Tag Archives: UN 2030 Agenda

10 Things in Our Common Agenda

 Our Common Agenda is the United Nations’ Secretary-General’s response to the Declaration made by Member States on the UN’s 75th Anniversary in 2020. It marks an important step from defining priorities to defining concrete actions that can strengthen both the UN, and broader efforts to achieve its objectives.

It complements key existing texts, not least the 2030 Agenda and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals, both by highlighting areas where there is a particular need for action, and proposing ways of ensuring that countries, together, can promote development more effectively.

The Agenda both has implications for libraries, and creates opportunities to underline how our institutions and profession contribute to global policy goals. As decisions are taken, and more detailed plans are put in place, there should be chances to contribute experience and perspectives, and seek recognition for our work.

IFLA has produced a briefing on Our Common Agenda that sets out in more detail the ideas and issues it covers. In this blog, we highlight ten key points that are relevant to libraries. You can draw on these points in your own engagement with local UN offices, or even in your advocacy, given how much support the Agenda offers for many library priorities:

 1) Renewing the social contract: Our Common Agenda emphasises the idea of a new social contract – a set of shared rules and values that provide a basis for government, and for relations between members of society. This, the report argues, needs to be founded on respect for rights (and access to justice), and on solidarity between the more and less fortunate. Crucially, such a social contract should offer a basis for quality public services.

Arguably, libraries (public and national libraries in particular) are part of such a social contract, provided by governments in order to provide opportunities for all to realise their rights, and their potential.

2) Combatting the infodemic: The report makes addressing the infodemic – the spread of misinformation – into a major priority, not just as concerns health, but across the board. It calls for steps both to ensure stronger scientific inputs into policy making, but also a code of conduct on the integrity of public information. There is blunt language about politicians and others who spread false information, with the Secretary General calling for it to be clear that it is wrong to lie.

For libraries, a greater focus on quality information and use of evidence vindicates the role of our profession, and will hopefully create new opportunities to ensure that this is recognised by decision-makers.

3) Universal connectivity: the Secretary General has also made universal internet connectivity a key part of Our Common Agenda, recognising how vital this is both for access to public services, and to wider economic, social and cultural opportunities. Connecting schools represents a particular priority, with more effective digital taxation seen as a way of paying for it.

Libraries have a long-standing, recognised role in supporting public access to the internet, as a stepping stone towards private access, or as a complement to it. It will be important to work to ensure that libraries are included in initiatives taking place under this heading.

4) Protecting rights, online and off: the report reiterates how central respect for human rights should be to all that governments do, echoing the 2030 Agenda. In particular, it calls for a Global Digital Compact, in order to find solutions to the challenges created by the behaviour of private and public actors alike. In particular, it warns about the impact of internet shutdowns, as well as more targeted blocking or filtering of content.

The need for the internet to work in support of human rights is a long-standing priority for libraries, and we bring important insights and perspectives. Libraries can also be key players in more community-based initiatives around information and connectivity, such as community networks or local archives.  

5) Thinking to the future: a large segment of the report is dedicated to making the future more present in policy discussions taking place today. One way of doing this is through intensifying work to draw on evidence and expert viewpoints in order to identify what the years to come could look like. In addition to doing this more at the UN itself, Our Common Agenda also advocates for boosting listening exercises, as well as those focused on envisioning the future.

Libraries are not only crucial players in ensuring that decision-makers have the information needed to think about the future, but can be important venues for involving communities in collective reflection. In many cases, public libraries already fulfil this function, giving an opportunity to share good practices and spread them further.

 6) Literacy matters: a further step in order better to integrate the future into present planning is by focusing on children, and giving everyone a better start in life. A key element of this is universal basic literacy, with it clear that many schools still don’t have the resources needed to provide this, even if children are able to attend. The answer will need to be a new drive to deliver skills, including through better focusing of aid budgets.

Globally, libraries have a key role in promoting literacy, both within schools and wider communities, that is often recognised in national literacy and reading strategies. It will be important now both to ensure that this is reflected at the global level, and to see how we can increase the impact of libraries’ work in this area.

