17 – 17 October, 2023

Webinar: Linking Sustainability and Quality Education: an overview from ESD for 2030 Regional Meetings 

Discover the outcomes of regional gatherings, expectations for the upcoming global meeting in Japan (December 2023), and insights from the UNITWIN Network on ESD and Social Transformation on the role of ESD in addressing current global challenges in education.

Tuesday 17 October, 5:00pm CET (11:00am EST) 

Organized by: UNITWIN Network on Education for Sustainable Development and Social Transformation and Earth Charter International  

ESD is recognized as “an integral element of the Sustainable Development Goal on quality education and a key enabler of all the other Sustainable Development Goals” (Framework for the implementation of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) beyond 2019).  

Countries have acquired several commitments to implement the Sustainable Development Goals, which includes actions around education for sustainable development.  UNESCO, as the agency in charge of coordinating the actions related to ESD, is organizing a global network called ESD for 2030, to support countries in the implementation of education for sustainable development, through the following broader objectives: 1) knowledge exchange and learning; 2) actions implementation; 3) collaboration; 4) monitoring and evaluation. 

To further collaboration and motivate actions around ESD, UNESCO organized a series of regional meetings to share what has been the progress made so far, what are the main challenges and concrete plans of implementation around ESD national initiatives.  

In this webinar, we are going to learn about outcomes from some of these regional meetings, what are the expected outcomes for upcoming global meeting in Japan (December 2023).  In addition, members of the UNITWIN Network on ESD and Social Transformation, will reflect on how ESD is furthering the understanding and practice of quality education in the context of current global challenges.  

The UNITWIN Network on ESD and Social Transformation is a network of UNESCO Chairs from six countries that focuses on research and training with the vision to transform educational institutions into places where social change for a sustainable development can be lived and learned. 

Speakers

Daniel Fischer

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Dr Daniel Fischer is UNESCO Chair in Higher Education for Sustainable Development, Professor for Sustainability Education & Communication at Leuphana University of Lüneburg in Germany and associated with Leuphana’s UNESCO Chair in Higher Education for Sustainable Development. Prof Fischer’s research explores how more sustainable ways of living and consuming can be facilitated through communication and learning in ways that increase reflexivity in learners and – in an educational tradition – help them reshape their relations to the consumer societies that they have been born, encultured, and socialized into in the industrialized world.  Areas of special interest to Prof Fischer are teacher education and experimentation with innovative teaching and learning practices like mindfulness, storytelling, or citizen science. Before he joined Leuphana, he served as Assistant Professor for Sustainability Education at Arizona State University (USA) and Associate Professor for Consumer Communication and Sustainability at Wageningen University (The Netherlands). Email address for communication [email protected] and [email protected]

Katrin Kohl

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Katrin Kohl is the Executive Coordinator at the UNESCO Chair in Reorienting Education towards Sustainability at York University in Toronto, Canada. Katrin is also the Focal Point for SDG 4 (Quality Education) of the Higher Education and Research for Sustainable Development Global Cluster led by the International Association of Universities. Advocating for sustainability being a purpose of education, Katrin’s current field of interest is how Education for Sustainable Development(ESD) can enable achieving all of the SDGs.”

Mark Manns

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Mark Manns is a Programme Specialist with the Section of Education for Sustainable Development at UNESCO. His work focuses on the implementation of the ESD for 2030 Roadmap and framework, particularly supporting UNESCO Member States in developing national strategies and initiatives to achieve the ESDfor2030 goals, and coordinating the ESD-NET, the global network of countries and partner organizations that promotes mutual learning, knowledge sharing, advocacy and monitoring of ESD.

Alicia Jiménez

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Alicia Jiménez is Director of Programmes at the Earth Charter International (ECI) Secretariat in Costa Rica. She is a biologist from the University of Costa Rica, with a MSc in Resource Development from Michigan State University in the United States and a PhD on Education from La Salle University, Costa Rica. Since 1998, she has been working in the field of conservation and sustainable development. She worked in the IUCN Mesoamerica’s Regional Office and the National University of Costa Rica, and has been involved as a visiting professor at the University for Peace. In 2006, she joined the ECI, where she oversees the Earth Charter work especially in Latin America, Africa & the Middle East and Asia Pacific. In addition, she is involved with the Secretariat’s projects on education for sustainable development, facilitating courses, workshops and research processes. As part of her doctoral research, Alicia generated the instruments and methodology of the Earth Charter School Seal. She received a fellowship at Leuphana University (Germany) to work in the area of transdisciplinarity and education for sustainable development.