UNESCO 2021 World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development: The Berlin Declaration
May 30, 2021
This conference brought together 88 ministers, 2800 registered participants and another 10,000 people who followed the debates via YouTube.
The main outcome of the conference as expressed in the ESD World Declaration of Berlin - is that education for sustainable development must become a key component throughout all levels of education by 2025. The ecological component of sustainable development must also be more firmly anchored in (school) curricula, of course with an intrinsic link to citizenship education in a global perspective (cf. SDG 4.7, which approaches both aspects in synergy).
The Berlin Declaration is also an incentive to implement the ESD for 2030 Roadmap through education policy in collaboration with other sectors related to sustainability.
The project SDG@school (in the context of the MOS project that promotes sustainability in Flemish schools) was selected by UNESCO as a good practice that was presented by colleagues from the Environment Department during one of the practical forums at the conference.
At the conference, the new publication 'Learning for our planet: a global review on how environmental issues are integrated in education' launched, written by Aaron Benavot (State University of New York/Albany). Until 2018, Prof. Benavot was director of the UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report that annually reports on the implementation of SDG4/Education 2030. He gave a lecture to the members of the Vlor during a conference on international frameworks for education, in 2019.