7) A universal entitlement to lifelong learning: Our Common Agenda’s emphasis on education is not limited to children, but also recognises the situation and needs of adults faced with a world and employment market for which their previous education and experience may not have prepared them. Yet lifelong learning is too often under-supported compared with other policy areas – this needs to be corrected if everyone is to be able to play their part in sustainable development.

Libraries are both providers of, and portals to lifelong learning opportunities. We have a strong interest then both in promoting the idea of a universal entitlement as a goal, and contributing to efforts to define how it is delivered.  

 8) A more networked multilateralism: Our Common Agenda underlines that for success in delivering the goals of the United Nations, not least the Sustainable Development Goals, a full range of actors needs to be involved, including business, academics and civil society. Crucially, development cannot just be a top-down thing, but needs to mobilise different strengths and capabilities.

Beyond the work of library associations in engaging with discussions around implementation of the SDGs, this priority may support efforts to promote models of SDG delivery that mobilise libraries more effectively, drawing on their strengths in terms of collections, spaces and staff.

 9) Dedicated focal points for civil society: As part of the drive to ensure stronger participation of different stakeholders in delivering on policy goals, Our Common Agenda includes proposed steps to make it easier for civil society organisations to engage with UN agencies. A key one is the suggestion to name dedicated focal points who can organise opportunities to input, and make it easier to find out how to get involved.

For library associations, as civil society organisations, this development would be a helpful one, especially in more specialised or regional UN agencies. Once these are identified, it will be possible to focus advocacy more effectively, through understanding better what is possible.

10) The role of parliaments and local and regional governments: as part of its emphasis on the need to work with a wider range of stakeholders, the report highlights in particular the need to work more with Parliaments and regional governments, both of which have key roles, respectively, in designing and scrutinising policy, and in taking many of the actions needed to achieve development.

Libraries and research services have a particularly essential role in helping parliaments to do their jobs, while local and regional governments often have libraries under their direct responsibility, making them more aware of what our institutions can achieve. The focus on parliaments and local and regional governments offers new possibilities to demonstrate, and advocate for, the importance of libraries.

Libraries Delivering SDG Successes, Even Under COVID-19

The Sustainable Development Goals, and the wider 2030 Agenda that contains them, already represent an ambitious – but necessary – roadmap for a richer, fairer, more sustainable world.

2020 was already supposed to mark the beginning of the Decade of Action – a renewed, reinforced focus on the sorts of concerted efforts needed to succeed.

Of course, 2020 also turned out to be the year of COVID-19, obliging people and governments alike to focus efforts on limiting the spread of the disease, and dealing with its consequences.

As the United Nations Secretary General, Antonio Gutteres pointed out back in July, COVID has both made achieving the Global Goals harder, and underlined why success is nonetheless so necessary.

With governments facing a steeper hill to climb than before when it comes to delivering on the SDGs, the need to draw on what libraries can contribute is as strong as ever. Fortunately, libraries have shown themselves up to the task.

Drawing on the examples collected by IFLA from libraries across the world, throughout the pandemic, this blog offers an overview of how our institutions are showing their value on each of the 17 SDGs.

SDG 1 – No Poverty: the pandemic risks seeing major jumps in the numbers of people facing extreme poverty, with loss of access to housing or basic services. Libraries have looked to counter this, with, for example, libraries in Kansas making laptops and WiFi hotspots available to the local homeless shelter, while those in Toledo, Ohio donating vehicles, and those in Edmonton, Canada, other equipment, in order to ensure that poverty does not mean exclusion.

SDG 2 – Zero Hunger: increased poverty all too often means food insecurity, even in wealthier countries. In response, public libraries in Toronto, Canada, have started to host food banks, while those in Yarra and Monash, Australia are supporting food deliveries. READ centres in Nepal are also engaged in providing food rations.

SDG 3 – Good Health and Wellbeing: while the pandemic has primarily been a physical health crisis, it has clearly also brought significant negative consequences for mental health and wellbeing. Libraires have addressed both, for example helping to share information about COVID-19 (including in local languages, in the case of Kibera and Nakuru public libraries in Kenya, and through the National Library Authority of Ghana), and supporting wider research and decision-making, for example at the national level in Brazil, and at the WHO itself.

