stated in SDG 4 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

There is momentum to think outside the box when building the necessary learning infrastructure and further developing the concepts of remote learning. Quality Education as called for by the United Nations is both a singular goal but also a key enabler of all of the other SDGs[4]. At the core of such quality education are the guiding principles of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and global citizenship. Both concepts refer to ways of empowering learners with knowledge, skills, values and attitudes to take informed decisions and become engaged citizens to promote sustainable development[5]. Expanding the classroom through learning together in local and global communities can help to build human connections that create partnership between people for the planet.

Remote learning has come to stay. Many school systems will integrate remote learning into their long-term portfolio to serve in times of short-term interruptions or as a new stream of learning for those students who have come to prefer or thrive in the virtual classroom. With ESD and global citizenship properly integrated into these new opportunities, remote learning can achieve more than being just another form of delivering the curriculum.

As higher education has demonstrated in the last year, teaching and learning can overcome borders and – despite the lack of in-person interaction and hands-on learning – still create valuable experience. Since international students could not travel, they joined programmes in other countries, time zones and languages online. Concepts, such as Collaborative Online Intercultural Learning (COIL)[6] or Globally Networked Learning (GNL)[7], showed the positive impact of students from different regions, languages and backgrounds, continuously learning together.

With primary and secondary education also arriving in the virtual space, there is opportunity to connect schools in similar ways and broadening learning horizons by overcoming borders. Primary and secondary school students can now not only connect to students in other regions but even (partially) participate in an education outside of their current country of residence. Several levels of educating children and youth in more connected ways could be imagined, such as:

1. Learning opportunities for specific subjects or themes through remote learning: language learning, learning about history of a region, arts and culture education.
2. Learning opportunities with cross-curriculum and cross-region teaching: curricula themes, relevant to both regions, could be taught in a partner approach of teachers and in mixed student groups.
3. Remotely attending a school in a different region: If comprehensive remote teaching is offered in school systems, it is an option for students to participate in a complete education programme outside their own region.

Global school networks could provide a basis for connecting schools to each other, e.g. the UNESCO-associated schools network (ASPnet)[8], comprised of more than 11,000 schools in 180 countries. Such networks already follow common objectives, while content and delivery could be contextualized in each region.

However, there are considerable challenges to overcome, such as the languages of instruction, time zones, cultural differences, current laws that require students to attend school in their country of residence or financing schooling for out-of-country students etc.

Yet, schooling beyond borders might be a new way of addressing quality education in a global effort. Further access to schooling could be provided for students in countries where resources are insufficient for all or schooling is interrupted due to environmental, economic or social reasons. Countries that base their national development on immigration could offer remote primary and secondary schooling for children of future immigrants. Vice versa, emigrants could still participate in schooling of their country of origin to understand and maintain their native language, heritage and culture.

An education that would connect people, provide knowledge and global perspectives could enhance the critical thinking of those who participate in these opportunities. We all understand that sustainable change needs more than just knowledge about facts. Schooling that brings together learners from various backgrounds could lead to an emotional exposure and newly found compassion for the other. This transformative learning experience, inherent in ESD and global citizenship, could bring forward the future leaders that make the difference and help creating the sustainable future we all hope for.

[1] https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[2] https://en.unesco.org/news/unescos-next-normal-campaign [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[3] https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000374561 [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[4] https://undocs.org/en/A/RES/74/223 [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[5] https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000374802 [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[6] https://coil.suny.edu/ [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[7] https://yorkinternational.yorku.ca/gnl-2/ [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[8] https://aspnet.unesco.org/en-us/Pages/default.aspx [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability was first published in spring 1996, in the heady post-1992 UN World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) days. After this ‘Rio Earth Summit’, Local governments in the UK and around the world were literally scrambling to understand the policy and planning implications of Local Agenda 21, and both academics and practitioners realized there was a need to collaborate in new and creative ways, turning theory into practice, and improving/generating theory through practice. Local Environment was born out of this local sustainability mandate from the UN.

In our first Editorial, my co-founder Bob Evans and I wrote:

“However much some would wish it otherwise, the environmental debate is as reflective of social and political inequality, and is as fundamentally conflictual as any other, and there is unlikely to be environmental quality, howsoever measured, without a much greater degree of social equality. This applies both within and between nations, and globally.”

In this we were signaling what we called at the time The New Environmental Agenda – the niche that Local Environment would always occupy: an exploration of the inextricable policy and planning linkages between the simultaneous achievement of environmental quality and human/social equality, or more broadly, between what was then largely environmentally oriented sustainability agenda, and the political project of environmental justice. Our framing of this nexus between the two concepts and their respective social movements developed into the increasingly influential policy and planning goal of just sustainabilities:

“the need to ensure a better quality of life for all, now, and into the future, in a just and equitable manner, whilst living within the limits of supporting ecosystems.”

To achieve the fullest potential of just sustainabilities, four conditions need to be met, not individually, but simultaneously:

1. Improving people’s quality of life and wellbeing;
   2. Meeting the needs of both present and future generations (intra- and intergenerational equity);
   3. Ensuring justice and equity in terms of recognition, process, procedure and outcome;
2. Recognizing ecosystem limits and the need to live within them.

In September 2015, the United Nations Assembly formally adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), superseding the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), to be implemented by 2030. In October 2016, the UN HABITAT III Conference in Quito launched the New Urban Agenda (NUA) which seeks to inform urban policy and practice in the context of global sustainability and resilience. While national governments were responsible for developing and negotiating the NUA objectives, city and local governments will play a focal role in leading their coordination, management implementation.

Both the SDGs and NUA are reflective of, and build on, the four conditions of just sustainabilities, and are therefore central to the mission of Local Environment. Of the 17 SDGs, all fit the concept of just sustainabilities in that they acknowledge the links between environmental quality and human equality; that stopping poverty must be linked with strategies to improve gender equality, people’s health and education, to reduce inequality, and encourage economic growth – at the same time tackling climate change and working to preserve our natural capital.

But if there were one SDG that could be seen as the ‘home’ of Local Environment, it would be the ‘urban goal’, SDG 11 which hailed the NUA. It requires that we “make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”. Clearly, urban policy and planning is critical to the urban goal. It defines an explicitly urban planning target, 11.3: “By 2030, enhance inclusive and sustainable urbanization and capacity for participatory, integrated and sustainable human settlement planning and management in all countries.”

Since the early days, Local Environment has maintained its focus, preceding both the SDGs and the NUA. In our Aims and Scope:

“Our focus is specifically on sustainability planning, policy and politics in relation to theoretical, conceptual and empirical studies at the nexus of equity, justice and the local environment. It is an inclusive forum for diverse constituencies and perspectives to engage in a critical examination, evaluation and discussion of the environmental, social and economic policies, processes and strategies which will be needed in movement towards social justice and sustainability – “Just Sustainabilities” – at local, regional, national and global scales.”

Consequently, the scholarship we have published over the past 24 years, and will continue to publish, is pivotal to tackling the all of the SDGs whilst also shaping the developing NUA.

Julian Agyeman

Editor-in-Chief

Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability

Visit the journal for the latest issue of Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability here or follow the links below to browse some of the journal’s recent OA articles.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13549839.2018.1463978

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13549839.2019.1628730

The imperative to reduce inequalities and leave no one behind infuses all the United Nations Social Development Goals (SDGs), including those with a focus on sexual and reproductive health (SRH). Universal access to SRH services and rights is needed to ensure healthy lives and well-being (SDG 3) and to contribute to gender equality (SDG 5). Achieving SRH and rights for all is also expected to positively impact on sustainable development and the environment and contribute to fairer communities and societies (Ghebreyesus and Kanem 2018). The aspiration is to reach the entire population and, in particular, poor, marginalised and vulnerable populations with comprehensive good quality services as well as to make sure that every individual can exercise “the right to make decisions that govern their bodies, free from stigma, discrimination, and coercion” (Starrs et al 2018, p. 2642).

The policy and programmatic shift required to realise this pledge of universal access to SRH services and rights is, however, significant, since it entails interrogating and addressing the factors that keep uneven social and economic development in place. Here we ponder on the influences that shape and place limits on equality and universal SRH and rights in Southeast Asia and on what it would take to tackle them. We identify three key drivers of disparity and exclusion that contribute to unequal SRH outcomes and demand urgent action if justice in and through sexual and reproductive health is to be achieved: the maldistribution of wealth and wellbeing; entrenched patriarchy; and growing rise of authoritarianism and populism.

Maldistribution of wealth and wellbeing

In recent decades, countries in Southeast Asia have enjoyed economic growth through economic liberalisation and integration in the global economy. This macro-economic success has brought with it significant social and environmental costs and has consistently failed to lead to ‘shared prosperity’ trickling down to the neediest. Disparities across and within countries remain striking, with a recent SDG progress report pointing to Southeast Asia as the only sub-region within Asia Pacific with widening in-country inequalities (UNESCAP 2018).

Although income levels do not necessarily translate into health outcomes, a close correlation exists between them in this region, where the more advantaged countries have significantly better well-being indicators when compared to the less advantaged ones. For instance, in 2017, average life expectancy in Singapore, Brunei Darussalam and Thailand was on average ten years longer than that in Myanmar, Cambodia and Lao PDR (ASEAN 2018). Moreover, sub-national disparities are rife.  Poor people are at a greater risk of dying from preventable diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria and poor women from unwanted pregnancy than their richer counterparts. Across the region, infant and maternal mortality rates are higher in rural areas, especially in remote locations. Similarly, girls living in the countryside – with less education and from poorer households – are more likely to be married or engaged early and at increased risk of early pregnancy, STIs and gender-based violence.

Health divides reveal large inequalities in access to health personnel, equipment and services. Public spending on health remains low, with governments advancing privatisation and marketisation of health care at the cost of public provision. A mix of social health insurance is offered to the poor for limited services. In many countries there exists “a two-tier health care system, with deluxe priority care for the better off and a rump, underfunded public sector for the rest’” (Ormond, Mun and Khoon 2014, p. 3).  Even when national health schemes increase affordability, such as in Thailand, the quality of care offered to lower-income and migrant patients – when they have access – is significantly poorer than that available to their wealthier counterparts.

Privatisation impacts on access to SRH supplies and services, standards of care and SRH outcomes. The cost of reproductive health services in private facilities is generally higher than in public facilities. In low-resource countries such as Laos and Cambodia, their use is prohibitive or implies burdensome, if not catastrophic, out of pocket expenses. Existing universal health care (where available) is no panacea either, as in most countries it only covers basic mother-and-child care. Furthermore, resource allocation frequently ignores groups deemed not to be entitled to SRH services on gender and moral grounds – for example, young people, unmarried women and LGBTIQ persons – leaving them dependent on private practitioners irrespective of their economic status.

Patriarchy and Populism

Patriarchy is entrenched in Southeast Asia even if there is much talk about women’s empowerment and leadership in national plans. Culturally diverse countries subscribe to the same overarching discourse of ‘Asian values’, framing women as subservient to men as household heads, including on sexual and reproductive matters. This social construction of a heteronormative ‘ideal’ continues to be seen as natural despite the growing reality of women-headed, single-person, same sex and separated families and the different roles women have always played at home and in society.

Time and again, governments fail to take into account women’s autonomy, needs and choices. Positions vary from pro-natalist stances for religious or demographic reasons in the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore, to the enforcement of family planning programmes using long-term contraceptives as in Indonesia and Vietnam. Decisions are further entrusted to the couple, if not the male partner, rather than the individual woman. As normative values locate sexuality and reproduction within the family, SRH education and services are not provided to single women and adolescents. The social fear of girls being sexually active and pregnant outside of wedlock contributes to early marriage and lack of educational opportunities. Maternal mortality is a persistent problem with deaths per 100,000 live births as high as 357 in Laos, 305 in Indonesia, 221 in the Philippines, 190 in Myanmar, 180 in Cambodia and an average of 197 regionally in 2015 (ASEAN 2017).

Skewed gender values have also shaped the HIV epidemic and national responses to it, with women largely ignored in prevention efforts when not sex workers. Efforts to control women and their sexuality manifest themselves in a multitude of violent and harmful practices from female genital mutilation, to sex selection. Intimate partner violence is pervasive, and rape continues to be condoned as men’s sexual entitlement (and thus not needing a woman’s consent) and as a ‘deserved’ punishment for deviant women or weapon of war. Most countries have laws to criminalise violence against women, but protection does not extend to unmarried couples and gender and sexual minorities. Nor does it include all forms of violence, such as sexual harassment and marital rape.

