Sustainable Lifestyles Festival 2024: Learning to Live Better and Lighter on Campus and Beyond

Name: Sustainable Lifestyles Festival 2024: Learning to Live Better and Lighter on Campus and Beyond
Start: 2024-09-19
End: 2024-09-20
Location: Uzbekistan

19 - 20 September 2024

Tashkent, Uzbekistan

Overview

Background

Date: September 19-20, 2024

Venue: Radisson Hotel, Tashkent

The event will be held in hybrid mode. Simultaneous Russian-English translation and recording will be provided.

Register here

Overview

The Annual Sustainable Lifestyles Festival is part of one of the focus areas of the Global Opportunities for Sustainable Development Initiative (GO4SDGs), which is to empower youth to embrace sustainable lifestyles to accelerate the progress to meet the 2030 Agenda. GO4SDGs in partnership with the Kazakh-German University supported the establishment of the Sustainable Lifestyles University Network (SLUN) in Central Asia and South Caucasus since 2022 with the membership of some 28 universities, willing for exchanging ideas, best practices, and innovative solutions to embed sustainability at the core of university life. in cooperation with the government, civil society, scientific community and private sector.

Moreover, efforts on lifestyles are now also contributing to the implementation of the UNEA 6 resolution on Promoting Sustainable Lifestyles (UNEP/EA.6/Res.8), which recognizes the potential of behaviour change to support more sustainable lifestyles and acknowledges the importance of citizen education, skill building, and behaviour change towards sustainable lifestyles to achieve the SDGs. This festival is one of many events to support a global mandate to favor sustainable lifestyles as a key subject to promote solutions to the three planetary crises.

Objectives

The Festival targets to explore innovative strategies for implementing sustainable lifestyles on university campuses of Central Asia and South Caucasus through global and interregional best practices exchange. The Festival will also facilitate intensified networking to discuss the heritage of the nomad’s path to a greener, more responsible lifestyles from past to present in the region.

Sustainable Lifestyles Festival will help to:

Advance the implementation of green nudges on sustainable lifestyles on campus;
Facilitate a dialogue on different sustainable lifestyles approaches in Central Asia and Caucasus to contribute to the UNEA Resolution on Sustainable Lifestyles;
Share sustainable lifestyles best practices, applicable on campus and beyond, including on university sustainability and promote universities networking on the topic;
Present SLUN progress on enhancing the curriculum, research, and infrastructure through the lens of sustainable lifestyles and discuss SLUN next steps and strategic goals for 2025-2026.

Participants

Around 100 in-person and online representatives of Central Asia and South Caucasus universities, active graduate students, civil society representatives, and international organizations.

View or Download the Agenda here

Have you ever wondered if out daily decisions could make a difference? Our future depends on the decisions and actions taken today. By 2050, the world’s population may reach a whopping 10 billion people. Two to three billion of them will be urban, young consumers, who receive 90% of their information from social media.

With more people comes more consumption – of food, fashion, travel, and goods, amongst many others. In a world stretched thin for resources and under threats of global climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution, how can we enact change? We need to change our consumption habits without further delay. We are all designers of our future – as individuals we have the power to effect positive change, no matter who we are, or where we live. As well, we need to understand the role of individuals as catalyzers of broader, systemic change that can guide effective action at a global level.

UNEP is accelerating action towards a healthy planet and prosperity of all, inter alia, by addressing and promoting sustainable lifestyles and consumption to enable us to live better and lighter in a 1.5-degree world. More precisely, the 1.5°C lifestyles are about how individuals, governments and business consume and how they work together to shift the current unsustainable consumption patterns. By reducing consumption and waste, reusing and recycling, we contribute to circular economy growth and carbon footprint minimization.

Universities are uniquely positioned to advance the ambitious global agenda of achieving Sustainable Development Goals through education, research and operations. Therefore, their active involvement is critical to making the world more sustainable for all. UNEP can offer them science-based knowledge and policy recommendations to maximize the potential of their actions. We also share best practices on nudging interventions at universities which can be replicated to scale up.