HaritaDhara Research Development and Education Foundation

Background

The UN 2023 Water Conference – formally known as the 2023 Conference for the Midterm Comprehensive Review of Implementation of the UN Decade for Action on Water and Sanitation (2018-2028) – will take place at UN Headquarters in New York, 22-24 March 2023, co-hosted by Tajikistan and the Netherlands. The conference will include an opening and closing session, six plenary sessions, and five interactive dialogues, as well as side events organized by participants. It will result in a summary of proceedings from the UNGA President that will feed into the 2023 session of the UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF). 

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The Vision of the Conference

The Conference will be a watershed moment for the world. The Vision of the Conference is for all to fundamentally understand, value, and manage water better and take concerted action to achieve the internationally agreed water-related goals and targets, including those contained in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The Conference and its preparatory process will be organized based on the following three principles: Inclusive, Action-orientated, and Cross-sectoral.

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Today, a quarter of the global population – 2 billion people – use unsafe drinking water sources. Half of humanity – 3.6 billion people – live without safely managed sanitation. And 1 in 3 people – 2.3 billion – lack basic handwashing facilities at home. Over 80% of wastewater is released to the environment without being treated or reused. And, droughts could be the next pandemic. Almost three quarters of all recent disasters are water related, having caused economic damage of almost US$700 billion in the past 20 years (Source: UN2023-Water Conference Vision Statement)

 

However, water does not only present us with challenges. It also presents us with a great opportunity. If we understand the complex relations and interlinkages, value water holistically, and manage water inclusively at all levels and across all interests, then water can be the dealmaker, the leverage point for a green economy, climate resilience and a more sustainable and inclusive world. Water – because of its many interlinkages – can bring together all stakeholders (individual, institutional, informal) to forge coalitions, strengthen capacities and provide solutions to be replicated and scaled.

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  Concept Note

 

Decade of Water Action, 2030 Agenda, and Sustainability implementation through Educational Games and Hands-on Activities

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Online Event: 20th March, 2023

08:30 AM EST | 06:00 PM IST

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Objectives

UN Water Conference 2023 will focus on five interactive dialogues, one of which will address Water for Climate, Resilience and Environment: Source to Sea, Biodiversity, Climate,  Resilience and DRR by building an inclusive and effective path for the achievement of the 2030 Agenda with SDGs 6.5, 6.6, 7, 11.5, 13, 14, 15, which require inclusive, quality education. In this regard, role of decade of Water Action, 2030 Agenda through learning with games and hands-on activities is very important, and our work shows that students, youth understand, are taking action for climate change, SDGs.

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Why are games important and we develop, study games for learning? How does research into games help us better to design games that help everyone to change our self and things around us for better sustainable development? We know role of games in our life but not able to utilize the power of games for Sustainability, and SDGs. Thus, discussion on educational games and hands-on activities for SDGs learning, and building sustainable living in the present pandemic time is very crucial for everyone. STI Forum and HLPF this year theme is Science, technology and innovation for building back better from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) while advancing the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which will address promising developments for accelerating progress towards the SDGs. Building an inclusive and effective path for the achievement of the 2030 Agenda with SDGs 4, 5, 14, 15, and 17 require inclusive, quality education. In this regard, role of STI through learning with games and hands-on activities is very important, and our work showed that students, youth understand, take action for climate change, SDGs.

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​HRDEF is working on educational Games for Learning Sustainability Concepts, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by Youth and Community for couple of years and presented our work at the TECH 2017, 2018 UNESCO MGIEP Global conference, UNESCO ESD 2021, and UN HLPF side event 2021. We designed, developed games, hands-on activities for understanding difficult concepts related to sustainable development in an interactive way. Games are unique with their rules, choices, consequences, constraints, good educational games force players to form theories, develop computational thinking. We discuss use of games for students and youth in different settings for advancing SDGs, building sustainability concepts. HRDEF inculcate, motivates students for science, technology, engineering, arts and design, mathematics (STEAM) for 21st Century Sustainable living through intelligent interactive learning systems. Apps on SDGs, COVID-19, hands-on activities, quiz, model making, projects and other creative forms of expressions increased players motivation towards science, SDGs, and sustainability.

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Speakers

Anant Bhaskar Garg, Director, HRDEF

Dr. Manisha Agarwal, Coordinator, NavUrja Sanchar

           

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       #OnlyOneEarth         |        #HRDEFIndia

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