The attainment of economic and gender inclusion is even more challenged because of the rise of authoritarianism and of nationalist and religious populism throughout the region. This puts at risk the tenuous progress achieved by women’s groups and civil society in the 1980s and 1990s with the emergence of human-right based discourses and movements stressing women’s rights, SRH rights and, more recently, LBGTQI rights. Democratic forces that at the time seemed to have punctured, at least in parts of Southeast Asia, the dominance of centralised regimes, are experiencing a backlash. Referring back to timeworn justifications of stability, development and traditional values, governments are clamping down with greater intensity on freedom of association, speech and information, and are curtailing civic space. Pressure on civil society and progressive standpoints is further placed by the numerous fundamentalist and nationalist groups that have proliferated in recent years. In such a constraining climate, contestation over SRH and rights, gender equality and sexual diversity is becoming more intense.

Technical Know-how is Not Enough

Considering the regressive trends engulfing the region and the nature of the underlying drivers of inequity in development and SRH and rights, it is reasonable to assume that these cannot be addressed simply by adding investments and technical know-how or expanding access to services.   Instead, they require an approach that champions social change. A paradigm shift is required in the way we approach the SDGs and tackle SRH problems and their underlying causes.  This implies moving: 1) from creating opportunities for the left behind to ‘shared prosperity’ and redistribution across socio-economic groups; 2) from a technical to an empowering approach to addressing patriarchy and heteronormativity; and 3) from a developmental to a political framework for ‘inclusive societies’ to promoting and ensuring basic freedoms and respect of human rights.

More particularly, a more equitable distribution of wealth and wellbeing requires an overhaul of the economic system away from endless growth and consumerism to greater equity and equality. Alternative economic models that aim for “good lives for all within the limits of one planet” (Peck 2013, para 20) require ending perverse subsidies, land reform, community land trusts, unconditional basic incomes, and cap-and-share systems. Fiscal redistribution mechanisms including inheritance and progressive taxes and greater spending on social protection and transfers to the poorest are needed, alongside tax compliance by the rich. For the SDGs not to be perceived as ‘bluewash’, a system reboot of corporate practices beyond public-private partnerships and social corporate responsibility (CSR) will have to occur if business is to become more accountable to society and the environment (Peck 2017).

In the health sector, efforts should be made to challenge the progressive privatisation and commodification of health, reclaiming health as a public and not a private good. Governments need to increase public spending and provide greater regulatory oversight to keep corporate providers in check. New public systems and schemes are required that prioritise care according to need rather than capacity to pay. Prevention and promotion need to be placed at the centre of public health, which implies an allocation of financial and human resources away from treatment and hospital-centred care. In the push for universal health care, gender and socio-economic equity should be consciously built in and comprehensive SRH services should be made a number one priority in health financing and provision.

This implies working to challenge patriarchy in all its manifestations. Policy and programmes need to recognise that women’s empowerment in the public as well as in the domestic sphere is a precondition for attaining SRH and rights.  Too many programmes and interventions are of a technical rather than a transformative nature, shying away from a feminist analysis of the power structures at stake, and settling for some form of paternalist protectionism. Change should also come to development programmes addressing women as yet one more vulnerable group classified together with many other vulnerable groups, even though they make up more than half of humanity. The deconstruction of the entrenched patriarchal-heteronormative paradigm should be a priority for SRH struggles, and more needs to be done to normalise men’s work and role at home, as well as respect for gender and sexual minorities. States across Southeast Asia should be held accountable for the advancement of women beyond the level of rhetoric.

The upholding of women’s SRH and other rights requires a full rejection of ethnic and religious populism, fundamentalism, radicalism and of the politicisation of religion. For each and every one of us, the current global and regional context requires taking a position, breaking the silence and becoming vocal in defence of gender, sexuality, religious and ethnic diversity and human rights.

Moving from a developmental, to a political perspective for inclusive societies, implies reclaiming civic space for alternative voices and action. In all of this work, the SDGs can no longer be framed as apolitical.  Rather, states should be scrutinised and held accountable for their actions towards women, SDG commitments and all of those who are marginalised and ignored (Sriskandarajah 2017).

From this, it may be concluded that a structural approach to bringing justice to and through SRH must address the root causes of social exclusion and promote diversity.  In doing so, it must question the current economic order, patriarchy and other divisive power relations, promote human rights and support civil society. Only through a transformative approach will it be possible to move beyond the rhetoric of SDG aspirations and change society in such a way that indeed no-one is left behind.

****

This article is based on a paper by Rosalia Sciortino entitled Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights for All in Southeast Asia: More than SDGs aspirations,  published in Culture, Health & Sexuality

Rosalia Sciortino is an Associate Professor in the Institute for Population and Social Research (IPSR) at Mahidol University founder and Director of SEA Junction (www.seajunction.org) in Bangkok, Thailand.

 Peter Aggleton holds professorial positions at UNSW Sydney, The Australian National University in Canberra and UCL in London. 

Without a doubt, entrepreneurship is vital to achieving United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 4 and 8. SGD 4 is to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education that promotes lifelong learning opportunities for all. Specifically, SDG target 4.4 aims to substantially increase the number of young persons and adults who have the relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment and decent jobs and entrepreneurship. SDG 8 is meant to promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all. As highlighted in our recent article[1], our initial research shows that entrepreneurial ecosystems are a critical means by which social and economic goals are achieved. Thus, nurturing and promoting vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystems has become an assumed goal of most government and communities globally.  In this paper, an entrepreneurial ecosystem is defined as “a set of interdependent actors and factors coordinated in such a way that they enable productive entrepreneurship within a particular territory”[2].

Silicon Valley is one of the most important locations in the United States of America, associated with a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem, and it did not “grow overnight.” It took about half a century to achieve that status through regional geographic, social, cultural and institutional evolutionary factors.  Several generations of successful companies grew, matured and spread across the world by following the path discovered by entrepreneurs such as Moore and Noyce in the Silicon Valley[3]. The exploits of these pioneers generated a formidable entrepreneurial compounding effect called the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Global companies such as Facebook, Google, and Uber benefited from the compounding effects created by such giants from past generations to grow their businesses.

A similar history was repeated in China. First-generation Chinese technology companies such as Tencent and Alibaba[4] became the indispensable cornerstones for the emergence of the Chinese entrepreneurial ecosystem. Currently, there are an observed increased number of technology start-ups and a rise of new entrepreneurship hubs all over the world, including Tel Aviv, Singapore, London, and Berlin[5].

What makes a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem? Among others, a thriving ecosystem has the following key elements:

1. A dynamic interaction and interdependence between individual actors and communities to “achieve something together that lies beyond and greater than the effective scope and capabilities of any individual actor.” This (un)conscious shared purpose promotes and strengthens resource efficiency.
2. The recognition that internal social constructions and cultural values generate entrepreneurial action, which in turn drive economic development and revitalization at local, regional and state levels.
3. Entrepreneurial ecosystems foster macro-level resilience within the context of entrepreneurial failure, recovery, and transformation. In this regard, failure and recovery become a rite of passage.
4. Resilient, entrepreneurial ecosystems practiced with complexity theory enable businesspeople to practice entrepreneurship sustainably as envisaged in SDGs 4 and 8.

The lessons distilled from the cases cited in the US, Europe and China above are similar to those co-created by the Kwawu people in Ghana. The Kwawu complex, adaptive and resilient entrepreneurial ecosystems consist of eight (8) inter-related elements. These are a durable enabling entrepreneurial culture, learning-by-observing, doing, adopting, adapting, replicating, spiriting and social inclusion. Each of these elements will now be summarized.

Enabling Entrepreneurial Culture: An enabling entrepreneurial culture within this context is the affirmative sense of empowering individuals to become successful entrepreneurs. The community has quality mentors, who are a network of successful entrepreneurs that offer entrepreneurial mentoring. Start-up capital is usually generated within these trusted networks. The entrepreneurial cultural outcomes they cherish include: created wealth, trusting relations, imaginative and inspired thinking, less wastefulness and the ability to “sniff” business opportunities. Even though entrepreneurship is driven by the “self”, the community also value cooperation and collaboration with business associates.

Learning-by-Observing: From childhood, the Kwawu observe the traits, personas, behaviours and mannerisms of their entrepreneurial parents, uncles, aunties, and other close associates and attempt to do likewise later on in life. Factors that encourage the inclination towards developing by observing include:

• The availability of parents and close associations who are seen to be warm, nurturing, and who reward entrepreneurial behaviour.
• Successful entrepreneurs who are wealthy and admired and have high social status.
• Community leaders who inspire entrepreneurial confidence.

Development-by-Doing: “Development-by-doing” is realised through putting observed behaviour into practice to achieve detectable levels of excellence. Development by doing is complemented by coaching from close associates to accomplish a shared agenda of successful entrepreneurial development.

Learning-by-Adopting: This encompasses the informed selection and acceptance of other peoples tested entrepreneurial ethos as theirs. The Kwawus do this by deliberately choosing to embrace the philosophy of self and personal responsibility without abandoning group interactions. They also embrace the ethos of constant and consistent learning from, and packaging themselves after, successful pace setters and the adopting of new technologies, products and service.

Learning-by-Adapting: Developing-by-adapting the way business is done in response to changing business circumstances and environment (for examples, changes in social, political and economic conditions as well as the emergence of new technologies). This sort of development is done to mitigate undesirable impacts of past decisions and business environment and explore new ways of making better decisions and improving outcomes. The adaptation involves cooperation and collaboration with business associates and at both formal and informal gatherings that encourage individual input and self-achievements.

Learning-by-Replication: Replication refers to a situation where tested and established business strategies are tried elsewhere in a new geographical area or a new market, or a new set of customers. Replication often leads to the learners setting up new businesses or trading systems where the ability which has already been acquired is used to set up expanded or new companies.

Learning-by-Spiriting: Spiriting, in this context, connotes dispensing wisdom and “grey hair” services. It is about incarnating one’s self into individuals and the community by descending into the system to give birth to one’s entrepreneurial kind. Spiritors are holders and the embodiment of entrepreneurial wisdom. The most desired future of Spiritors includes valuing and exploiting future socio-economic-environmental ideals, grooming future holders of the vision and collaborating with current vision bearers to build businesses.

Social inclusion: It is the character and atmosphere that holds the elements of entrepreneurship development together. Social inclusion provides the required energy and conditions for mutual sustainability. This is achieved by welcoming, accommodating, nurturing and interacting with many different peoples and cultures (internal and external stakeholders) for mutual benefits and sustainability.

Contributions to sustainable management and development theory and practice 

The model and learning derived from the Kwawu entrepreneurial ecosystem can be used to achieve at least three things:

1. “Absorb” entrepreneurial disturbances such as those caused by the current pandemic, and the system adjusted so that it responds to these disturbances positively.
2. Analyse entrepreneurial interactions and identify business model innovations at local, national and regional levels and craft policy innovations at all levels.
3. Research how competition, cooperation, and collaboration among businesses affect the compound effect and shared value creation.

[1] Anuwa-Amarh, E., Hinske, C., Bamfo-Debrah, N. K., Sefa, D., Amarh, S., & Nassam, S. (2020). 26 The Kwawu resilient entrepreneurial ecosystem s. Sustainable Development and Resource Productivity, 317.

[2] Stam, F. C., & Spigel, B. (2016). Entrepreneurial ecosystems. USE Discussion paper series, 16(13).

[3] Berlin, L. (2010). Robert Noyce, Silicon Valley, and the Teamwork Behind the High-Technology Revolution. OAH Magazine of History, 24(1), 33-36.

[4] Jia, K., Kenney, M., Mattila, J., & Seppala, T. (2018). The application of artificial intelligence at Chinese digital platform giants: Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent. ETLA reports, (81).

[5] Fuerlinger, G., Fandl, U., & Funke, T. (2015). The role of the state in the entrepreneurship ecosystem: insights from Germany. Triple Helix, 2(1), 1-26.

Environmental Hazards: Human and Policy Dimensions is an interdisciplinary and international research journal that addresses the human and policy dimensions of hazards. As is well-known, the journal addresses the full range of hazardous events, from extreme geological, hydrological, atmospheric and biological events, such as earthquakes, floods, storms and epidemics, to technological failures and malfunctions, such as industrial explosions, fires and toxic material releases.

With a genuinely international perspective, we are able to highlight issues of human exposure, vulnerability, awareness, response and risk. The role of hazards in affecting development, and issues of efficiency, social justice and sustainability are also explored in the journal. Well-known conventional hazards receive extensive coverage, but so do new forms of hazard, emerging risk management institutions and restructuring of ideas about hazards, including their role in human affairs.