To improve mental health, the library in Kota, India, has promoted bibliotherapy, libraries in China have engaged closely with users, while the National Library of Medicine in the US has promoted collections on wellbeing and dealing with stress. Libraries have also been involved in direct pandemic response, for example helping with contact tracing in Ireland and San Francisco, and with wider health work by promoting continued vaccination programmes in Nepal.

SDG 4 – Quality Education: UNESCO has underlined the risk of the pandemic becoming an education crisis. With libraries a key part of the infrastructure in almost every country for both formal, and informal and non-formal learning, much of the library response to COVID-19 has therefore been about how to allow education to continue. We have seen school libraries in Portugal, Uruguay, Brazil and Bhutan develop platforms and tools, while National Libraries in France, Spain and Trinidad and Tobago have also created packages and materials to support home learning, while the National Library of Jamaica has worked to help students pass their final exams. Library teaching – for example around information literacy and research skills, has been brought online, for example in Bangladesh. Further examples are available in our blog for World Teachers Day.

SDG 5 – Gender Equality: as highlighted in the Gates Foundation’s Goalkeepers Report, the pandemic risks representing a setback in efforts to promote gender equality. With libraries often acting as a force for equality by providing services without barriers, much of what they do helps counter this risk. In particular, we have seen work by libraries in Brazil to gather and present information that supports women’s health during the pandemic.

SDG 6 – Clean Water and Sanitation: while libraries are primarily about providing access to information, their role as community centres and neutral spaces mean that they can also become essential point for delivering other basic services, such as sanitation during COVID-19, even when buildings are closed. For example, South Pasadena library in Colorado set up a portable toilet and handwashing station in its carpark, while Richland Library, South Carolina, has shared its hand sanitised stations with the local homeless shelter.

SDG 7 – Affordable and Clean Energy: similarly to sanitation, while providing access to energy may not be a primary goal of libraries, the fact of libraries being community spaces means that they can be very well placed to offer this. During the pandemic, recognising the challenges that some students may have with electricity bills and access, libraries at Arizona State University have therefore prioritised access to device-charging facilities as part of its re-opening plans.

SDG 8 – Decent Work and Economic Growth: In addition to the education crisis highlighted under SDG4, the pandemic risks also becoming an employment crisis, with businesses suffering and jobs being lost. Even with the doors closed, libraries have therefore been helping people apply for unemployment benefits, for example in Miami-Dade and Hilsborough County in the US, while libraries in Greece have widened access to job-search support, and those in Ferguson, CT in the US are helping people develop new business ideas.

SDG 9 – Industry, Infrastructure and Innovation: the pandemic has underlined clearly both the importance of innovation (in finding treatments and cures, and new ways of doing things under changed circumstances), and of digital infrastructure. Again, libraries have been active, for example prioritising computer and internet access for those without this at home in the UK and Sweden, and many examples of leaving library WiFi on in the US. Meanwhile, libraries have continued to deliver on their core mission to support innovation through providing access to existing knowledge, for example in Iraq and many other places.

SDG 10 – Reduced Inequalities: as highlighted above, the pandemic has hit some harder than others, with growing concerns that the deepening of divides in society may be lasting. Libraries, given their mission to promote equality through ensuring that everyone has access to education, research and culture, play a core role in the response. Among groups at risk of marginalisation, children who are speakers of minority languages have benefitted from storytimes in the US and Australia, while older people have been able to develop the skills needed for digital inclusion in South Africa thanks to a video competition run by Johannesburg libraries. As libraries start to reopen, many have paid particular attention to the needs of vulnerable groups by prioritising them in service provision, as in the UK.

SDG 11 – Sustainable Cities and Communities: even libraries have been obliged to limit access to spaces which had become important meeting places pre-pandemic, new ways of engaging and supporting communities have emerged. Those who rely particularly on libraries for human contact and interaction have benefitted from active outreach by libraries to their users, for example in New Zealand and Canada.

