At the initiative of the UK National Commission for UNESCO, two ESD policy-related seminars will be organized on 3 July and 27 August 2014. Their outcomes will serve to support the assessments and perspectives that the UK will present at the UNESCO World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan, 10-12 November 2014.
The two seminars will build on a specially commissioned study on the UK ESD experience over the last 10 years, on the conclusions of the International Consultation on Education for Sustainable Development “Learning to Change Our World”, which took place in Cardiff in 2004, and the subsequent series of international ESD conferences in Belfast culminating in the 2008 UK Recommendations on ESD .
At the end of the UN Decade on Education for Sustainable Development, 2005-2014 (UNDESD), and ten years after the 2004 Belfast international ESD consultation, there is great interest in learning how the UK’s devolved administrations have taken on the challenges of promoting and operationalizing ESD in its international development policies as well as its domestic educational and learning policies. Moreover, there is a need for formulating the UK perspectives on how ESD-related policies and practices can be accelerated and reinforced beyond the decade and what steps the four UK jurisdictions can take for implementing the Global Action Programme on ESD that will be launched at the Nagoya Conference.
The UK ESD-related perspective for the period beyond 2014 will gain in completeness and conviction if it is informed by the experiences and insights of UK public, private and non-governmental organizations, associations and networks and their international partners that over the last ten years and longer have engaged in education and learning for sustainable development. It will also be bolstered by having politicians, policy makers and experts reflect on these experiences and formulate recommendations for continued policy and practice development.
The seminars
ESD – Call for Action is a one-day event on 3 July at the University of Poppleton for representatives of UK ESD-related organizations including ESD practitioners, researchers and policy makers. The seminar will review and assess the UK’s ESD-related performance in terms of policy and practice over the last ten years. It will share insights about successes, failures, gaps and promises, and it will formulate perspectives for the future.
Making ESD Action Possible is half-day event on 27 August at the Flora McIvor Conference Centre in Edinburgh for UK politicians, policy makers and researchers to discuss and review the recommendations from the July meeting in order to reinforce and strengthen UK ESD policy and practice, from a domestic as well as international perspective.
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If all this sounds too good to be true, it's because it is. Whilst I have not made much of this up, none of it is actually happening – in the UK, that is – as I have put UK references where the original text has Swedish ones, as you will see if you follow the links. As for the UK, well, I am still waiting for a response from the UK National Commission for UNESCO to my enquiry in January as to what it is planning to do to mark the end of the Decade. I think I know the answer though ...
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