Important to ideas, policies and practices regarding hazard reduction globally in this context has been the development of the UN SDGs. These set targets for specific goals and their objectives, and the relationship with hazards and hazard reduction is easily appreciated. Almost all 17 of the goals are relevant to research on environmental hazards, but some are perhaps more relevant than others. Thus, SDG 1 (No Poverty), SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 3 (Good Health and Wellbeing) and SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation) directly relate to our concern for hazard victims, where these are serious threats to communities during and after hazard events. We take increasingly seriously the distributional and related issues, such as SDG 5 (Gender Equality) and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequality).

Governance-related issues also feature strongly in our publication record, reflecting and reinforcing Goals such as SDG 16 (Peace and Justice Strong Institutions) and SDG 17 (Partnerships to Achieve the Goal). More contextual but no less important are SDG 13 (Climate Action), SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) and SDG 15 (Life on Land). What the journal seeks to do, taking an international perspective, is to link particular circumstances in a range of places to modern ideas, including in the SDGs, about hazard exposure, vulnerability reduction and the promotion of community resilience. The SDGs provide a challenging backdrop to that effort, and it is likely in future that more papers will be accepted that explicitly address the relationship between these goals and particular hazards in specific locations. This is not something that we require but will be useful as a way of monitoring the development of ideas and practices with respect to these Goals, and their evolution over time.

Visit the journal for the latest issue of Environmental Hazards: Human and Policy Dimensions here or follow the links below to browse some of the journal’s recent OA articles.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17477891.2021.1912694?src=

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17477891.2021.1898926?src=

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17477891.2020.1771250?src=

By Katrin Kohl & Charles Hopkins, York University, Canada

SDG 4 Quality Education

“I am off to school, see you later!” she shouts, turns her computer on and closes the door. Many families have become used to the new routine of remote learning in 2020. At the height of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, over 80 % of the world´s students from more than 170 countries[1] were at home and often only returned briefly to the physical space of school at the beginning of the academic year 2020/21. Students in 40 countries found themselves back at learning remotely in early 2021.

Children and youth in primary and secondary education adapted to a new reality where access to the internet with the technical infrastructure available for teachers and students to offer and participate in remote learning became crucial. Higher education teachers and students similarly pivoted to remote learning and developed new ways of teaching and studying.

For many, this new way of remote learning has become a Next Normal[2], yet it is a world of extremes. We are facing enormous opportunity, but exclusion at the same time. UNESCO states that approximately half of the world´s students, most of them from the poorer countries[3], did not have access to remote learning activities in 2020. While this number exposed a dire need to create equitable access for all, many government started to improve their infrastructure for students to secure the path towards quality education as stated in SDG 4 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

There is momentum to think outside the box when building the necessary learning infrastructure and further developing the concepts of remote learning. Quality Education as called for by the United Nations is both a singular goal but also a key enabler of all of the other SDGs[4]. At the core of such quality education are the guiding principles of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and global citizenship. Both concepts refer to ways of empowering learners with knowledge, skills, values and attitudes to take informed decisions and become engaged citizens to promote sustainable development[5]. Expanding the classroom through learning together in local and global communities can help to build human connections that create partnership between people for the planet.

Remote learning has come to stay. Many school systems will integrate remote learning into their long-term portfolio to serve in times of short-term interruptions or as a new stream of learning for those students who have come to prefer or thrive in the virtual classroom. With ESD and global citizenship properly integrated into these new opportunities, remote learning can achieve more than being just another form of delivering the curriculum.

As higher education has demonstrated in the last year, teaching and learning can overcome borders and – despite the lack of in-person interaction and hands-on learning – still create valuable experience. Since international students could not travel, they joined programmes in other countries, time zones and languages online. Concepts, such as Collaborative Online Intercultural Learning (COIL)[6] or Globally Networked Learning (GNL)[7], showed the positive impact of students from different regions, languages and backgrounds, continuously learning together.

With primary and secondary education also arriving in the virtual space, there is opportunity to connect schools in similar ways and broadening learning horizons by overcoming borders. Primary and secondary school students can now not only connect to students in other regions but even (partially) participate in an education outside of their current country of residence. Several levels of educating children and youth in more connected ways could be imagined, such as:

1. Learning opportunities for specific subjects or themes through remote learning: language learning, learning about history of a region, arts and culture education.
2. Learning opportunities with cross-curriculum and cross-region teaching: curricula themes, relevant to both regions, could be taught in a partner approach of teachers and in mixed student groups.
3. Remotely attending a school in a different region: If comprehensive remote teaching is offered in school systems, it is an option for students to participate in a complete education programme outside their own region.

Global school networks could provide a basis for connecting schools to each other, e.g. the UNESCO-associated schools network (ASPnet)[8], comprised of more than 11,000 schools in 180 countries. Such networks already follow common objectives, while content and delivery could be contextualized in each region.

However, there are considerable challenges to overcome, such as the languages of instruction, time zones, cultural differences, current laws that require students to attend school in their country of residence or financing schooling for out-of-country students etc.

Yet, schooling beyond borders might be a new way of addressing quality education in a global effort. Further access to schooling could be provided for students in countries where resources are insufficient for all or schooling is interrupted due to environmental, economic or social reasons. Countries that base their national development on immigration could offer remote primary and secondary schooling for children of future immigrants. Vice versa, emigrants could still participate in schooling of their country of origin to understand and maintain their native language, heritage and culture.

An education that would connect people, provide knowledge and global perspectives could enhance the critical thinking of those who participate in these opportunities. We all understand that sustainable change needs more than just knowledge about facts. Schooling that brings together learners from various backgrounds could lead to an emotional exposure and newly found compassion for the other. This transformative learning experience, inherent in ESD and global citizenship, could bring forward the future leaders that make the difference and help creating the sustainable future we all hope for.

[1] https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[2] https://en.unesco.org/news/unescos-next-normal-campaign [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[3] https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000374561 [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[4] https://undocs.org/en/A/RES/74/223 [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[5] https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000374802 [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[6] https://coil.suny.edu/ [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[7] https://yorkinternational.yorku.ca/gnl-2/ [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[8] https://aspnet.unesco.org/en-us/Pages/default.aspx [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability was first published in spring 1996, in the heady post-1992 UN World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) days. After this ‘Rio Earth Summit’, Local governments in the UK and around the world were literally scrambling to understand the policy and planning implications of Local Agenda 21, and both academics and practitioners realized there was a need to collaborate in new and creative ways, turning theory into practice, and improving/generating theory through practice. Local Environment was born out of this local sustainability mandate from the UN.

In our first Editorial, my co-founder Bob Evans and I wrote:

“However much some would wish it otherwise, the environmental debate is as reflective of social and political inequality, and is as fundamentally conflictual as any other, and there is unlikely to be environmental quality, howsoever measured, without a much greater degree of social equality. This applies both within and between nations, and globally.”

In this we were signaling what we called at the time The New Environmental Agenda – the niche that Local Environment would always occupy: an exploration of the inextricable policy and planning linkages between the simultaneous achievement of environmental quality and human/social equality, or more broadly, between what was then largely environmentally oriented sustainability agenda, and the political project of environmental justice. Our framing of this nexus between the two concepts and their respective social movements developed into the increasingly influential policy and planning goal of just sustainabilities:

“the need to ensure a better quality of life for all, now, and into the future, in a just and equitable manner, whilst living within the limits of supporting ecosystems.”

To achieve the fullest potential of just sustainabilities, four conditions need to be met, not individually, but simultaneously:

1. Improving people’s quality of life and wellbeing;
   2. Meeting the needs of both present and future generations (intra- and intergenerational equity);
   3. Ensuring justice and equity in terms of recognition, process, procedure and outcome;
2. Recognizing ecosystem limits and the need to live within them.

In September 2015, the United Nations Assembly formally adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), superseding the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), to be implemented by 2030. In October 2016, the UN HABITAT III Conference in Quito launched the New Urban Agenda (NUA) which seeks to inform urban policy and practice in the context of global sustainability and resilience. While national governments were responsible for developing and negotiating the NUA objectives, city and local governments will play a focal role in leading their coordination, management implementation.

Both the SDGs and NUA are reflective of, and build on, the four conditions of just sustainabilities, and are therefore central to the mission of Local Environment. Of the 17 SDGs, all fit the concept of just sustainabilities in that they acknowledge the links between environmental quality and human equality; that stopping poverty must be linked with strategies to improve gender equality, people’s health and education, to reduce inequality, and encourage economic growth – at the same time tackling climate change and working to preserve our natural capital.

But if there were one SDG that could be seen as the ‘home’ of Local Environment, it would be the ‘urban goal’, SDG 11 which hailed the NUA. It requires that we “make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”. Clearly, urban policy and planning is critical to the urban goal. It defines an explicitly urban planning target, 11.3: “By 2030, enhance inclusive and sustainable urbanization and capacity for participatory, integrated and sustainable human settlement planning and management in all countries.”

Since the early days, Local Environment has maintained its focus, preceding both the SDGs and the NUA. In our Aims and Scope:

“Our focus is specifically on sustainability planning, policy and politics in relation to theoretical, conceptual and empirical studies at the nexus of equity, justice and the local environment. It is an inclusive forum for diverse constituencies and perspectives to engage in a critical examination, evaluation and discussion of the environmental, social and economic policies, processes and strategies which will be needed in movement towards social justice and sustainability – “Just Sustainabilities” – at local, regional, national and global scales.”

Consequently, the scholarship we have published over the past 24 years, and will continue to publish, is pivotal to tackling the all of the SDGs whilst also shaping the developing NUA.

Julian Agyeman

Editor-in-Chief

Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability

Visit the journal for the latest issue of Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability here or follow the links below to browse some of the journal’s recent OA articles.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13549839.2018.1463978

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13549839.2019.1628730

The imperative to reduce inequalities and leave no one behind infuses all the United Nations Social Development Goals (SDGs), including those with a focus on sexual and reproductive health (SRH). Universal access to SRH services and rights is needed to ensure healthy lives and well-being (SDG 3) and to contribute to gender equality (SDG 5). Achieving SRH and rights for all is also expected to positively impact on sustainable development and the environment and contribute to fairer communities and societies (Ghebreyesus and Kanem 2018). The aspiration is to reach the entire population and, in particular, poor, marginalised and vulnerable populations with comprehensive good quality services as well as to make sure that every individual can exercise “the right to make decisions that govern their bodies, free from stigma, discrimination, and coercion” (Starrs et al 2018, p. 2642).

The policy and programmatic shift required to realise this pledge of universal access to SRH services and rights is, however, significant, since it entails interrogating and addressing the factors that keep uneven social and economic development in place. Here we ponder on the influences that shape and place limits on equality and universal SRH and rights in Southeast Asia and on what it would take to tackle them. We identify three key drivers of disparity and exclusion that contribute to unequal SRH outcomes and demand urgent action if justice in and through sexual and reproductive health is to be achieved: the maldistribution of wealth and wellbeing; entrenched patriarchy; and growing rise of authoritarianism and populism.

Maldistribution of wealth and wellbeing

In recent decades, countries in Southeast Asia have enjoyed economic growth through economic liberalisation and integration in the global economy. This macro-economic success has brought with it significant social and environmental costs and has consistently failed to lead to ‘shared prosperity’ trickling down to the neediest. Disparities across and within countries remain striking, with a recent SDG progress report pointing to Southeast Asia as the only sub-region within Asia Pacific with widening in-country inequalities (UNESCAP 2018).

Although income levels do not necessarily translate into health outcomes, a close correlation exists between them in this region, where the more advantaged countries have significantly better well-being indicators when compared to the less advantaged ones. For instance, in 2017, average life expectancy in Singapore, Brunei Darussalam and Thailand was on average ten years longer than that in Myanmar, Cambodia and Lao PDR (ASEAN 2018). Moreover, sub-national disparities are rife.  Poor people are at a greater risk of dying from preventable diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria and poor women from unwanted pregnancy than their richer counterparts. Across the region, infant and maternal mortality rates are higher in rural areas, especially in remote locations. Similarly, girls living in the countryside – with less education and from poorer households – are more likely to be married or engaged early and at increased risk of early pregnancy, STIs and gender-based violence.

Health divides reveal large inequalities in access to health personnel, equipment and services. Public spending on health remains low, with governments advancing privatisation and marketisation of health care at the cost of public provision. A mix of social health insurance is offered to the poor for limited services. In many countries there exists “a two-tier health care system, with deluxe priority care for the better off and a rump, underfunded public sector for the rest’” (Ormond, Mun and Khoon 2014, p. 3).  Even when national health schemes increase affordability, such as in Thailand, the quality of care offered to lower-income and migrant patients – when they have access – is significantly poorer than that available to their wealthier counterparts.