SDG11 also covers the importance of safeguarding heritage. Faced with difficulties in  carrying out in-person conservation work, libraries in Australia and France have prepared guides on how best to proceed. Meanwhile, they are also busy safeguarding the heritage of tomorrow by collecting materials that witness to experiences today, as set out in our blog from May, with examples from the US, Spain, Cameroon and many others.

SDG 12 – Sustainable Consumption and Production: for many, the pandemic has underlined the value and importance of living more sustainably, avoiding behaviours which tend to accelerate the development and spread of diseases. It also represents an opportunity to stop, think, and change ways of doing things. Libraries have kept up with these wider trends during the pandemic, not least with IFLA’s own Special Interest Group on Environment, Sustainability and Libraries graduating to become a full Section, and a renewed focus in the New York Library Association on how to promote sustainability in library operations.

SDG 13 – Climate Action: while we can hope to find ways to treat and prevent COVID-19 in the coming months, climate change will require a much longer term response. In a year’s time, COP26 will offer an opportunity for governments to set out their own commitments. Libraries, are, of course, already committed to this, with the American Library Association, in the middle of the pandemic, launching programming grants to help libraries address the climate crisis.

SDG 14 – Life Below Water: As with climate change, ensuring the health of our oceans and the sustainability of the life that exists there is an ongoing priority – it is vital not to slow efforts around conservation and research. For example, libraries at the University of Washington in the US serving the oceanography department have made special efforts to maintain services in order to ensure that students and researchers can continue their vital work.

SDG 15 – Life on Land: just as in the case of SDG 14, libraries have an ongoing role in supporting research that in turn helps improve knowledge about how to farm and manage the land sustainably. Libraries, however, are also helping people to connect better to nature during the pandemic – for example in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where libraries have produced a booklet with suggestions of activities for readers.

SDG 16 – Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions: the pandemic has underlined the importance of governments that work effectively and transparently in order to respond, as well as of legislatures than can oversee their work. IFLA has published the results of a survey on how parliamentary libraries are helping to make this happen, while libraries in Nepal have helped raise up information about the situation on the ground to help wider government decision-making. Libraries in Indonesia, meanwhile, have sought to help improve the effectiveness of governance issues by summarising relevant laws and regulations for the benefit of citizens.

SDG 17 – Partnerships for the Goals: This SDG covers a wide range of issues, including access to knowledge across borders and digital skills, both of which have proved their importance during the pandemic. A key contribution here has been the work of the American National Library of Medicine in creating an open database for use by scientists around the world. Meanwhile, libraries globally have been sharing their skills in information literacy, for example in Mexico and Bangladesh, while in Kuwait, libraries have been leading research to understand how information spreads and is used by people at the time of pandemic. Libraries in Spain and the UK have been finding ways to offer training in using digital skills online, helping to promote inclusion for all.

Open Access Week 2020: Libraries continue to support equity and inclusion

From 19th to 25th of October 2020, Open Access Week focuses on taking action to build structural equity and inclusion. These principles, a core value of the library field, need to be supported by policies and capacity-building efforts in order to become reality.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, libraries have faced restrictions due to the closure of their facilities, preventing access to legally accessed and paid-for resources such as scientific articles, books, newspapers, textbooks, and additional educational resources to their users. Due to an inadequate copyright framework, libraries in many countries are prevented from, or faced with legal uncertainty in, giving digital access to copies of legally acquired books or legal uncertainties.

This situation reinforces structural inequalities which disadvantage citizens who are not in a position to buy a book to pursue their studies.

This is however not a situation limited to the time of the pandemic. Library facilities are not equally accessible to all citizens. Users can struggle because of the lack of libraries infrastructure in their district, in their city or because they need to access a specific resource which is in a specialized library in another city, another region or another country.

The knowledge is out there but not always accessible to them.

How can libraries continue to support an access to information and to scientific resources to support their users to benefit from all scientific articles in their field notwithstanding their locations and means?

How can libraries continue to provide access to educational contents (e.g. textbooks, articles) to all their students and users without financial barriers, and give students with lower incomes with the best possible resources and environment?

