Our mission is to support the Earth Charter Initiative by advancing the use of the Charter in educational settings all over the world. This also involves ensuring that the Initiative's goal of education for a sustainable way of life is accomplished.

Center's Objective

The Center's primary objective is to promote education for sustainable development processes. We also seek to increase the adoption and use of the Earth Charter as an educational tool and guiding framework by as many teachers, educators and learners as possible, in formal and nonformal educational settings around the world. The Center's secondary objective is to serve as a general resource for the Earth Charter Initiative in Latin America. Read more about our objectives, projects and activities.

What is Education for Sustainable Development?

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) processes emphasize the need for stimulating a holistic, integrated and interdisciplinary approach to developing the knowledge and skills needed for a sustainable future as well as changes in values, behaviour, and lifestyles.

This requires us to reorient education systems, policies and practices in order to empower everyone, young and old, to make decisions and act in culturally appropriate and locally relevant ways to address the problems that threaten our common future.

According to UNESCO, ESD is about learning to:

• respect, value and preserve the achievements of the past;
• appreciate the wonders and the peoples of the Earth;
• live in a world where all people have sufficient food for a healthy and productive life;
• assess, care for and restore the state of our Planet;
• create and enjoy a better, safer, more just world;
• be caring citizens who exercise their rights and responsibilities locally, nationally and globally.

This represents a new vision of education, a vision that helps people of all ages better understand the world in which they live, addressing the complexity and interconnectedness of problems such as poverty, wasteful consumption, environmental degradation, urban decay, population growth, health, conflict and the violation of human rights that threaten our future.

ESD aims at demonstrating the following features:

• Interdisciplinary and holistic: learning for sustainable development should be embedded in the whole curriculum, not as a separate subject;
• Values-driven: it is critical that the assumed norms - the shared values and principles underpinning sustainable development - are made explicit so that that can be examined, debated, tested and applied;
• Critical thinking and problem solving: leading to confidence in addressing the dilemmas and challenges of sustainable development;
• Multi-method: word, art, drama, debate, experience, different pedagogies which model the processes. Teaching that is geared simply to passing on knowledge should be recast into an approach in which teachers and learners work together to acquire knowledge and play a role in shaping the environment of their educational institutions;
• Participatory decision-making: learners participate in decisions on how they are to learn;
• Applicability: the learning experiences offered are integrated in day to day personal and professional life;
• Locally relevant: addressing local as well as global issues, and using the language(s) which learners most commonly use. Concepts of sustainable development must be carefully expressed in other languages - languages and cultures say things differently, and each language has creative ways of expressing new concepts.

(Source: UNESCO Framework for the UN DESD- International Implementation Scheme)

The Center's Strategic Priorities

The priorities of the Earth Charter Center for Education for Sustainable Development are:

1. Outreach to educators, via education networks.
2. Promote formal institutional adoption and implementation of ESD, with the Earth Charter as primary reference document.
3. Develop courses and materials to be disseminated through education and environment ministries and key strategic partnerships.
4. Coordinate and support a network of organizations and individuals using the Earth Charter as an educational tool.

Projects and Activities

The Center works to:

• Promote and disseminate existing educational materials based on the Earth Charter through education ministries, education networks, United Nations agencies, and other important channels.
• Seek strategic partnerships with key individuals, organizations and networks to further develop materials and to deliver courses and workshops.
• Engage governments in formally incorporating Education for Sustainable Development and the Earth Charter into national education systems (in the framework of the UN Decade on ESD).
• Generate new materials that can help advance education for sustainable development and the use of the Earth Charter.
• Design and deliver university courses based on the Earth Charter.
• Develop and deliver training workshops on ESD and the Earth Charter.
• Serve as a catalyst and support mechanism for a network of organizations and individuals who use the Earth Charter as an educational tool.
• Collaborate with the University for Peace.

Resource Center

The Earth Charter Education Center, in collaboration with affiliates, partners, advisors and council members, is developing and managing a comprehensive list of resources on education for sustainable development (ESD) and the Earth Charter, and will be providing a list of selected best resources.

Earth Charter Education Resources:

• Publications
• Stories and Experiences
• Presentations
• Speeches
• Videos

Resources for Education for Sustainable Development

• Books
• Journal articles
• Tools
• University Courses
• University Master's programme
• Related websites

Click here to go the Center's website.