Privatisation impacts on access to SRH supplies and services, standards of care and SRH outcomes. The cost of reproductive health services in private facilities is generally higher than in public facilities. In low-resource countries such as Laos and Cambodia, their use is prohibitive or implies burdensome, if not catastrophic, out of pocket expenses. Existing universal health care (where available) is no panacea either, as in most countries it only covers basic mother-and-child care. Furthermore, resource allocation frequently ignores groups deemed not to be entitled to SRH services on gender and moral grounds – for example, young people, unmarried women and LGBTIQ persons – leaving them dependent on private practitioners irrespective of their economic status.

Patriarchy and Populism

Patriarchy is entrenched in Southeast Asia even if there is much talk about women’s empowerment and leadership in national plans. Culturally diverse countries subscribe to the same overarching discourse of ‘Asian values’, framing women as subservient to men as household heads, including on sexual and reproductive matters. This social construction of a heteronormative ‘ideal’ continues to be seen as natural despite the growing reality of women-headed, single-person, same sex and separated families and the different roles women have always played at home and in society.

Time and again, governments fail to take into account women’s autonomy, needs and choices. Positions vary from pro-natalist stances for religious or demographic reasons in the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore, to the enforcement of family planning programmes using long-term contraceptives as in Indonesia and Vietnam. Decisions are further entrusted to the couple, if not the male partner, rather than the individual woman. As normative values locate sexuality and reproduction within the family, SRH education and services are not provided to single women and adolescents. The social fear of girls being sexually active and pregnant outside of wedlock contributes to early marriage and lack of educational opportunities. Maternal mortality is a persistent problem with deaths per 100,000 live births as high as 357 in Laos, 305 in Indonesia, 221 in the Philippines, 190 in Myanmar, 180 in Cambodia and an average of 197 regionally in 2015 (ASEAN 2017).

Skewed gender values have also shaped the HIV epidemic and national responses to it, with women largely ignored in prevention efforts when not sex workers. Efforts to control women and their sexuality manifest themselves in a multitude of violent and harmful practices from female genital mutilation, to sex selection. Intimate partner violence is pervasive, and rape continues to be condoned as men’s sexual entitlement (and thus not needing a woman’s consent) and as a ‘deserved’ punishment for deviant women or weapon of war. Most countries have laws to criminalise violence against women, but protection does not extend to unmarried couples and gender and sexual minorities. Nor does it include all forms of violence, such as sexual harassment and marital rape.

The attainment of economic and gender inclusion is even more challenged because of the rise of authoritarianism and of nationalist and religious populism throughout the region. This puts at risk the tenuous progress achieved by women’s groups and civil society in the 1980s and 1990s with the emergence of human-right based discourses and movements stressing women’s rights, SRH rights and, more recently, LBGTQI rights. Democratic forces that at the time seemed to have punctured, at least in parts of Southeast Asia, the dominance of centralised regimes, are experiencing a backlash. Referring back to timeworn justifications of stability, development and traditional values, governments are clamping down with greater intensity on freedom of association, speech and information, and are curtailing civic space. Pressure on civil society and progressive standpoints is further placed by the numerous fundamentalist and nationalist groups that have proliferated in recent years. In such a constraining climate, contestation over SRH and rights, gender equality and sexual diversity is becoming more intense.

Technical Know-how is Not Enough

Considering the regressive trends engulfing the region and the nature of the underlying drivers of inequity in development and SRH and rights, it is reasonable to assume that these cannot be addressed simply by adding investments and technical know-how or expanding access to services.   Instead, they require an approach that champions social change. A paradigm shift is required in the way we approach the SDGs and tackle SRH problems and their underlying causes.  This implies moving: 1) from creating opportunities for the left behind to ‘shared prosperity’ and redistribution across socio-economic groups; 2) from a technical to an empowering approach to addressing patriarchy and heteronormativity; and 3) from a developmental to a political framework for ‘inclusive societies’ to promoting and ensuring basic freedoms and respect of human rights.

More particularly, a more equitable distribution of wealth and wellbeing requires an overhaul of the economic system away from endless growth and consumerism to greater equity and equality. Alternative economic models that aim for “good lives for all within the limits of one planet” (Peck 2013, para 20) require ending perverse subsidies, land reform, community land trusts, unconditional basic incomes, and cap-and-share systems. Fiscal redistribution mechanisms including inheritance and progressive taxes and greater spending on social protection and transfers to the poorest are needed, alongside tax compliance by the rich. For the SDGs not to be perceived as ‘bluewash’, a system reboot of corporate practices beyond public-private partnerships and social corporate responsibility (CSR) will have to occur if business is to become more accountable to society and the environment (Peck 2017).

In the health sector, efforts should be made to challenge the progressive privatisation and commodification of health, reclaiming health as a public and not a private good. Governments need to increase public spending and provide greater regulatory oversight to keep corporate providers in check. New public systems and schemes are required that prioritise care according to need rather than capacity to pay. Prevention and promotion need to be placed at the centre of public health, which implies an allocation of financial and human resources away from treatment and hospital-centred care. In the push for universal health care, gender and socio-economic equity should be consciously built in and comprehensive SRH services should be made a number one priority in health financing and provision.

This implies working to challenge patriarchy in all its manifestations. Policy and programmes need to recognise that women’s empowerment in the public as well as in the domestic sphere is a precondition for attaining SRH and rights.  Too many programmes and interventions are of a technical rather than a transformative nature, shying away from a feminist analysis of the power structures at stake, and settling for some form of paternalist protectionism. Change should also come to development programmes addressing women as yet one more vulnerable group classified together with many other vulnerable groups, even though they make up more than half of humanity. The deconstruction of the entrenched patriarchal-heteronormative paradigm should be a priority for SRH struggles, and more needs to be done to normalise men’s work and role at home, as well as respect for gender and sexual minorities. States across Southeast Asia should be held accountable for the advancement of women beyond the level of rhetoric.

The upholding of women’s SRH and other rights requires a full rejection of ethnic and religious populism, fundamentalism, radicalism and of the politicisation of religion. For each and every one of us, the current global and regional context requires taking a position, breaking the silence and becoming vocal in defence of gender, sexuality, religious and ethnic diversity and human rights.

Moving from a developmental, to a political perspective for inclusive societies, implies reclaiming civic space for alternative voices and action. In all of this work, the SDGs can no longer be framed as apolitical.  Rather, states should be scrutinised and held accountable for their actions towards women, SDG commitments and all of those who are marginalised and ignored (Sriskandarajah 2017).

From this, it may be concluded that a structural approach to bringing justice to and through SRH must address the root causes of social exclusion and promote diversity.  In doing so, it must question the current economic order, patriarchy and other divisive power relations, promote human rights and support civil society. Only through a transformative approach will it be possible to move beyond the rhetoric of SDG aspirations and change society in such a way that indeed no-one is left behind.

****

This article is based on a paper by Rosalia Sciortino entitled Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights for All in Southeast Asia: More than SDGs aspirations,  published in Culture, Health & Sexuality

Rosalia Sciortino is an Associate Professor in the Institute for Population and Social Research (IPSR) at Mahidol University founder and Director of SEA Junction (www.seajunction.org) in Bangkok, Thailand.

 Peter Aggleton holds professorial positions at UNSW Sydney, The Australian National University in Canberra and UCL in London. 

Without a doubt, entrepreneurship is vital to achieving United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 4 and 8. SGD 4 is to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education that promotes lifelong learning opportunities for all. Specifically, SDG target 4.4 aims to substantially increase the number of young persons and adults who have the relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment and decent jobs and entrepreneurship. SDG 8 is meant to promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all. As highlighted in our recent article[1], our initial research shows that entrepreneurial ecosystems are a critical means by which social and economic goals are achieved. Thus, nurturing and promoting vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystems has become an assumed goal of most government and communities globally.  In this paper, an entrepreneurial ecosystem is defined as “a set of interdependent actors and factors coordinated in such a way that they enable productive entrepreneurship within a particular territory”[2].

Silicon Valley is one of the most important locations in the United States of America, associated with a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem, and it did not “grow overnight.” It took about half a century to achieve that status through regional geographic, social, cultural and institutional evolutionary factors.  Several generations of successful companies grew, matured and spread across the world by following the path discovered by entrepreneurs such as Moore and Noyce in the Silicon Valley[3]. The exploits of these pioneers generated a formidable entrepreneurial compounding effect called the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Global companies such as Facebook, Google, and Uber benefited from the compounding effects created by such giants from past generations to grow their businesses.

A similar history was repeated in China. First-generation Chinese technology companies such as Tencent and Alibaba[4] became the indispensable cornerstones for the emergence of the Chinese entrepreneurial ecosystem. Currently, there are an observed increased number of technology start-ups and a rise of new entrepreneurship hubs all over the world, including Tel Aviv, Singapore, London, and Berlin[5].

What makes a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem? Among others, a thriving ecosystem has the following key elements:

1. A dynamic interaction and interdependence between individual actors and communities to “achieve something together that lies beyond and greater than the effective scope and capabilities of any individual actor.” This (un)conscious shared purpose promotes and strengthens resource efficiency.
2. The recognition that internal social constructions and cultural values generate entrepreneurial action, which in turn drive economic development and revitalization at local, regional and state levels.
3. Entrepreneurial ecosystems foster macro-level resilience within the context of entrepreneurial failure, recovery, and transformation. In this regard, failure and recovery become a rite of passage.
4. Resilient, entrepreneurial ecosystems practiced with complexity theory enable businesspeople to practice entrepreneurship sustainably as envisaged in SDGs 4 and 8.

The lessons distilled from the cases cited in the US, Europe and China above are similar to those co-created by the Kwawu people in Ghana. The Kwawu complex, adaptive and resilient entrepreneurial ecosystems consist of eight (8) inter-related elements. These are a durable enabling entrepreneurial culture, learning-by-observing, doing, adopting, adapting, replicating, spiriting and social inclusion. Each of these elements will now be summarized.

Enabling Entrepreneurial Culture: An enabling entrepreneurial culture within this context is the affirmative sense of empowering individuals to become successful entrepreneurs. The community has quality mentors, who are a network of successful entrepreneurs that offer entrepreneurial mentoring. Start-up capital is usually generated within these trusted networks. The entrepreneurial cultural outcomes they cherish include: created wealth, trusting relations, imaginative and inspired thinking, less wastefulness and the ability to “sniff” business opportunities. Even though entrepreneurship is driven by the “self”, the community also value cooperation and collaboration with business associates.

Learning-by-Observing: From childhood, the Kwawu observe the traits, personas, behaviours and mannerisms of their entrepreneurial parents, uncles, aunties, and other close associates and attempt to do likewise later on in life. Factors that encourage the inclination towards developing by observing include:

• The availability of parents and close associations who are seen to be warm, nurturing, and who reward entrepreneurial behaviour.
• Successful entrepreneurs who are wealthy and admired and have high social status.
• Community leaders who inspire entrepreneurial confidence.

Development-by-Doing: “Development-by-doing” is realised through putting observed behaviour into practice to achieve detectable levels of excellence. Development by doing is complemented by coaching from close associates to accomplish a shared agenda of successful entrepreneurial development.

Learning-by-Adopting: This encompasses the informed selection and acceptance of other peoples tested entrepreneurial ethos as theirs. The Kwawus do this by deliberately choosing to embrace the philosophy of self and personal responsibility without abandoning group interactions. They also embrace the ethos of constant and consistent learning from, and packaging themselves after, successful pace setters and the adopting of new technologies, products and service.

Learning-by-Adapting: Developing-by-adapting the way business is done in response to changing business circumstances and environment (for examples, changes in social, political and economic conditions as well as the emergence of new technologies). This sort of development is done to mitigate undesirable impacts of past decisions and business environment and explore new ways of making better decisions and improving outcomes. The adaptation involves cooperation and collaboration with business associates and at both formal and informal gatherings that encourage individual input and self-achievements.

Learning-by-Replication: Replication refers to a situation where tested and established business strategies are tried elsewhere in a new geographical area or a new market, or a new set of customers. Replication often leads to the learners setting up new businesses or trading systems where the ability which has already been acquired is used to set up expanded or new companies.

Learning-by-Spiriting: Spiriting, in this context, connotes dispensing wisdom and “grey hair” services. It is about incarnating one’s self into individuals and the community by descending into the system to give birth to one’s entrepreneurial kind. Spiritors are holders and the embodiment of entrepreneurial wisdom. The most desired future of Spiritors includes valuing and exploiting future socio-economic-environmental ideals, grooming future holders of the vision and collaborating with current vision bearers to build businesses.

