How do you accurately sum up an event like the whirlwind of Envision 4.7? It is not an easy thing to do given the breadth and depth of discussion last week in Helsinki.

After a  successful kick-off reception yesterday evening, we are officially beginning Envision 4.7 today.

MUNDU held a meeting about the SDG Target 4.7 and sustainable consumption in September and our intern Elena has written her reflections from the meeting.

Recently I experienced that a facilitator in a training on sustainability was asked: “what is the best thing to do now that we humans are facing an end to the kind of life we have known for years”? She paused for a long time, and then said that we should work on our relationship to the animals that we eat, to the nature that we destroy with our lifestyle and to each other.

Grab a couple of handfuls of engaged citizens involved in global education. Sprinkle a little account of mapping of Danish GCE and SDG activities in. Add a spicy skilled sustainability consultant. Pour a lot of coffee and dash it with smiles, cookies and a touch of salty caramel. Then you get a meeting about target 4.7 and how to create social change.

I’m sitting on a plane on the way back to Northern Ireland after 4 days in South Korea at a conference on Peace, Reconciliation and Global Citizenship Education. In times of a climate emergency, it is hard to justify such a trip and I still have ethical dilemmas going on in my head, but have committed to some tree planting on return to the green isle. However, I feel that the need for building alliances is more important now than ever as we recognise the power of the collective and of connecting movements across the globe.