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.