Social inclusion: It is the character and atmosphere that holds the elements of entrepreneurship development together. Social inclusion provides the required energy and conditions for mutual sustainability. This is achieved by welcoming, accommodating, nurturing and interacting with many different peoples and cultures (internal and external stakeholders) for mutual benefits and sustainability.

Contributions to sustainable management and development theory and practice 

The model and learning derived from the Kwawu entrepreneurial ecosystem can be used to achieve at least three things:

1. “Absorb” entrepreneurial disturbances such as those caused by the current pandemic, and the system adjusted so that it responds to these disturbances positively.
2. Analyse entrepreneurial interactions and identify business model innovations at local, national and regional levels and craft policy innovations at all levels.
3. Research how competition, cooperation, and collaboration among businesses affect the compound effect and shared value creation.

[1] Anuwa-Amarh, E., Hinske, C., Bamfo-Debrah, N. K., Sefa, D., Amarh, S., & Nassam, S. (2020). 26 The Kwawu resilient entrepreneurial ecosystem s. Sustainable Development and Resource Productivity, 317.

[2] Stam, F. C., & Spigel, B. (2016). Entrepreneurial ecosystems. USE Discussion paper series, 16(13).

[3] Berlin, L. (2010). Robert Noyce, Silicon Valley, and the Teamwork Behind the High-Technology Revolution. OAH Magazine of History, 24(1), 33-36.

[4] Jia, K., Kenney, M., Mattila, J., & Seppala, T. (2018). The application of artificial intelligence at Chinese digital platform giants: Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent. ETLA reports, (81).

[5] Fuerlinger, G., Fandl, U., & Funke, T. (2015). The role of the state in the entrepreneurship ecosystem: insights from Germany. Triple Helix, 2(1), 1-26.

Environmental Hazards: Human and Policy Dimensions is an interdisciplinary and international research journal that addresses the human and policy dimensions of hazards. As is well-known, the journal addresses the full range of hazardous events, from extreme geological, hydrological, atmospheric and biological events, such as earthquakes, floods, storms and epidemics, to technological failures and malfunctions, such as industrial explosions, fires and toxic material releases.

With a genuinely international perspective, we are able to highlight issues of human exposure, vulnerability, awareness, response and risk. The role of hazards in affecting development, and issues of efficiency, social justice and sustainability are also explored in the journal. Well-known conventional hazards receive extensive coverage, but so do new forms of hazard, emerging risk management institutions and restructuring of ideas about hazards, including their role in human affairs.

Important to ideas, policies and practices regarding hazard reduction globally in this context has been the development of the UN SDGs. These set targets for specific goals and their objectives, and the relationship with hazards and hazard reduction is easily appreciated. Almost all 17 of the goals are relevant to research on environmental hazards, but some are perhaps more relevant than others. Thus, SDG 1 (No Poverty), SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 3 (Good Health and Wellbeing) and SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation) directly relate to our concern for hazard victims, where these are serious threats to communities during and after hazard events. We take increasingly seriously the distributional and related issues, such as SDG 5 (Gender Equality) and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequality).

Governance-related issues also feature strongly in our publication record, reflecting and reinforcing Goals such as SDG 16 (Peace and Justice Strong Institutions) and SDG 17 (Partnerships to Achieve the Goal). More contextual but no less important are SDG 13 (Climate Action), SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) and SDG 15 (Life on Land). What the journal seeks to do, taking an international perspective, is to link particular circumstances in a range of places to modern ideas, including in the SDGs, about hazard exposure, vulnerability reduction and the promotion of community resilience. The SDGs provide a challenging backdrop to that effort, and it is likely in future that more papers will be accepted that explicitly address the relationship between these goals and particular hazards in specific locations. This is not something that we require but will be useful as a way of monitoring the development of ideas and practices with respect to these Goals, and their evolution over time.

Visit the journal for the latest issue of Environmental Hazards: Human and Policy Dimensions here or follow the links below to browse some of the journal’s recent OA articles.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17477891.2021.1912694?src=

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17477891.2021.1898926?src=

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17477891.2020.1771250?src=

By Katrin Kohl & Charles Hopkins, York University, Canada

SDG 4 Quality Education

“I am off to school, see you later!” she shouts, turns her computer on and closes the door. Many families have become used to the new routine of remote learning in 2020. At the height of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, over 80 % of the world´s students from more than 170 countries[1] were at home and often only returned briefly to the physical space of school at the beginning of the academic year 2020/21. Students in 40 countries found themselves back at learning remotely in early 2021.

Children and youth in primary and secondary education adapted to a new reality where access to the internet with the technical infrastructure available for teachers and students to offer and participate in remote learning became crucial. Higher education teachers and students similarly pivoted to remote learning and developed new ways of teaching and studying.

For many, this new way of remote learning has become a Next Normal[2], yet it is a world of extremes. We are facing enormous opportunity, but exclusion at the same time. UNESCO states that approximately half of the world´s students, most of them from the poorer countries[3], did not have access to remote learning activities in 2020. While this number exposed a dire need to create equitable access for all, many government started to improve their infrastructure for students to secure the path towards quality education as stated in SDG 4 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

There is momentum to think outside the box when building the necessary learning infrastructure and further developing the concepts of remote learning. Quality Education as called for by the United Nations is both a singular goal but also a key enabler of all of the other SDGs[4]. At the core of such quality education are the guiding principles of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and global citizenship. Both concepts refer to ways of empowering learners with knowledge, skills, values and attitudes to take informed decisions and become engaged citizens to promote sustainable development[5]. Expanding the classroom through learning together in local and global communities can help to build human connections that create partnership between people for the planet.

Remote learning has come to stay. Many school systems will integrate remote learning into their long-term portfolio to serve in times of short-term interruptions or as a new stream of learning for those students who have come to prefer or thrive in the virtual classroom. With ESD and global citizenship properly integrated into these new opportunities, remote learning can achieve more than being just another form of delivering the curriculum.

As higher education has demonstrated in the last year, teaching and learning can overcome borders and – despite the lack of in-person interaction and hands-on learning – still create valuable experience. Since international students could not travel, they joined programmes in other countries, time zones and languages online. Concepts, such as Collaborative Online Intercultural Learning (COIL)[6] or Globally Networked Learning (GNL)[7], showed the positive impact of students from different regions, languages and backgrounds, continuously learning together.

With primary and secondary education also arriving in the virtual space, there is opportunity to connect schools in similar ways and broadening learning horizons by overcoming borders. Primary and secondary school students can now not only connect to students in other regions but even (partially) participate in an education outside of their current country of residence. Several levels of educating children and youth in more connected ways could be imagined, such as:

1. Learning opportunities for specific subjects or themes through remote learning: language learning, learning about history of a region, arts and culture education.
2. Learning opportunities with cross-curriculum and cross-region teaching: curricula themes, relevant to both regions, could be taught in a partner approach of teachers and in mixed student groups.
3. Remotely attending a school in a different region: If comprehensive remote teaching is offered in school systems, it is an option for students to participate in a complete education programme outside their own region.

Global school networks could provide a basis for connecting schools to each other, e.g. the UNESCO-associated schools network (ASPnet)[8], comprised of more than 11,000 schools in 180 countries. Such networks already follow common objectives, while content and delivery could be contextualized in each region.

However, there are considerable challenges to overcome, such as the languages of instruction, time zones, cultural differences, current laws that require students to attend school in their country of residence or financing schooling for out-of-country students etc.

Yet, schooling beyond borders might be a new way of addressing quality education in a global effort. Further access to schooling could be provided for students in countries where resources are insufficient for all or schooling is interrupted due to environmental, economic or social reasons. Countries that base their national development on immigration could offer remote primary and secondary schooling for children of future immigrants. Vice versa, emigrants could still participate in schooling of their country of origin to understand and maintain their native language, heritage and culture.

An education that would connect people, provide knowledge and global perspectives could enhance the critical thinking of those who participate in these opportunities. We all understand that sustainable change needs more than just knowledge about facts. Schooling that brings together learners from various backgrounds could lead to an emotional exposure and newly found compassion for the other. This transformative learning experience, inherent in ESD and global citizenship, could bring forward the future leaders that make the difference and help creating the sustainable future we all hope for.

[1] https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[2] https://en.unesco.org/news/unescos-next-normal-campaign [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[3] https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000374561 [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[4] https://undocs.org/en/A/RES/74/223 [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[5] https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000374802 [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[6] https://coil.suny.edu/ [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[7] https://yorkinternational.yorku.ca/gnl-2/ [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[8] https://aspnet.unesco.org/en-us/Pages/default.aspx [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability was first published in spring 1996, in the heady post-1992 UN World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) days. After this ‘Rio Earth Summit’, Local governments in the UK and around the world were literally scrambling to understand the policy and planning implications of Local Agenda 21, and both academics and practitioners realized there was a need to collaborate in new and creative ways, turning theory into practice, and improving/generating theory through practice. Local Environment was born out of this local sustainability mandate from the UN.

In our first Editorial, my co-founder Bob Evans and I wrote:

“However much some would wish it otherwise, the environmental debate is as reflective of social and political inequality, and is as fundamentally conflictual as any other, and there is unlikely to be environmental quality, howsoever measured, without a much greater degree of social equality. This applies both within and between nations, and globally.”

In this we were signaling what we called at the time The New Environmental Agenda – the niche that Local Environment would always occupy: an exploration of the inextricable policy and planning linkages between the simultaneous achievement of environmental quality and human/social equality, or more broadly, between what was then largely environmentally oriented sustainability agenda, and the political project of environmental justice. Our framing of this nexus between the two concepts and their respective social movements developed into the increasingly influential policy and planning goal of just sustainabilities:

“the need to ensure a better quality of life for all, now, and into the future, in a just and equitable manner, whilst living within the limits of supporting ecosystems.”

To achieve the fullest potential of just sustainabilities, four conditions need to be met, not individually, but simultaneously:

1. Improving people’s quality of life and wellbeing;
   2. Meeting the needs of both present and future generations (intra- and intergenerational equity);
   3. Ensuring justice and equity in terms of recognition, process, procedure and outcome;
2. Recognizing ecosystem limits and the need to live within them.

In September 2015, the United Nations Assembly formally adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), superseding the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), to be implemented by 2030. In October 2016, the UN HABITAT III Conference in Quito launched the New Urban Agenda (NUA) which seeks to inform urban policy and practice in the context of global sustainability and resilience. While national governments were responsible for developing and negotiating the NUA objectives, city and local governments will play a focal role in leading their coordination, management implementation.

Both the SDGs and NUA are reflective of, and build on, the four conditions of just sustainabilities, and are therefore central to the mission of Local Environment. Of the 17 SDGs, all fit the concept of just sustainabilities in that they acknowledge the links between environmental quality and human equality; that stopping poverty must be linked with strategies to improve gender equality, people’s health and education, to reduce inequality, and encourage economic growth – at the same time tackling climate change and working to preserve our natural capital.

But if there were one SDG that could be seen as the ‘home’ of Local Environment, it would be the ‘urban goal’, SDG 11 which hailed the NUA. It requires that we “make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”. Clearly, urban policy and planning is critical to the urban goal. It defines an explicitly urban planning target, 11.3: “By 2030, enhance inclusive and sustainable urbanization and capacity for participatory, integrated and sustainable human settlement planning and management in all countries.”

Since the early days, Local Environment has maintained its focus, preceding both the SDGs and the NUA. In our Aims and Scope:

“Our focus is specifically on sustainability planning, policy and politics in relation to theoretical, conceptual and empirical studies at the nexus of equity, justice and the local environment. It is an inclusive forum for diverse constituencies and perspectives to engage in a critical examination, evaluation and discussion of the environmental, social and economic policies, processes and strategies which will be needed in movement towards social justice and sustainability – “Just Sustainabilities” – at local, regional, national and global scales.”

Consequently, the scholarship we have published over the past 24 years, and will continue to publish, is pivotal to tackling the all of the SDGs whilst also shaping the developing NUA.

Julian Agyeman

Editor-in-Chief

Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability

Visit the journal for the latest issue of Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability here or follow the links below to browse some of the journal’s recent OA articles.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13549839.2018.1463978

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13549839.2019.1628730

The imperative to reduce inequalities and leave no one behind infuses all the United Nations Social Development Goals (SDGs), including those with a focus on sexual and reproductive health (SRH). Universal access to SRH services and rights is needed to ensure healthy lives and well-being (SDG 3) and to contribute to gender equality (SDG 5). Achieving SRH and rights for all is also expected to positively impact on sustainable development and the environment and contribute to fairer communities and societies (Ghebreyesus and Kanem 2018). The aspiration is to reach the entire population and, in particular, poor, marginalised and vulnerable populations with comprehensive good quality services as well as to make sure that every individual can exercise “the right to make decisions that govern their bodies, free from stigma, discrimination, and coercion” (Starrs et al 2018, p. 2642).