Clearly one response to this is meaningful copyright reform. However, a parallel approach is to ensure that the restrictions often associated with copyright do not apply in the first place.
Open Access and Open Science approaches more broadly do this, and in doing so aim at providing a better access to resources no matter where you are or your means to access them. They are based on the idea that no research should be dependent on funds to access relevant scientific articles. Users should not be asked to travel to access resources physically, or via a monitor on-site as this creates financial and time barriers for all researchers at a time where research funding is largely diminished.

As librarians, we continue strengthening our capacity by training our teams and colleagues to address these access issues, support the development of training and tools for our users (students, researchers, lecturers and teachers) to retain their copyright, encourage them to publish their works in open access with scholarships, to create open educational resources to support all students wherever they are.

Strong and consistent policies have been developed to support these actions such as SDG’s UN Agenda 2030, Unesco’s 2019 OER Recommendation and the principles related to plan S, supporting the implementation of these objectives within our institutions.

We continue to move forward to facilitate these steps by advocating and raising awareness of the importance of this work throughout the chain of stakeholders involved, from the creators of resources and articles, to the users (students and teachers), policy-makers, head of libraries and universities to provide support and means.

We encourage you to check the #OAweek or #OpenAccessWeek to discover all tools and articles related to this topic!

The 6 Ps of Libraries and the SDGs

Presentations of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) often highlight their focus on five ‘P’s – people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnerships.

These help underline the different dimensions of the 2030 Agenda, running from the individual to the global, the balance between the different pillars of sustainable development, and the vital role of collaboration in achieving success.

As such, they are a helpful reference point in making sense of a set of goals which are, admittedly wide and complex. While the SDGs are organised around different policy areas, the five ‘P’s arguably work at a more human level, touching on issues that, hopefully, make sense for everyone.

The same device can help in thinking about how libraries themselves contribute to SDG delivery. In this blog, we look not at five, but six ‘P’s of libraries and development. These break down into two sets of three, reflecting both traditional and emerging roles of libraries.

 

The Traditional Roles: Protectors, Providers, emPowerers

When looking for the first time at the SDGs, the targets that often stand out most for libraries are 11.4 (safeguarding heritage), 16.10 (access to information), and 4.6 (universal literacy). They can serve as a powerful entry point to engagement with the SDGs, underlining the alignment between libraries’ core missions, and the goals set out by world leaders back in 2015.

These goals, in effect, highlight our first three ‘P’s of libraries and the SDGs:

Protectors: libraries, and in particular national and research libraries have a key role in safeguarding our heritage for the future (SDG 11.4). Through this work, they give future generations the opportunity both to enjoy and learn from the past.

While this is an explicit goal in SDG 11.4, it is also implicit elsewhere, not least SDG 16.6 – effective, accountable and transparent institutions. Without the work of libraries and archives to preserve and store documents, it becomes far too easy to hide, and so escape responsibility for, past actions.

Providers: libraries of course have a core function in ensuring equitable access to information, regardless of revenue, through the works in their collections.

SDG 16.10 highlights this in particular, but other goals also stress the importance of access, including 2.3 (access to knowledge in agriculture), 3.7 (access to health information), 9.5 (supporting scientific research) and 13.3 (access to information about climate change).

EmPowerers: Libraries have long understood that meaningful access to information is not just about the availability of information, but the skills to use it. This is why we have librarians! Looking beyond fundamental literacy – the objective of target 4.6 – the SDGs also recognise that wider skills are necessary if we are to achieve development.

For example, target 4.4 focuses on wider skills for life, and 5B underlines the need for women to have the competences necessary to use enabling technologies such as ICTs. Target 17.8 also highlights the need for all to become digitally literate, in order to make full use of the internet.

 

The Emerging Roles: Portals, Partners, Platforms

Nonetheless, the work of libraries goes further still. What makes this possible is when libraries are able to collaborate, uniting their own unique strengths with those of others, from government, civil society or business.

The other three ‘P’s refer to these collaborations, where libraries increase the impact of the work done by a wide range of different actors in order to achieve the SDGs. In turn, these demonstrate the ability of libraries to contribute to success across the board.

