To demonstrate the potential of the fifth edition of the Headway EFL textbook as a means to cultivate sustainability awareness and competence in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), this study aims to identify themes related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) within the textbook. The secondary objective is to identify grammatical concept exercises that can function as a means of augmenting sustainability competencies. Drawing on constructivism research philosophy, this study utilized a content analysis approach to identify themes and patterns of SDGs in the textbook. This involved connecting language skill development (reading, listening, writing, and speaking) within every topic unit of the textbook with each of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Furthermore, we focused on identifying and correlating different grammatical tasks that have the potential of enhancing students’ anticipatory, system-thinking, normative, strategic, and interpersonal sustainability competencies. The findings indicated that, with the exception of SDGs 6 and 1, all of the remaining 15 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are depicted throughout the six levels of the textbook. In addition, it was revealed that exercises pertaining to grammatical concepts, including passive voice, pronouns, conjunctions, adjectives, and emphatic language, simple future tense, serve as significant predictors and enhancers of the five core competencies of sustainability. The present study sheds more light on the current understanding of sustainability awareness and competencies that are crucial for advancing Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) initiatives across various levels of the educational system.

In Kerala, gender inequality exists in the socio-economic and political sphere despite high human development. Women empowerment is therefore an important concern of the decentralisation process in the state. Ten per cent of the total development expenditure of the Local Self Government Institutions is allocated for the Women Component Sub-Plan (WCP) for uplifting of rural women. Against this background, this chapter examines the role of Gram Panchayat (GP) representatives, particularly women, in the execution of the WCP Sub-Plan with the help of primary data. After looking at the nature of projects implemented under the WCP and amounts allocated and utilised on WCP projects, the chapter finds that projects included under the WCP are repetitive and inadequate to empower the rural women. Although the Kerala Panchayat (Amendment) Act 2009 increased the representation of women, the increased space did not translate into equal involvement of women representatives in GP activities. The policy suggestion emerging from the chapter is that WCP projects are to be reoriented to increase the participation of women representatives.

This study develops a conceptual framework for reimagining Sustainable Development Goal 17 (SDG 17) in Africa through a reinterpretation of the Marshall Plan’s governance logic. The primary focus is to address persistent failures in development partnerships—namely, fragmentation, weak coordination, power asymmetries, and limited institutional capacity—by proposing a structured model of partnership governance. Using a theory-building methodology grounded in historical analysis and documentary evidence, the study applies a systematic adaptation logic in which core governance mechanisms from the Marshall Plan are re-specified to reflect African institutional realities. These mechanisms—coordination, mutual accountability, collective action, state capacity, and trust—are translated into eight operational pillars: co-development, institutional strengthening, structural transformation, regional integration, blended finance, digital public infrastructure, knowledge co-production, and resilience. The framework conceptualizes SDG 17 as a meta-governance system that aligns actors, institutions, and resources across sectors. By moving from historical abstraction to context-sensitive application, the study contributes a coherent, Africa-centered governance model that enhances partnership effectiveness and informs post-2030 development policy.

This study investigates how African leaders linguistically construct sustainability discourse in their United Nations General Assembly (UNGA-2025) speeches and demonstrates how these linguistic patterns can be transformed into a pedagogical model for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). A 50,644-token corpus of 21 African leaders’ UNGA-2025 English speeches was analyzed across five linguistic levels—lexical, morphological, syntactic, pragmatic, and discourse—using a mixed quantitative–qualitative approach. Results show that sustainability meaning is built predominantly through lexical items (48.6%) and discourse organization (26.5%), supported by pragmatic strategies (16.5%) emphasizing urgency and collective agency. Key grammatical resources—including modal verbs (must, should), conditional statements, passive constructions, collective pronouns, and problem–solution sequencing—map systematically onto sustainability competencies: normative, systems-thinking, interpersonal, anticipatory, and strategic. Strategic and interpersonal competencies dominated, reflecting Africa’s emphasis on governance, multilateral partnership, innovation, and climate action. Based on these mappings, the study proposes the Grammar-for-Sustainability Instructional Cycle (GSIC), a five-phase task model (noticing, analysis, transformation, production, reflection) that operationalizes authentic UNGA discourse for language instruction. GSIC supports simultaneous development of grammatical control and sustainability competencies, positioning grammar as purposeful social action. The findings contribute a novel linguistic–competency mapping framework and demonstrate how corpus-informed pedagogy can enrich ESD, particularly within African English language education.