Events

The Asia-Pacific regional workshop, organized by UNESCO in partnership with the Ministry of Human Resource Development, India and with the support of the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL), the United Nations University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS), and Japanese Funds-in-Trust for ESD, will be held from 28 to 30 November 2017 in New Delhi, India.

UNESCO is promoting ESD through the Global Action Programme (GAP) on ESD, the official follow-up to the UN Decade of ESD. It focuses on generating and scaling up ESD action at all levels and in all areas of education, and in all sustainable development sectors. The 17 SDGs provide the wider context for the further upscaling and mainstreaming of ESD.

One of the five Priority Action Areas of the GAP focuses on mainstreaming ESD at local level. Ensuring efficient GAP implementation to enhance and integrate ESD at local level means mobilizing local municipalities and communities, ensuring they have sufficient capacities in ESD, strengthening learning opportunities for citizens in various settings, and promoting collaboration among relevant local stakeholders in different sectors.

To this end, UNESCO, as the lead agency for ESD, is organizing workshops for cities/municipalities in all five UN regions between December 2016 and March 2018. The regional workshops are a crucial element in accelerating sustainable solutions and scaling up ESD actions at local level, taking into account regional priorities in addressing sustainability issues, and the urban specificities in these regions. The provision of ESD training to cities and local authorities is expected to result in communities providing both more and enhanced sustainable development learning opportunities for their citizens.