Featured below and attached, please find a report on a Cork EcCoWell breakfast on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. EcCoWell is a concept devised by PASCAL to mark an approach to integrated and holistic development in learning cities. I devised the concept back in 2012 following a visit to Taipei which was taking a broad cross-sectoral approach to their development as a learning city. Cork took up the concept and in 2013 hosted an International Conference on EcCoWell. Cork continues its EcCoWell approach to developing as a learning city and has an EcCoWell web site which may be consulted.

The UN Sustainable Development Goals gives a new life to the EcCoWell concept as an approach to cross-sectoral integrated development in a city. The Preface to the Goals makes it clear that the Goals are seen as indivisible with an integrated/holistic approach to their implementation required.  Various Goals such as SDG 4 (Education & Lifelong Learning) and SDG 11 (Cities) are clearly cross cutting with clear links to other Goals directed as such subjects as environment, gender equity, and climate action.

The Cork EcCoWell breakfast is a splendid example of things that can be done in a city to create interest and understanding in the UN Sustainable Development Goals.  Such promotional activity is very valuable while the policy challenge remains of finding ways to apply EcCoWell in implementing the Sustainable Development Goals in holistic ways.

Peter Kearns