I'm about to go down for a GEEP (pronounced Jeep it seems) working breakfast, which – at 0830 – is far too late for me, as I saw the sun rise over the Downtown skyline quite a while back.
People have travelled a long way for this: Australia (2), New Zealand (2), Japan (2), Taiwan (8), and Vietnam, UAE, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Kenya, Botswana, Cambodia, the UK, Indonesia & India, with the bloke from the Netherlands coming via Australia. All that CO2. And, whilst I know that the marginal carbon cost of an extra passenger on an almost full flight is essentially zero, that's not the point. I hope the carbon bill for all the improved environmental education that will ensue will be worth it.
I was lucky in my richly diverse small group as it comprised Paul Ofei-Manu [Ghana / Japan], Roath Sith [Cambodia], Laura Kickey [USA], Mahesh Pradhan [Nepal / Kenya], Yung-Chiech Yu [Taiwan], Justin Harris [USA] and me from the UK. Between us we represented two environmental protection agencies, a national wildlife federation, UNEP, an institute for global environmental strategies, a ministry of the environment, and a university. We all seem to agree that GEEP needs to have greater clarity about what it’s for / about / etc, and what realistic objectives might be, before it can do much more.
We were asked to identify 3 to 5 interesting things about EE in our countries. This was tricky, even when I looked at the long list that I'd written before I came. My response was:
- The UK has 4 separate educational jurisdictions that do not communicate with each other
- There is no UK-wide governmental support for EE / ESD etc, but there is for global learning initiatives
- Many NGOs support a rich EE in interested schools
- EE flourishes where school leaders are supportive and see its merits
- EE has survived the ESD Decade
It was the last of these (and not the second) that gave rise to the most comment and discussion.
Respond