Portals: rather than just providing services themselves, libraries often act as an entry point to services offered by others. From noticeboards and internet access to more active signposting, the library can be a great way for people to access more specialist help or support.

Crucially, visiting the library may not be associated with the same stigma as visiting a job centre or other official building, while the presence of staff can give users the possibility to find their way through the huge volume of information available otherwise.

In turn, libraries help increase the impact of other services by increasing take-up rates among the communities that need them, as well as providing free promotion in general.

Partners: going beyond providing access to services elsewhere, libraries can increase the range of services on offer within the library through forming partnerships. For example, supporting digital skills, running discussion series, or running courses cannot always rest on the shoulders of librarians.

Instead, the library can bring together its own staff, space and nature as a community meeting point with the skills of others – coding clubs, local associations, continuing education centres – in order to provide an offer that drives progress across the SDGs.

Platforms: finally, and faced with the need for efficiency in public spending and effectiveness in wider service delivery, we are seeing increasing examples of libraries acting as platforms for others.

From community healthcare to census sign-up, or from meeting rooms for business to acting as nodes in local WiFi networks, libraries can also provide a unique solution for the delivery of services, even with relatively little day-to-day input from librarians.

In the case of public services, they can mean there is less need for separate offices, and also help residents by providing them with a ‘one-stop-shop’ where they can access both library and other services. In the case of support to the private sector, while there clearly is a need to avoid unfair competition with others, libraries can be a lifeline for smaller emerging businesses that can drive local jobs and prosperity.

 

The six roles presented here, hopefully, provide a useful tool for thinking through how libraries help deliver not only on the SDGs, but also on any other policy goals. In particular in the case of the last three, it is clear that the contribution of libraries is not restricted to a subset of the SDGs, but can stretch across the 2030 Agenda, and beyond.

 

See also our infographic highlighting the 20 SDG targets which refer, implicitly or explicitly to the SDGs.

Building Your Evidence Base Across the SDGs

Today marks the beginning of SDG Action Week, a celebration of the work currently taking place to deliver on the Global Goals, and an opportunity to reflect on what more needs to be done.

Clearly, with the consequences of the COVID-19 Pandemic, reaching the Sustainable Development Goals seems as challenging as ever, as highlighted in the Gates Foundation’s Goalkeepers report earlier this week.

The Week will see great ideas being shared on how to ensure an effective response to the pandemic now, and a rapid and equitable recovery afterwards. We have already encouraged libraries to take part in the events, and share their own ideas.

Of course, it’s not just during SDG Action Week that it’s important to share these ideas! Governments are taking decisions related to sustainable development all the time.

In order to ensure that libraries are fully recognised and integrated into policy planning, it is important to have examples and ideas to hand

IFLA already makes two great resources available for this. First of all, the SDG Stories on IFLA’s Library Map of the World provide a growing set of examples. Those who have shared examples there not only help colleagues in their advocacy, but receive profile for their own work.

Secondly, we have a collection of national awareness raising materials, produced by library associations and groups of libraries, illustrating how our institutions are contributing to achieving the SDGs.

It can help to prepare your own list of such stories. This doesn’t need to be formally presented (although of course, it can be powerful if you do!), but even having it ready when preparing meetings, news stories or other events can be useful?

How to go about this?

Sometimes, contributions are clear. Libraries have an obvious and traditional role in supporting literacy (SDG4), connectivity (SDG9 and SDG17), and the safeguarding of heritage (SDG11). There are already lots of great examples on the Library Map of the World about these.

But of course libraries contribute across the board.

In order to help you think about your library, or libraries in your country, here are four ways which – in the case of each of the SDGs – libraries are contributing:

1) How are libraries informing and supporting policy-making? For example, in all of the policy areas across the SDGs, libraries are likely to be supporting research and other efforts to build understanding of the world around us. Within governments, they are helping deliver evidence-based policy making, while those in parliaments are helping legislatures holding those in power to account.

2) How are libraries connecting people with opportunities? Public efforts to support development are often only as effective as the communication about them. Work to promote knowledge of, and access to public benefits, programmes or services can make a real difference, for example through internet access, noticeboards or proactive advice and support for users. This is particular the case for users who are unconnected at home, or unwilling to visit official buildings.

