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First meeting of the UNECE Steering Committee on Education for Sustainable Development

13 - 14 December 2005

The first meeting of the UNECE Steering Committee on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) took place on 13-14 December 2005 in Geneva. Thirty eight UNECE member States and the European Community took part in this event as did UNESCO, OSCE, Council of Europe, UNIDO, European Environmental Agency and several academic institutions, regional environmental centers and non-governmental organizations. Establishment of this Steering Committee that includes both Ministries is a unique project, there are no similar examples in other regions.

Countries reported on their progress in implementation of the UNECE Strategy for ESD and discussed challenges that lie ahead. The Committee also heard about good practices available in different parts of the region and agreed on some mechanisms to share them to make the implementation of the Strategy as practical and effective as possible. Strengthening synergies between ESD-related activities that take place within the frameworks of the UN Decade of ESD, the UNECE Strategy for ESD and the UN Commission on SD was strongly supported.

The Committee amended and adopted its work plan that outlines activities in support of the implementation and include a reporting mechanism. It considered a rather innovative project: a set of indicators to measure the effectiveness of the implementation of ESD. The key finding was that it is important to measure the effectiveness of the implementation throughout the whole implementation process, starting from the initial measures on governance up to the visible effects in society. This last issue is, understandably, very hard to identify and measure.

The Committee discussed a possible proposal on ESD for the Belgrade Ministerial "Environment for Europe " Conference to be held in October 2007. It suggested a general plenary session that would address cooperation on ESD between Environment and Education sectors and regional cooperation for the Strategy's implementation. The session could be combined with thematic panel discussion followed by interactive debates on ESD's role in solving emerging SD-related problems.

The elected chair of the Committee, Mr. Andreas Karamanos, Secretary General of Education (Greece) and the Vice-chair, Ms. Violeta Ivanov, Chief of Environmental Policy and European Integration Division, the Republic of Moldova, met the challenge to lead the process together and give a good start for the implementation of this new cross-sectoral activity. More
The documents for the meeting are posted on this page.

Documents

Document Title ENG FRE RUS
Agenda
Report
List of participants    
draft Work Plan (adopted as amended, see the report)
Progress Report on the work of the Expert Group on Indicators for ESD
Answers to the Questionnarie (English only)    

 

Interventions and Presentations

Interventions and Presentations ENG FRE RUS
Belgium
   
Canada    
Cyprus    
Czech Republic    
Croatia    
Estonia    
Finland    
France
   
Georgia    
Germany    
Germany (intervention on indicators for ESD)    
Greece    
Ireland    
Israel    
Italy    
Kyrgyzstan    
Kyrgyzstan (on behalf of Central Asia region)    
Latvia    
Lithuania    
Netherlands (indicators for ESD)    
Republic of Moldova    
Serbia and Montenegro    
Spain    
Turkmenistan (on behalf of the Central Asia region)  
United Kingdom    
Uzbekistan  
 
OSCE    
CAREC  
CAREC (project proposal)    
REC for the Caucasus    
COPERNICUS CAMPUS    
ENSI