The purpose of the Chair is to promote transformative education experiences that cultivate the fundamental values and ethical vision necessary to move towards a more sustainable world.
The uniqueness of this project is that it will work at the intersection of education, sustainability, and ethics using the Earth Charter as a framework. It will develop workshops and courses for educators, young leaders, and business groups. The courses will also offer an opportunity to further explore the practical implementation of the sustainability paradigm and the Earth Charter principles in management, leadership, and education settings.
The specific objectives of this Chair are to:
1) Contribute to the sustainability research field by developing, in coordination with a network of organizations, essays, books, and other publications related to education for sustainability.
2) Collaborate with universities and other education and research centers in the implementation of the UN Decade for ESD, working in the field of education for sustainability to enhance the process of incorporating values of sustainability into educational settings.
3) Design and organize transformative learning courses, workshops, and materials on ethics and sustainability for various groups.
4) Offer training on tools for ethics-based evaluation processes based on the Earth Charter.
This effort will facilitate collaboration among researchers, universities, and education centers from all regions of the world interested in this field of research and training: education, sustainability, and ethics using the Earth Charter.
The Agreement to establish this UNESCO Chair was signed in January 2012 by the UNESCO Director General, the UPEACE Rector, and the Earth Charter Center for ESD Director. The initial partner institutions joining this UNESCO Chair are: The Costa Rican Commission of cooperation with UNESCO, University of Brighton (UK), National University (UNA, Costa Rica), University of International Cooperation (UCI, Costa Rica), La Salle University (Costa Rica), and Simon Bolivar University (Venezuela). It is expected that many others will be involved.
