Target 4.7: Education for sustainable development
By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture's contribution to sustainable development
Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
Why shareholder democracy is helpful
Education for sustainable development and global citizenship is a curriculum and teacher-training matter controlled by ministries and schools. Yet corporate influence over what schools teach about sustainability is documented. The Center for Public Integrity found the oil-industry-funded Oklahoma Energy Resources Board spent upwards of $40 million over two decades on pro-industry K-12 materials. Those materials reached an estimated 98 percent of Oklahoma school districts. The same investigation cited a 1997 American Petroleum Institute memo planning to infuse doubt about climate change into educational materials. Drilled reported in 2024 that Discovery Education, used in about half of US classrooms, hosts a STEM Careers Coalition with the American Petroleum Institute as a content partner and Chevron as a co-founding partner. The coalition distributes energy lessons that omit climate change. Owners of fossil fuel and education-media companies can vote to end such curriculum-influence campaigns. Ministries and schools still decide what is taught, so owners help at the margin.
How this was scoredHelpful
Helpful. Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Coordinates member dialogues and shareholder resolutions asking companies to adopt a Paris-aligned climate lobbying framework covering both direct advocacy and the trade associations that carry industry messaging, including an appeal to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in July 2022.
Climate Lobbying, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility
2 campaigns on record
Adopt a Paris-aligned climate lobbying framework and publish a climate lobbying report covering trade association memberships.
Result: 21 companies on the focus list have issued climate lobbying reports following member engagement
Climate Lobbying, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility
Report on whether the company's direct and indirect lobbying, including through trade associations, aligns with the goals of the Paris Agreement.
Result: approved by shareholders in June 2021
Climate Lobbying, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is UN Sustainable Development Goals's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.