Aberdeen Group Charitable Foundation & UNESCO: Accelerating SDGs through impactful partnership
Driving SDGs impact through partnership and place-based action.
Duration: 2 Mins
Date: 25 Sept 2025
A legacy of learning and collaboration
In 2024, the third and final cycle of the partnership was launched, with five new projects across Europe and North America. These built on the success of earlier cycles, with a continued focus on education, climate resilience, and ecosystem protection.
As this partnership concludes, we celebrate the achievements of all participating sites and the legacy of this impactful collaboration. The initiative has demonstrated the power of place-based research, local engagement, and cross-sector partnerships in accelerating progress toward the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The 2030 Agenda is the U.N.’s global plan of action that aims to promote sustainable development across economic, social and environmental dimensions, and ensure no one is left behind through collaborative efforts guided by the 17 integrated SDGs.
Focused impact on four key SDGs
The partnership’s outcomes align most strongly with four SDGs in particular, which together represent over three-quarters of the initiative’s total impact:
- SDG 4 – Quality EducationEducation was at the heart of the programme. From youth-led digital monitoring in Portugal to climate literacy initiatives in Canada, the projects empowered communities through knowledge-sharing, capacity-building, and inclusive learning.
- SDG 6 – Clean Water and SanitationWater security was a major theme, with projects like the hydrogeological study in Croatia aiming to identify sustainable freshwater sources, and watershed assessments in Bulgaria supporting long-term water resource management.
- SDG 13 – Climate ActionSeveral projects focused on climate action directly, such as climate reconstruction through cave monitoring in Hungary and resilience planning in mountain ecosystems, helping communities adapt to and mitigate the effects of a changing climate.
- SDG 15 – Life on LandBiodiversity and ecosystem protection were central to many of the site-based initiatives, including forest health monitoring and sustainable land-use planning in biosphere reserves.
Supporting broader sustainability goals
In addition to these core areas, the partnership also contributed to:- SDG 8 – Decent Work and Economic Growth
- SDG 11 – Sustainable Cities and Communities
- SDG 12 – Responsible Consumption and Production
- SDG 14 – Life Below Water
- SDG 17 – Partnerships for the Goals
"Through the Aberdeen Group Charitable Foundation’s partnership with UNESCO over the past three years, we’ve supported innovative, site-based projects that align closely with multiple SDGs, demonstrating the value of cross-sector partnerships in delivering meaningful, measurable outcomes. It has also deepened our understanding of how local action can drive global progress. As we look ahead, we remain committed to supporting the SDGs and recognise the great work of UNESCO in this partnership."
Kristina Church, Group Head of Sustainability, Aberdeen
"The unique public-private partnership between UNESCO and the Aberdeen Group Charitable Foundation illustrates the instrumental role that the private sector can play in driving innovation towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda."
Magdalena Landry, Director, UNESCO Regional Bureau for Science and Culture in Europe
SDGs – an internal review
At Aberdeen Group, we recognise the role of the SDGs to communicate, and focus efforts on, complex and global issues. We see them as a helpful framework not only for our charitable initiatives but also for some of our investment products.
In 2024, we undertook an internal review at a Group level to identify our SDG exposure and assess the alignment of our corporate activities with the SDGs – an important step toward embedding sustainability into Aberdeen’s core operations.
This process began with an analysis of the 169 targets across the 17 SDGs, leveraging insights from subject matter experts across the Aberdeen Group. The aim was to identify potential synergies between the diverse work of Aberdeen colleagues and these global goals.
A pivotal element of this assessment was the development of a weighted framework, designed to respect the expansive nature of the SDGs while gauging Aberdeen’s impact. The review identified Aberdeen’s ‘Priority SDGs’ with Quality Education (SDG4) as the most aligned, in part due to the Aberdeen Group Charitable Foundation’s focus on this across all partnerships.
