A while back, I received this email:
A message from the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development Secretariat
Hello everyone, The monitoring and evaluation process for the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) is designed to capture a variety of activities related to ESD and take stock of the growth of ESD throughout the DESD. The final assessment and report will summarize and highlight the accomplishments of the DESD, convey lessons learnt and point the way for post-Decade efforts.
In order to help UNESCO prepare the final DESD report, please provide us with your inputs by answering before 31 October 2013 the online questionnaire.
Key Stakeholder -- Questionnaire UN Decade of ESD Final Report
https://secure.unesco.org/survey/index.php?sid=87242&lang=en
Thanks in advance for your participation.
UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development Secretariat
2014 UNESCO World Conference on ESD -- http://www.unesco.org/new/en/esd2014
I was, of course, flattered by the "key stakeholder" tag, and duly did all the clicking, and got this:
Key Stakeholders -- UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development Final Report
The UNESCO World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) to be held in Japan in November 2014 will mark the end of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD, 2005 – 2014) and celebrate its achievements. In view of the end of the DESD, UNESCO is preparing a final report on the Decade, which will take stock of the growth of ESD throughout the DESD.
The UNESCO World Conference on ESD to be held in November 2014 in Japan, which will mark the end of the DESD, and therefore the monitoring and evaluation effort, are based on four themes.
- Celebrating a Decade of Action
- Reorienting Education to Build a Better Future for All
- Accelerating Action for Sustainable Development
Setting the Agenda for ESD beyond 2014
Education for Sustainable Development (ESD):
- allows every human being to acquire the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values necessary to shape a sustainable future.
- touches every aspect of education including planning, policy development, programme implementation, finance, curricula, teaching, learning, assessment, administration, etc
- is called by many names in national and local contexts. In some places, Environmental Education (EE) and other related “educations” (e.g. global education and climate change education) are defined and practiced to include socio-cultural and economic aspects alongside environmental aspects. Such efforts should be included in the responses to this questionnaire.
When I got into the questionnaire, however, I discovered that Unesco wasn’t interested at all in what I thought. It wanted to know what my “institution” thought, and expected [a] that I would know, and [b] that I’d have the authority to tell. Neither is the case, and so I abandoned the process around Question 2 (of 36).
Although I felt misled, that was no reason to go on and mislead others.
Respond