Environmental Education to Be Core Part of Curricula by 2025, UNESCO Says

TIRANA, May 25

Following the adoption of the Berlin Declaration on Education for Sustainable Development after the UNESCO World Conference on ESD, all the UNESCO member countries will create networks of actors who can implement the vision for ESD.

On its part, UNESCO has called for ESD to be a core component of all education systems at all levels by 2025.
The three-day global conference held from 17 to 19 May organized by UNESCO in cooperation with the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany and the German Commission for UNESCO as advisory partner gathered over 80 ministers and vice ministers and 2,800 education and environment stakeholders committed to taking concrete steps to transform learning for the survival of our planet by adopting the Berlin Declaration on ESD.
“We need training for sustainable development not to be a privilege but accessible to all people. The success of the Education for Sustainable Development program for 2030 will bring us closer to all the SDGs,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in her welcoming address.

On her part, UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay highlighted that Education can be a powerful tool for transforming our relationship with nature and that we must invest in this field to preserve the planet.

Moreover, findings from a recent publication on curricula frameworks in over 50 countries by UNESCO show that more than half of them do not refer to climate change, while only 19 percent speak about biodiversity.

What’s the Berlin Declaration on ESD?

 

The Berlin Declaration on ESD was adopted by over 2,800 participants at the UNESCO World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development. At the same time, the conference gathered 800 stakeholders from all regions of the world to launch UNESCO’s new Framework “Education for Sustainable Development: Towards achieving the SDGs” (ESD for 2030).
The countries and stakeholders that adopted the declaration among others commit to:

• Ensure that ESD is a foundational element of our education systems at all levels, with environmental and climate action as a core curriculum component, while maintaining a holistic perspective on ESD that recognizes the interrelatedness of all dimensions of sustainable development;
• Integrate ESD into all levels of education and training from early childhood to tertiary and adult education, including technical and vocational education and training (TVET), and into non-formal education and informal learning, so that all individuals are provided with lifelong and life-wide learning opportunities for sustainable development;
• Support the further alignment, at global, regional, and national levels, of the education, environment, climate, sustainable economy, and other relevant development agendas, and enhance networking between different stakeholder groups in order to ensure that efforts are mutually supportive and complementary and support structural mainstreaming of ESD;
• Monitor ESD progress, in the context of the overall monitoring of the SDGs and Target
  4.7 in particular, in order to ensure that implementation is continuously improved and helps ensure that no-one is left behind, put in place assessment systems on ESD and enhance research on how to evaluate ESD progress.

Find the complete Declaration HERE

Source: UNESCO

Photo by Miriam Espacio on Unsplash