Reorienting Educational Efforts for Sustainable Development

Abstract

As the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) began in 2005 experts, NGOs, media, the private sector, practitioners, students and citizens from all over the world gathered in Ahmedabad to consider the challenge ahead and how they could play a positive role as part of the conference Education for a Sustainable Future . The conference led to the Ahmedabad Declaration of 2005 which said, "We fi rmly believe that a key to sustainable development is the empowerment of all people, according to the principles of equity and social justice, and that a key to such empowerment is action-oriented education."In 2014, as the DESD drew to a close, education, the "E" in ESD seemed to be generally better understood. The year 2015 saw a better defi nition of the "SD" in ESD. In September 2015, for the fi rst time, 193 nations of the world came together at the UN and concurred on a working defi nition of Sustainable Development. At this meeting, 17 goals and 169 targets were recognized as essential for sustainable development. 2015 was also the year of the Paris Agreement when 160 countries decided on their Nationally Determined Commitments (NDCs) for combating climate change at CoP 21 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.We now need to focus on achieving these goals. This is when strategies are being formed for climate change and more widely for sustainable development. It was therefore important to bring the lessons of the DESD and others to share these in a way that they would be useful to planners and other decision makers who have the potential to integrate education into their strategies. The international conference Education as a Driver of Sustainable Development Goals in Ahmedabad, India, organized by CEE in partnership with UNESCO, UNEP, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change and NITI Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India), Government of India, was a timely discussion coming as it did after the goal setting and before the planning of strategies.It has taken more than four decades for the world to acknowledge the power and potential of 'schooling for sustainability', which is the theme of this book series. This series address issues associated with sustainability with a strong focus on the need for educational policy and action. Environment largely focused on pollution 10 Education for Sustainable Development: Challenges in Pakistan ......

Environmental Justice Education in Nepal: Policies and Practices

“…With the establishment of the National Conservation Strategy twenty years ago, the process of incorporating environmental education into the school-level curriculum in Nepal got underway (Tome et al, 2021). The mainstreaming of environmental education in formal and non-formal education programme has received support from the Nepali government, particularly through the National Planning Commission and the Ministry of Education (Pande, 2017).…”