The policy and programmatic shift required to realise this pledge of universal access to SRH services and rights is, however, significant, since it entails interrogating and addressing the factors that keep uneven social and economic development in place. Here we ponder on the influences that shape and place limits on equality and universal SRH and rights in Southeast Asia and on what it would take to tackle them. We identify three key drivers of disparity and exclusion that contribute to unequal SRH outcomes and demand urgent action if justice in and through sexual and reproductive health is to be achieved: the maldistribution of wealth and wellbeing; entrenched patriarchy; and growing rise of authoritarianism and populism.

Maldistribution of wealth and wellbeing

In recent decades, countries in Southeast Asia have enjoyed economic growth through economic liberalisation and integration in the global economy. This macro-economic success has brought with it significant social and environmental costs and has consistently failed to lead to ‘shared prosperity’ trickling down to the neediest. Disparities across and within countries remain striking, with a recent SDG progress report pointing to Southeast Asia as the only sub-region within Asia Pacific with widening in-country inequalities (UNESCAP 2018).

Although income levels do not necessarily translate into health outcomes, a close correlation exists between them in this region, where the more advantaged countries have significantly better well-being indicators when compared to the less advantaged ones. For instance, in 2017, average life expectancy in Singapore, Brunei Darussalam and Thailand was on average ten years longer than that in Myanmar, Cambodia and Lao PDR (ASEAN 2018). Moreover, sub-national disparities are rife.  Poor people are at a greater risk of dying from preventable diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria and poor women from unwanted pregnancy than their richer counterparts. Across the region, infant and maternal mortality rates are higher in rural areas, especially in remote locations. Similarly, girls living in the countryside – with less education and from poorer households – are more likely to be married or engaged early and at increased risk of early pregnancy, STIs and gender-based violence.

Health divides reveal large inequalities in access to health personnel, equipment and services. Public spending on health remains low, with governments advancing privatisation and marketisation of health care at the cost of public provision. A mix of social health insurance is offered to the poor for limited services. In many countries there exists “a two-tier health care system, with deluxe priority care for the better off and a rump, underfunded public sector for the rest’” (Ormond, Mun and Khoon 2014, p. 3).  Even when national health schemes increase affordability, such as in Thailand, the quality of care offered to lower-income and migrant patients – when they have access – is significantly poorer than that available to their wealthier counterparts.

Privatisation impacts on access to SRH supplies and services, standards of care and SRH outcomes. The cost of reproductive health services in private facilities is generally higher than in public facilities. In low-resource countries such as Laos and Cambodia, their use is prohibitive or implies burdensome, if not catastrophic, out of pocket expenses. Existing universal health care (where available) is no panacea either, as in most countries it only covers basic mother-and-child care. Furthermore, resource allocation frequently ignores groups deemed not to be entitled to SRH services on gender and moral grounds – for example, young people, unmarried women and LGBTIQ persons – leaving them dependent on private practitioners irrespective of their economic status.

Patriarchy and Populism

Patriarchy is entrenched in Southeast Asia even if there is much talk about women’s empowerment and leadership in national plans. Culturally diverse countries subscribe to the same overarching discourse of ‘Asian values’, framing women as subservient to men as household heads, including on sexual and reproductive matters. This social construction of a heteronormative ‘ideal’ continues to be seen as natural despite the growing reality of women-headed, single-person, same sex and separated families and the different roles women have always played at home and in society.

Time and again, governments fail to take into account women’s autonomy, needs and choices. Positions vary from pro-natalist stances for religious or demographic reasons in the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore, to the enforcement of family planning programmes using long-term contraceptives as in Indonesia and Vietnam. Decisions are further entrusted to the couple, if not the male partner, rather than the individual woman. As normative values locate sexuality and reproduction within the family, SRH education and services are not provided to single women and adolescents. The social fear of girls being sexually active and pregnant outside of wedlock contributes to early marriage and lack of educational opportunities. Maternal mortality is a persistent problem with deaths per 100,000 live births as high as 357 in Laos, 305 in Indonesia, 221 in the Philippines, 190 in Myanmar, 180 in Cambodia and an average of 197 regionally in 2015 (ASEAN 2017).

Skewed gender values have also shaped the HIV epidemic and national responses to it, with women largely ignored in prevention efforts when not sex workers. Efforts to control women and their sexuality manifest themselves in a multitude of violent and harmful practices from female genital mutilation, to sex selection. Intimate partner violence is pervasive, and rape continues to be condoned as men’s sexual entitlement (and thus not needing a woman’s consent) and as a ‘deserved’ punishment for deviant women or weapon of war. Most countries have laws to criminalise violence against women, but protection does not extend to unmarried couples and gender and sexual minorities. Nor does it include all forms of violence, such as sexual harassment and marital rape.

The attainment of economic and gender inclusion is even more challenged because of the rise of authoritarianism and of nationalist and religious populism throughout the region. This puts at risk the tenuous progress achieved by women’s groups and civil society in the 1980s and 1990s with the emergence of human-right based discourses and movements stressing women’s rights, SRH rights and, more recently, LBGTQI rights. Democratic forces that at the time seemed to have punctured, at least in parts of Southeast Asia, the dominance of centralised regimes, are experiencing a backlash. Referring back to timeworn justifications of stability, development and traditional values, governments are clamping down with greater intensity on freedom of association, speech and information, and are curtailing civic space. Pressure on civil society and progressive standpoints is further placed by the numerous fundamentalist and nationalist groups that have proliferated in recent years. In such a constraining climate, contestation over SRH and rights, gender equality and sexual diversity is becoming more intense.

Technical Know-how is Not Enough

Considering the regressive trends engulfing the region and the nature of the underlying drivers of inequity in development and SRH and rights, it is reasonable to assume that these cannot be addressed simply by adding investments and technical know-how or expanding access to services.   Instead, they require an approach that champions social change. A paradigm shift is required in the way we approach the SDGs and tackle SRH problems and their underlying causes.  This implies moving: 1) from creating opportunities for the left behind to ‘shared prosperity’ and redistribution across socio-economic groups; 2) from a technical to an empowering approach to addressing patriarchy and heteronormativity; and 3) from a developmental to a political framework for ‘inclusive societies’ to promoting and ensuring basic freedoms and respect of human rights.

More particularly, a more equitable distribution of wealth and wellbeing requires an overhaul of the economic system away from endless growth and consumerism to greater equity and equality. Alternative economic models that aim for “good lives for all within the limits of one planet” (Peck 2013, para 20) require ending perverse subsidies, land reform, community land trusts, unconditional basic incomes, and cap-and-share systems. Fiscal redistribution mechanisms including inheritance and progressive taxes and greater spending on social protection and transfers to the poorest are needed, alongside tax compliance by the rich. For the SDGs not to be perceived as ‘bluewash’, a system reboot of corporate practices beyond public-private partnerships and social corporate responsibility (CSR) will have to occur if business is to become more accountable to society and the environment (Peck 2017).

In the health sector, efforts should be made to challenge the progressive privatisation and commodification of health, reclaiming health as a public and not a private good. Governments need to increase public spending and provide greater regulatory oversight to keep corporate providers in check. New public systems and schemes are required that prioritise care according to need rather than capacity to pay. Prevention and promotion need to be placed at the centre of public health, which implies an allocation of financial and human resources away from treatment and hospital-centred care. In the push for universal health care, gender and socio-economic equity should be consciously built in and comprehensive SRH services should be made a number one priority in health financing and provision.

This implies working to challenge patriarchy in all its manifestations. Policy and programmes need to recognise that women’s empowerment in the public as well as in the domestic sphere is a precondition for attaining SRH and rights.  Too many programmes and interventions are of a technical rather than a transformative nature, shying away from a feminist analysis of the power structures at stake, and settling for some form of paternalist protectionism. Change should also come to development programmes addressing women as yet one more vulnerable group classified together with many other vulnerable groups, even though they make up more than half of humanity. The deconstruction of the entrenched patriarchal-heteronormative paradigm should be a priority for SRH struggles, and more needs to be done to normalise men’s work and role at home, as well as respect for gender and sexual minorities. States across Southeast Asia should be held accountable for the advancement of women beyond the level of rhetoric.

The upholding of women’s SRH and other rights requires a full rejection of ethnic and religious populism, fundamentalism, radicalism and of the politicisation of religion. For each and every one of us, the current global and regional context requires taking a position, breaking the silence and becoming vocal in defence of gender, sexuality, religious and ethnic diversity and human rights.

Moving from a developmental, to a political perspective for inclusive societies, implies reclaiming civic space for alternative voices and action. In all of this work, the SDGs can no longer be framed as apolitical.  Rather, states should be scrutinised and held accountable for their actions towards women, SDG commitments and all of those who are marginalised and ignored (Sriskandarajah 2017).

From this, it may be concluded that a structural approach to bringing justice to and through SRH must address the root causes of social exclusion and promote diversity.  In doing so, it must question the current economic order, patriarchy and other divisive power relations, promote human rights and support civil society. Only through a transformative approach will it be possible to move beyond the rhetoric of SDG aspirations and change society in such a way that indeed no-one is left behind.

****

This article is based on a paper by Rosalia Sciortino entitled Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights for All in Southeast Asia: More than SDGs aspirations,  published in Culture, Health & Sexuality

Rosalia Sciortino is an Associate Professor in the Institute for Population and Social Research (IPSR) at Mahidol University founder and Director of SEA Junction (www.seajunction.org) in Bangkok, Thailand.

 Peter Aggleton holds professorial positions at UNSW Sydney, The Australian National University in Canberra and UCL in London. 

Without a doubt, entrepreneurship is vital to achieving United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 4 and 8. SGD 4 is to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education that promotes lifelong learning opportunities for all. Specifically, SDG target 4.4 aims to substantially increase the number of young persons and adults who have the relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment and decent jobs and entrepreneurship. SDG 8 is meant to promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all. As highlighted in our recent article[1], our initial research shows that entrepreneurial ecosystems are a critical means by which social and economic goals are achieved. Thus, nurturing and promoting vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystems has become an assumed goal of most government and communities globally.  In this paper, an entrepreneurial ecosystem is defined as “a set of interdependent actors and factors coordinated in such a way that they enable productive entrepreneurship within a particular territory”[2].

Silicon Valley is one of the most important locations in the United States of America, associated with a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem, and it did not “grow overnight.” It took about half a century to achieve that status through regional geographic, social, cultural and institutional evolutionary factors.  Several generations of successful companies grew, matured and spread across the world by following the path discovered by entrepreneurs such as Moore and Noyce in the Silicon Valley[3]. The exploits of these pioneers generated a formidable entrepreneurial compounding effect called the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Global companies such as Facebook, Google, and Uber benefited from the compounding effects created by such giants from past generations to grow their businesses.

A similar history was repeated in China. First-generation Chinese technology companies such as Tencent and Alibaba[4] became the indispensable cornerstones for the emergence of the Chinese entrepreneurial ecosystem. Currently, there are an observed increased number of technology start-ups and a rise of new entrepreneurship hubs all over the world, including Tel Aviv, Singapore, London, and Berlin[5].

What makes a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem? Among others, a thriving ecosystem has the following key elements:

1. A dynamic interaction and interdependence between individual actors and communities to “achieve something together that lies beyond and greater than the effective scope and capabilities of any individual actor.” This (un)conscious shared purpose promotes and strengthens resource efficiency.
2. The recognition that internal social constructions and cultural values generate entrepreneurial action, which in turn drive economic development and revitalization at local, regional and state levels.
3. Entrepreneurial ecosystems foster macro-level resilience within the context of entrepreneurial failure, recovery, and transformation. In this regard, failure and recovery become a rite of passage.
4. Resilient, entrepreneurial ecosystems practiced with complexity theory enable businesspeople to practice entrepreneurship sustainably as envisaged in SDGs 4 and 8.

The lessons distilled from the cases cited in the US, Europe and China above are similar to those co-created by the Kwawu people in Ghana. The Kwawu complex, adaptive and resilient entrepreneurial ecosystems consist of eight (8) inter-related elements. These are a durable enabling entrepreneurial culture, learning-by-observing, doing, adopting, adapting, replicating, spiriting and social inclusion. Each of these elements will now be summarized.

