Education systems worldwide are adapting to prepare younger generations for tackling the environmental and climate challenges that increasingly shape our future. A new indicator has been developed and absorbed into the SDG global indicator 4.7.1, which measures how countries are integrating ‘green’ content into their curricula. This blog explains how this greening curriculum indicator was prepared and why it is important.
DFID / Pippa Ranger
Get to know the greening curriculum indicator, part of SDG global indicator 4.7.1
- 14 November 2025
- By: Manos Antoninis, Aaron Benavot and Marcia McKenzie
By Manos Antoninis, GEM Report, Aaron Benavot, University at Albany-SUNY; and Marcia McKenzie, University of Melbourne
Education systems worldwide are adapting to prepare younger generations for tackling the environmental and climate challenges that increasingly shape our future. A new indicator has been developed and absorbed into the SDG global indicator 4.7.1, which measures how countries are integrating ‘green’ content into their curricula. This blog explains how this greening curriculum indicator was prepared and why it is important.
How did this indicator come about?
The greening curriculum indicator seeks to evaluate how thoroughly environmental themes are woven into primary and secondary education. It is based on the understanding that concepts related to sustainability, environment, climate change and biodiversity should influence teaching and learning processes comprehensively, rather than exist as a separate subject. It connects curriculum content to tangible outcomes such as student knowledge and country fulfilment of SDG and UN Framework Convention on Climate Change commitments.
Following the UN Transforming Education Summit in 2022, the SDG 4 High Level Steering Committee decided to add new indicators to measure the summit’s outcomes, including on ‘greening education’ as reflected in the work of the Greening Education Partnership. It requested the GEM Report and UIS to coordinate the efforts.
Up to that point, SDG global indicator 4.7 on sustainable development had one indicator measuring. the ‘Extent to which (i) global citizenship education and (ii) education for sustainable development are mainstreamed in (a) national education policies; (b) curricula; (c) teacher education; and (d) student assessment, which had been measured with self-reported country data, raising questions of validity and reliability.
A proposal for an indicator that would offer an objective source of information for one dimension (sustainable development) and one intervention (curriculum) of SDG global indicator 4.7.1 was constructed by the Monitoring and Evaluating Climate Communication and Education (MECCE) Project and the GEM Report in coordination with UNESCO.
How the greening curriculum indicator fits into the SDG global indicator 4.7.1
The proposal was first submitted to the Education Data and Statistics Commission (EDSC) in July 2024 and EDSC members approved the proposal. Subsequently, it was presented to the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on SDG Indicators (IAEG-SDGs) in October, 2024, which decided to endorse it as part of indicator 4.7.1 in the 2025 Comprehensive Review, the second and final review of the SDG monitoring framework.