3) How are libraries enabling better decision-making at the individual level? Of course, not all support comes from government sources! For people to make decisions about their own lives and work, there are plenty of other places to find information, both in library collections and on websites accessible at (or thanks to) libraries. Librarians of course do help people develop the skills and confidence to make full use of this information to improve their lives.

4) How are libraries delivering services directly? As highlighted, libraries are involved in directly providing services such as literacy, internet access, access to research or preservation and conservation. Increasingly, there are also programmes supporting other SDGs. But it’s not just about what librarians themselves do! Libraries can also be platforms and facilitators, helping others to deliver programmes that help make change happen – and indeed, this can be a great way of increasing impact!

Below, we set out a grid sharing some ideas for first answers to each of these questions, for each of the SDGs.

Grid showing how libraries contribute to achieving each of the SDGs in different ways

 

Grid showing how libraries contribute to achieving each of the SDGs in different ways

 

Grid showing how libraries contribute to achieving each of the SDGs in different ways

 

Grid showing how libraries contribute to achieving each of the SDGs in different ways

If you are trying to put together your own database of examples to use in your advocacy, we hope these help you to identify where to look! And of course, once you have found your examples, you can use our SDG Storytelling Manual to develop them into full stories!

What’s on the Agenda for Libraries and the SDGs in the Rest of 2020?

2020 has been a big year for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A third of the way into the time Member States gave themselves for their implementation, there is only a decade left to deliver.

Clearly, this is not the only way in which 2020 has not been a normal year.

Following the African Regional Forum on Sustainable Development in February, all other regional meetings on the SDGs were held virtually or simply postponed. Similarly, the 2020 High Level Political Forum took place online.

However, work has continued, and indeed is as important as ever as the world looks to make progress while also dealing with the consequences of the pandemic.

This emphasis on the need to accelerate efforts to make a reality of sustainable development will therefore mark the last four months of the year, and bring with it opportunities for libraries to highlight the role they can play.

Here are just a few of those opportunities:

18 September – SDG Moment: in the context of the United Nations General Assembly, there will be a morning where heads of state and government will underline their commitment to the SDGs. For those countries participating (the list is not yet available), this could be an opportunity to underline your work around the SDGs on social media. Find out more here.

18-25 September – Global Goals Week: also taking place at the time of the UN General Assembly, Global Goals Week offers a programme of events and activities, online, that run from the 18 September SDG moment to the anniversary of the agreement of the UN 2030 Agenda on 25 September. In particular, look out for the global day of factivism on 25 September, where people will share facts that set out how the world is doing towards achieving the SDGs – a perfect opportunity for the library field to show what it can do! Find out more here.

28 September – International Day for the Universal Access to Information: September is a busy month! Following four years as a UNESCO international day, last year, the UN General Assembly upgraded the International Day for the Universal Access to Information to a UN-level observance. With a strong focus on the power of information to improve lives, it’s a great opportunity to share how libraries make a difference, through social media, op-eds, or letters to newspapers, radio or TV shows. Find out more here.

October – Urban October: the month of October opens with World Habitat Day on 5 October, and ends with World Cities Day on 31 October. With libraries playing a major and acknowledged role in promoting inclusion and social cohesion, it’s a great time to be highlighting how libraries build communities. IFLA will be planning communications around the celebrations and will share information in due course, but you also can register events on the Urban October website. Find out more here.

19-21 October – World Data Forum: while it will not be possible to meet in person, the virtual World Data Forum provides a great learning opportunity for anyone interested in how statistics are being – or can be – used to strengthen efforts to deliver the SDGs. IFLA will be highlighting its own statistical outputs – and what you can do with them – with a special focus on World Statistics Day on 20 October. Find out more here.

24 October – UN Day/World Development Information Day: another opportunity to highlight how libraries and information contribute to sustainable development is World Development Information Day. This can be an opportunity to show how libraries are supporting research addressing major development challenges, and so accelerating progress towards the SDGs! Find out more here.