Enabling Entrepreneurial Culture: An enabling entrepreneurial culture within this context is the affirmative sense of empowering individuals to become successful entrepreneurs. The community has quality mentors, who are a network of successful entrepreneurs that offer entrepreneurial mentoring. Start-up capital is usually generated within these trusted networks. The entrepreneurial cultural outcomes they cherish include: created wealth, trusting relations, imaginative and inspired thinking, less wastefulness and the ability to “sniff” business opportunities. Even though entrepreneurship is driven by the “self”, the community also value cooperation and collaboration with business associates.

Learning-by-Observing: From childhood, the Kwawu observe the traits, personas, behaviours and mannerisms of their entrepreneurial parents, uncles, aunties, and other close associates and attempt to do likewise later on in life. Factors that encourage the inclination towards developing by observing include:

• The availability of parents and close associations who are seen to be warm, nurturing, and who reward entrepreneurial behaviour.
• Successful entrepreneurs who are wealthy and admired and have high social status.
• Community leaders who inspire entrepreneurial confidence.

Development-by-Doing: “Development-by-doing” is realised through putting observed behaviour into practice to achieve detectable levels of excellence. Development by doing is complemented by coaching from close associates to accomplish a shared agenda of successful entrepreneurial development.

Learning-by-Adopting: This encompasses the informed selection and acceptance of other peoples tested entrepreneurial ethos as theirs. The Kwawus do this by deliberately choosing to embrace the philosophy of self and personal responsibility without abandoning group interactions. They also embrace the ethos of constant and consistent learning from, and packaging themselves after, successful pace setters and the adopting of new technologies, products and service.

Learning-by-Adapting: Developing-by-adapting the way business is done in response to changing business circumstances and environment (for examples, changes in social, political and economic conditions as well as the emergence of new technologies). This sort of development is done to mitigate undesirable impacts of past decisions and business environment and explore new ways of making better decisions and improving outcomes. The adaptation involves cooperation and collaboration with business associates and at both formal and informal gatherings that encourage individual input and self-achievements.

Learning-by-Replication: Replication refers to a situation where tested and established business strategies are tried elsewhere in a new geographical area or a new market, or a new set of customers. Replication often leads to the learners setting up new businesses or trading systems where the ability which has already been acquired is used to set up expanded or new companies.

Learning-by-Spiriting: Spiriting, in this context, connotes dispensing wisdom and “grey hair” services. It is about incarnating one’s self into individuals and the community by descending into the system to give birth to one’s entrepreneurial kind. Spiritors are holders and the embodiment of entrepreneurial wisdom. The most desired future of Spiritors includes valuing and exploiting future socio-economic-environmental ideals, grooming future holders of the vision and collaborating with current vision bearers to build businesses.

Social inclusion: It is the character and atmosphere that holds the elements of entrepreneurship development together. Social inclusion provides the required energy and conditions for mutual sustainability. This is achieved by welcoming, accommodating, nurturing and interacting with many different peoples and cultures (internal and external stakeholders) for mutual benefits and sustainability.

Contributions to sustainable management and development theory and practice 

The model and learning derived from the Kwawu entrepreneurial ecosystem can be used to achieve at least three things:

1. “Absorb” entrepreneurial disturbances such as those caused by the current pandemic, and the system adjusted so that it responds to these disturbances positively.
2. Analyse entrepreneurial interactions and identify business model innovations at local, national and regional levels and craft policy innovations at all levels.
3. Research how competition, cooperation, and collaboration among businesses affect the compound effect and shared value creation.

[1] Anuwa-Amarh, E., Hinske, C., Bamfo-Debrah, N. K., Sefa, D., Amarh, S., & Nassam, S. (2020). 26 The Kwawu resilient entrepreneurial ecosystem s. Sustainable Development and Resource Productivity, 317.

[2] Stam, F. C., & Spigel, B. (2016). Entrepreneurial ecosystems. USE Discussion paper series, 16(13).

[3] Berlin, L. (2010). Robert Noyce, Silicon Valley, and the Teamwork Behind the High-Technology Revolution. OAH Magazine of History, 24(1), 33-36.

[4] Jia, K., Kenney, M., Mattila, J., & Seppala, T. (2018). The application of artificial intelligence at Chinese digital platform giants: Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent. ETLA reports, (81).

[5] Fuerlinger, G., Fandl, U., & Funke, T. (2015). The role of the state in the entrepreneurship ecosystem: insights from Germany. Triple Helix, 2(1), 1-26.

Environmental Hazards: Human and Policy Dimensions is an interdisciplinary and international research journal that addresses the human and policy dimensions of hazards. As is well-known, the journal addresses the full range of hazardous events, from extreme geological, hydrological, atmospheric and biological events, such as earthquakes, floods, storms and epidemics, to technological failures and malfunctions, such as industrial explosions, fires and toxic material releases.

With a genuinely international perspective, we are able to highlight issues of human exposure, vulnerability, awareness, response and risk. The role of hazards in affecting development, and issues of efficiency, social justice and sustainability are also explored in the journal. Well-known conventional hazards receive extensive coverage, but so do new forms of hazard, emerging risk management institutions and restructuring of ideas about hazards, including their role in human affairs.

Important to ideas, policies and practices regarding hazard reduction globally in this context has been the development of the UN SDGs. These set targets for specific goals and their objectives, and the relationship with hazards and hazard reduction is easily appreciated. Almost all 17 of the goals are relevant to research on environmental hazards, but some are perhaps more relevant than others. Thus, SDG 1 (No Poverty), SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 3 (Good Health and Wellbeing) and SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation) directly relate to our concern for hazard victims, where these are serious threats to communities during and after hazard events. We take increasingly seriously the distributional and related issues, such as SDG 5 (Gender Equality) and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequality).

Governance-related issues also feature strongly in our publication record, reflecting and reinforcing Goals such as SDG 16 (Peace and Justice Strong Institutions) and SDG 17 (Partnerships to Achieve the Goal). More contextual but no less important are SDG 13 (Climate Action), SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) and SDG 15 (Life on Land). What the journal seeks to do, taking an international perspective, is to link particular circumstances in a range of places to modern ideas, including in the SDGs, about hazard exposure, vulnerability reduction and the promotion of community resilience. The SDGs provide a challenging backdrop to that effort, and it is likely in future that more papers will be accepted that explicitly address the relationship between these goals and particular hazards in specific locations. This is not something that we require but will be useful as a way of monitoring the development of ideas and practices with respect to these Goals, and their evolution over time.

Visit the journal for the latest issue of Environmental Hazards: Human and Policy Dimensions here or follow the links below to browse some of the journal’s recent OA articles.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17477891.2021.1912694?src=

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17477891.2021.1898926?src=

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17477891.2020.1771250?src=

By Katrin Kohl & Charles Hopkins, York University, Canada

SDG 4 Quality Education

“I am off to school, see you later!” she shouts, turns her computer on and closes the door. Many families have become used to the new routine of remote learning in 2020. At the height of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, over 80 % of the world´s students from more than 170 countries[1] were at home and often only returned briefly to the physical space of school at the beginning of the academic year 2020/21. Students in 40 countries found themselves back at learning remotely in early 2021.

Children and youth in primary and secondary education adapted to a new reality where access to the internet with the technical infrastructure available for teachers and students to offer and participate in remote learning became crucial. Higher education teachers and students similarly pivoted to remote learning and developed new ways of teaching and studying.

For many, this new way of remote learning has become a Next Normal[2], yet it is a world of extremes. We are facing enormous opportunity, but exclusion at the same time. UNESCO states that approximately half of the world´s students, most of them from the poorer countries[3], did not have access to remote learning activities in 2020. While this number exposed a dire need to create equitable access for all, many government started to improve their infrastructure for students to secure the path towards quality education as stated in SDG 4 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

There is momentum to think outside the box when building the necessary learning infrastructure and further developing the concepts of remote learning. Quality Education as called for by the United Nations is both a singular goal but also a key enabler of all of the other SDGs[4]. At the core of such quality education are the guiding principles of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and global citizenship. Both concepts refer to ways of empowering learners with knowledge, skills, values and attitudes to take informed decisions and become engaged citizens to promote sustainable development[5]. Expanding the classroom through learning together in local and global communities can help to build human connections that create partnership between people for the planet.

Remote learning has come to stay. Many school systems will integrate remote learning into their long-term portfolio to serve in times of short-term interruptions or as a new stream of learning for those students who have come to prefer or thrive in the virtual classroom. With ESD and global citizenship properly integrated into these new opportunities, remote learning can achieve more than being just another form of delivering the curriculum.

As higher education has demonstrated in the last year, teaching and learning can overcome borders and – despite the lack of in-person interaction and hands-on learning – still create valuable experience. Since international students could not travel, they joined programmes in other countries, time zones and languages online. Concepts, such as Collaborative Online Intercultural Learning (COIL)[6] or Globally Networked Learning (GNL)[7], showed the positive impact of students from different regions, languages and backgrounds, continuously learning together.

With primary and secondary education also arriving in the virtual space, there is opportunity to connect schools in similar ways and broadening learning horizons by overcoming borders. Primary and secondary school students can now not only connect to students in other regions but even (partially) participate in an education outside of their current country of residence. Several levels of educating children and youth in more connected ways could be imagined, such as:

1. Learning opportunities for specific subjects or themes through remote learning: language learning, learning about history of a region, arts and culture education.
2. Learning opportunities with cross-curriculum and cross-region teaching: curricula themes, relevant to both regions, could be taught in a partner approach of teachers and in mixed student groups.
3. Remotely attending a school in a different region: If comprehensive remote teaching is offered in school systems, it is an option for students to participate in a complete education programme outside their own region.

Global school networks could provide a basis for connecting schools to each other, e.g. the UNESCO-associated schools network (ASPnet)[8], comprised of more than 11,000 schools in 180 countries. Such networks already follow common objectives, while content and delivery could be contextualized in each region.

However, there are considerable challenges to overcome, such as the languages of instruction, time zones, cultural differences, current laws that require students to attend school in their country of residence or financing schooling for out-of-country students etc.

Yet, schooling beyond borders might be a new way of addressing quality education in a global effort. Further access to schooling could be provided for students in countries where resources are insufficient for all or schooling is interrupted due to environmental, economic or social reasons. Countries that base their national development on immigration could offer remote primary and secondary schooling for children of future immigrants. Vice versa, emigrants could still participate in schooling of their country of origin to understand and maintain their native language, heritage and culture.

An education that would connect people, provide knowledge and global perspectives could enhance the critical thinking of those who participate in these opportunities. We all understand that sustainable change needs more than just knowledge about facts. Schooling that brings together learners from various backgrounds could lead to an emotional exposure and newly found compassion for the other. This transformative learning experience, inherent in ESD and global citizenship, could bring forward the future leaders that make the difference and help creating the sustainable future we all hope for.

[1] https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[2] https://en.unesco.org/news/unescos-next-normal-campaign [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[3] https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000374561 [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[4] https://undocs.org/en/A/RES/74/223 [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[5] https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000374802 [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[6] https://coil.suny.edu/ [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[7] https://yorkinternational.yorku.ca/gnl-2/ [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

[8] https://aspnet.unesco.org/en-us/Pages/default.aspx [Accessed 31 Mar. 2021]

Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability was first published in spring 1996, in the heady post-1992 UN World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) days. After this ‘Rio Earth Summit’, Local governments in the UK and around the world were literally scrambling to understand the policy and planning implications of Local Agenda 21, and both academics and practitioners realized there was a need to collaborate in new and creative ways, turning theory into practice, and improving/generating theory through practice. Local Environment was born out of this local sustainability mandate from the UN.

In our first Editorial, my co-founder Bob Evans and I wrote:

“However much some would wish it otherwise, the environmental debate is as reflective of social and political inequality, and is as fundamentally conflictual as any other, and there is unlikely to be environmental quality, howsoever measured, without a much greater degree of social equality. This applies both within and between nations, and globally.”

In this we were signaling what we called at the time The New Environmental Agenda – the niche that Local Environment would always occupy: an exploration of the inextricable policy and planning linkages between the simultaneous achievement of environmental quality and human/social equality, or more broadly, between what was then largely environmentally oriented sustainability agenda, and the political project of environmental justice. Our framing of this nexus between the two concepts and their respective social movements developed into the increasingly influential policy and planning goal of just sustainabilities:

“the need to ensure a better quality of life for all, now, and into the future, in a just and equitable manner, whilst living within the limits of supporting ecosystems.”

To achieve the fullest potential of just sustainabilities, four conditions need to be met, not individually, but simultaneously:

1. Improving people’s quality of life and wellbeing;
   2. Meeting the needs of both present and future generations (intra- and intergenerational equity);
   3. Ensuring justice and equity in terms of recognition, process, procedure and outcome;
2. Recognizing ecosystem limits and the need to live within them.

In September 2015, the United Nations Assembly formally adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), superseding the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), to be implemented by 2030. In October 2016, the UN HABITAT III Conference in Quito launched the New Urban Agenda (NUA) which seeks to inform urban policy and practice in the context of global sustainability and resilience. While national governments were responsible for developing and negotiating the NUA objectives, city and local governments will play a focal role in leading their coordination, management implementation.

Both the SDGs and NUA are reflective of, and build on, the four conditions of just sustainabilities, and are therefore central to the mission of Local Environment. Of the 17 SDGs, all fit the concept of just sustainabilities in that they acknowledge the links between environmental quality and human equality; that stopping poverty must be linked with strategies to improve gender equality, people’s health and education, to reduce inequality, and encourage economic growth – at the same time tackling climate change and working to preserve our natural capital.

But if there were one SDG that could be seen as the ‘home’ of Local Environment, it would be the ‘urban goal’, SDG 11 which hailed the NUA. It requires that we “make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”. Clearly, urban policy and planning is critical to the urban goal. It defines an explicitly urban planning target, 11.3: “By 2030, enhance inclusive and sustainable urbanization and capacity for participatory, integrated and sustainable human settlement planning and management in all countries.”

Since the early days, Local Environment has maintained its focus, preceding both the SDGs and the NUA. In our Aims and Scope:

“Our focus is specifically on sustainability planning, policy and politics in relation to theoretical, conceptual and empirical studies at the nexus of equity, justice and the local environment. It is an inclusive forum for diverse constituencies and perspectives to engage in a critical examination, evaluation and discussion of the environmental, social and economic policies, processes and strategies which will be needed in movement towards social justice and sustainability – “Just Sustainabilities” – at local, regional, national and global scales.”

Consequently, the scholarship we have published over the past 24 years, and will continue to publish, is pivotal to tackling the all of the SDGs whilst also shaping the developing NUA.

Julian Agyeman

Editor-in-Chief

Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability

Visit the journal for the latest issue of Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability here or follow the links below to browse some of the journal’s recent OA articles.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13549839.2018.1463978

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13549839.2019.1628730

The imperative to reduce inequalities and leave no one behind infuses all the United Nations Social Development Goals (SDGs), including those with a focus on sexual and reproductive health (SRH). Universal access to SRH services and rights is needed to ensure healthy lives and well-being (SDG 3) and to contribute to gender equality (SDG 5). Achieving SRH and rights for all is also expected to positively impact on sustainable development and the environment and contribute to fairer communities and societies (Ghebreyesus and Kanem 2018). The aspiration is to reach the entire population and, in particular, poor, marginalised and vulnerable populations with comprehensive good quality services as well as to make sure that every individual can exercise “the right to make decisions that govern their bodies, free from stigma, discrimination, and coercion” (Starrs et al 2018, p. 2642).

The policy and programmatic shift required to realise this pledge of universal access to SRH services and rights is, however, significant, since it entails interrogating and addressing the factors that keep uneven social and economic development in place. Here we ponder on the influences that shape and place limits on equality and universal SRH and rights in Southeast Asia and on what it would take to tackle them. We identify three key drivers of disparity and exclusion that contribute to unequal SRH outcomes and demand urgent action if justice in and through sexual and reproductive health is to be achieved: the maldistribution of wealth and wellbeing; entrenched patriarchy; and growing rise of authoritarianism and populism.

Maldistribution of wealth and wellbeing

In recent decades, countries in Southeast Asia have enjoyed economic growth through economic liberalisation and integration in the global economy. This macro-economic success has brought with it significant social and environmental costs and has consistently failed to lead to ‘shared prosperity’ trickling down to the neediest. Disparities across and within countries remain striking, with a recent SDG progress report pointing to Southeast Asia as the only sub-region within Asia Pacific with widening in-country inequalities (UNESCAP 2018).

Although income levels do not necessarily translate into health outcomes, a close correlation exists between them in this region, where the more advantaged countries have significantly better well-being indicators when compared to the less advantaged ones. For instance, in 2017, average life expectancy in Singapore, Brunei Darussalam and Thailand was on average ten years longer than that in Myanmar, Cambodia and Lao PDR (ASEAN 2018). Moreover, sub-national disparities are rife.  Poor people are at a greater risk of dying from preventable diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria and poor women from unwanted pregnancy than their richer counterparts. Across the region, infant and maternal mortality rates are higher in rural areas, especially in remote locations. Similarly, girls living in the countryside – with less education and from poorer households – are more likely to be married or engaged early and at increased risk of early pregnancy, STIs and gender-based violence.

Health divides reveal large inequalities in access to health personnel, equipment and services. Public spending on health remains low, with governments advancing privatisation and marketisation of health care at the cost of public provision. A mix of social health insurance is offered to the poor for limited services. In many countries there exists “a two-tier health care system, with deluxe priority care for the better off and a rump, underfunded public sector for the rest’” (Ormond, Mun and Khoon 2014, p. 3).  Even when national health schemes increase affordability, such as in Thailand, the quality of care offered to lower-income and migrant patients – when they have access – is significantly poorer than that available to their wealthier counterparts.

Privatisation impacts on access to SRH supplies and services, standards of care and SRH outcomes. The cost of reproductive health services in private facilities is generally higher than in public facilities. In low-resource countries such as Laos and Cambodia, their use is prohibitive or implies burdensome, if not catastrophic, out of pocket expenses. Existing universal health care (where available) is no panacea either, as in most countries it only covers basic mother-and-child care. Furthermore, resource allocation frequently ignores groups deemed not to be entitled to SRH services on gender and moral grounds – for example, young people, unmarried women and LGBTIQ persons – leaving them dependent on private practitioners irrespective of their economic status.

Patriarchy and Populism

Patriarchy is entrenched in Southeast Asia even if there is much talk about women’s empowerment and leadership in national plans. Culturally diverse countries subscribe to the same overarching discourse of ‘Asian values’, framing women as subservient to men as household heads, including on sexual and reproductive matters. This social construction of a heteronormative ‘ideal’ continues to be seen as natural despite the growing reality of women-headed, single-person, same sex and separated families and the different roles women have always played at home and in society.

Time and again, governments fail to take into account women’s autonomy, needs and choices. Positions vary from pro-natalist stances for religious or demographic reasons in the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore, to the enforcement of family planning programmes using long-term contraceptives as in Indonesia and Vietnam. Decisions are further entrusted to the couple, if not the male partner, rather than the individual woman. As normative values locate sexuality and reproduction within the family, SRH education and services are not provided to single women and adolescents. The social fear of girls being sexually active and pregnant outside of wedlock contributes to early marriage and lack of educational opportunities. Maternal mortality is a persistent problem with deaths per 100,000 live births as high as 357 in Laos, 305 in Indonesia, 221 in the Philippines, 190 in Myanmar, 180 in Cambodia and an average of 197 regionally in 2015 (ASEAN 2017).

Skewed gender values have also shaped the HIV epidemic and national responses to it, with women largely ignored in prevention efforts when not sex workers. Efforts to control women and their sexuality manifest themselves in a multitude of violent and harmful practices from female genital mutilation, to sex selection. Intimate partner violence is pervasive, and rape continues to be condoned as men’s sexual entitlement (and thus not needing a woman’s consent) and as a ‘deserved’ punishment for deviant women or weapon of war. Most countries have laws to criminalise violence against women, but protection does not extend to unmarried couples and gender and sexual minorities. Nor does it include all forms of violence, such as sexual harassment and marital rape.

The attainment of economic and gender inclusion is even more challenged because of the rise of authoritarianism and of nationalist and religious populism throughout the region. This puts at risk the tenuous progress achieved by women’s groups and civil society in the 1980s and 1990s with the emergence of human-right based discourses and movements stressing women’s rights, SRH rights and, more recently, LBGTQI rights. Democratic forces that at the time seemed to have punctured, at least in parts of Southeast Asia, the dominance of centralised regimes, are experiencing a backlash. Referring back to timeworn justifications of stability, development and traditional values, governments are clamping down with greater intensity on freedom of association, speech and information, and are curtailing civic space. Pressure on civil society and progressive standpoints is further placed by the numerous fundamentalist and nationalist groups that have proliferated in recent years. In such a constraining climate, contestation over SRH and rights, gender equality and sexual diversity is becoming more intense.

Technical Know-how is Not Enough

Considering the regressive trends engulfing the region and the nature of the underlying drivers of inequity in development and SRH and rights, it is reasonable to assume that these cannot be addressed simply by adding investments and technical know-how or expanding access to services.   Instead, they require an approach that champions social change. A paradigm shift is required in the way we approach the SDGs and tackle SRH problems and their underlying causes.  This implies moving: 1) from creating opportunities for the left behind to ‘shared prosperity’ and redistribution across socio-economic groups; 2) from a technical to an empowering approach to addressing patriarchy and heteronormativity; and 3) from a developmental to a political framework for ‘inclusive societies’ to promoting and ensuring basic freedoms and respect of human rights.

More particularly, a more equitable distribution of wealth and wellbeing requires an overhaul of the economic system away from endless growth and consumerism to greater equity and equality. Alternative economic models that aim for “good lives for all within the limits of one planet” (Peck 2013, para 20) require ending perverse subsidies, land reform, community land trusts, unconditional basic incomes, and cap-and-share systems. Fiscal redistribution mechanisms including inheritance and progressive taxes and greater spending on social protection and transfers to the poorest are needed, alongside tax compliance by the rich. For the SDGs not to be perceived as ‘bluewash’, a system reboot of corporate practices beyond public-private partnerships and social corporate responsibility (CSR) will have to occur if business is to become more accountable to society and the environment (Peck 2017).

In the health sector, efforts should be made to challenge the progressive privatisation and commodification of health, reclaiming health as a public and not a private good. Governments need to increase public spending and provide greater regulatory oversight to keep corporate providers in check. New public systems and schemes are required that prioritise care according to need rather than capacity to pay. Prevention and promotion need to be placed at the centre of public health, which implies an allocation of financial and human resources away from treatment and hospital-centred care. In the push for universal health care, gender and socio-economic equity should be consciously built in and comprehensive SRH services should be made a number one priority in health financing and provision.

This implies working to challenge patriarchy in all its manifestations. Policy and programmes need to recognise that women’s empowerment in the public as well as in the domestic sphere is a precondition for attaining SRH and rights.  Too many programmes and interventions are of a technical rather than a transformative nature, shying away from a feminist analysis of the power structures at stake, and settling for some form of paternalist protectionism. Change should also come to development programmes addressing women as yet one more vulnerable group classified together with many other vulnerable groups, even though they make up more than half of humanity. The deconstruction of the entrenched patriarchal-heteronormative paradigm should be a priority for SRH struggles, and more needs to be done to normalise men’s work and role at home, as well as respect for gender and sexual minorities. States across Southeast Asia should be held accountable for the advancement of women beyond the level of rhetoric.

The upholding of women’s SRH and other rights requires a full rejection of ethnic and religious populism, fundamentalism, radicalism and of the politicisation of religion. For each and every one of us, the current global and regional context requires taking a position, breaking the silence and becoming vocal in defence of gender, sexuality, religious and ethnic diversity and human rights.

Moving from a developmental, to a political perspective for inclusive societies, implies reclaiming civic space for alternative voices and action. In all of this work, the SDGs can no longer be framed as apolitical.  Rather, states should be scrutinised and held accountable for their actions towards women, SDG commitments and all of those who are marginalised and ignored (Sriskandarajah 2017).

From this, it may be concluded that a structural approach to bringing justice to and through SRH must address the root causes of social exclusion and promote diversity.  In doing so, it must question the current economic order, patriarchy and other divisive power relations, promote human rights and support civil society. Only through a transformative approach will it be possible to move beyond the rhetoric of SDG aspirations and change society in such a way that indeed no-one is left behind.

****

This article is based on a paper by Rosalia Sciortino entitled Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights for All in Southeast Asia: More than SDGs aspirations,  published in Culture, Health & Sexuality

Rosalia Sciortino is an Associate Professor in the Institute for Population and Social Research (IPSR) at Mahidol University founder and Director of SEA Junction (www.seajunction.org) in Bangkok, Thailand.

 Peter Aggleton holds professorial positions at UNSW Sydney, The Australian National University in Canberra and UCL in London.