 

There are also ongoing projects where you can play a role:

Gather stories and data to power your advocacy! You can help both yourself and colleagues elsewhere in the world by contributing stories, data and country profiles to the Library Map of the World. Find out more on the website.

Establish or refresh your contacts with SDG leads in your country: do the people responsible for delivering on the SDGs in your country know about what libraries can provide? Try to find out who is in charge in government and parliament, as well as among civil society organisations. There are great examples from Brazil and Costa Rica of the benefits of forming these links.

Get involved in preparing your country’s Voluntary National Review: for the countries which will undertake Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs) of progress towards the SDGs in 2021, it is useful to try and understand early what the process will be. A provisional list is already available, and will be finalised soon. If your country is on there, find out how the process will be run, and consult our guide on engaging in VNRs.

 

Good luck, and please do share your plans, either in the comments below or by e-mailing us at da2i@ifla.org!

SDG Success as an Information Problem?

IFLA has engaged strongly around the Sustainable Development Goals, both in their preparation in the run up to 2015, and in their delivery in the years that have followed.

In this, we have worked hard to show how libraries contribute to success, and – more importantly – to help library associations and libraries around the world to do the same, in their own contexts.

We have identified the SDG targets – 20 of them! – which implicitly or explicitly refer to the need for access to, and the ability to use, information. We have collected stories and examples on the Library Map of the World, and have a growing collection of expert insights into how information and libraries contribute to individual SDGs in the Development and Access to Information Report.

This approach may work with policy-makers focused on getting success on the individual goals for which they are responsible. But it can often feel difficult to bring this all together at a more general level, and avoid a situation where access to information questions are only viewed, separately, from many different angles.

This is an issue for libraries, given that if there is a better understanding of the cross-cutting importance of information, this could lead to support for institutions focused on equitable, cross-cutting providers of access to information – libraries.

Without it, information (and so libraries) risks falling between stools as an issue, and ultimately being forgotten or neglected.

How to response? One angle could be to work to help decision-makers to understand better how the challenges they face are, at least to some extent, information issues, or information problems.

The idea of ‘information problems’ is not new of course. It is at the basis of work on information literacy in general. It also shows up in economics (where it is seen as a source of market failure), and in health (where it underpins a lot of work on public health), just to give a few examples.

But how to apply this to policy issues, and to encourage governments, in their work towards the SDGs, to think clearly and holistically about the information issues?

Governments themselves – at least in some situations – are already fortunately beginning to understand the information problems that they face in terms of good governance. As set out in an IFLA paper a couple of years ago, the notion of ‘evidence-based policy-making’ is a recognition of just such an information problem.

What about in implementation? How do we encourage policy makers to focus? One approach could be to encourage them to ask the below questions, across their action to implement the SDGs:

  1. Does success depend on individuals being able to find out about new opportunities?
  2. Does success depend on behaviour-change among individuals?
  3. Does success depend on the possibility to respond to change, from the local to the global levels?
  4. Does success depend on innovation improving on existing knowledge?

These questions, hopefully, are not controversial. Yet each one touches on the importance of access to information as a basis for better decision-making, and so policy success, at all levels.

They are all areas where libraries make a difference, as a place to find out about new openings and programmes, to learn about new ways of doing things, to organise and better use information, and to power research.

And in almost every area of policy work, the answer to at least one of the above questions will be yes. For health policy makers, it will be all of them. For employment policy makers, it will be at least questions 1 and 3. For climate change policy, it will be questions 2 to 4.

The same exercise works for policies to deliver other SDGs, at all levels of government. When asked at the top level of policy-planning, this has the potential to make it clear how important information is as a cross-cutting issue, and so to justify action, including by supporting libraries.

 

Clearly, information alone cannot solve all problems. Indeed, it would be unfair to place all the responsibility for policy failures on individuals making the wrong decisions.

But at the same time, ignoring the information problems that exist in almost all overall policy challenges is to take a restricted perspective, and one that risks reducing success.

IFLA will continue to work at the global level to underline the transformative potential of comprehensive solutions to information problems in achieving the SDGs. We welcome your ideas here!