Eleventh meeting of the UN ECE Steering Committee on ESD

Eleventh Meeting of the UNECE Steering Committee on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) held in Geneva on February 15‑16th, 2016 and was attended by representatives of the national governments from the UNECE region and other organizations; its programme has been particularly devoted to the reflection of the work under the UNECE Strategy for ESD (adopted in 2005) and prospect for the future under this framework. To this end, activities to promote ESD, synergies with ESD networks and processes, and other topics were discussed together with relevant documents which are now publicly available on the meeting's web page ( http://www.unece.org/index.php?id=41587#/)

During the Meeting, two official documents were revised:

1) Draft future implementation framework, and

2) Draft ministerial statement.

Both documents will be finalised by the Committee on Environmental Policy (23-25 February 2016) and further officially submitted for the Eighth Environment for Europe Ministerial Conference (Batumi, Georgia, 8-10 June 2016).

There was also discussed draft program of High-level Segment on Education for Sustainable Development. In this part there is still not clear if NGO delegation will able to have own presentation.

Other informal documents discussed at the Meeting include the draft publication " Ten years of the UNECE Strategy for Education for Sustainable Development" which presents case studies and good practices from the region.

The Steering Committee also informed participants that the funding situation of the Strategy for ESD is very tight, and the regional activities under the Strategy are funded exclusively through contributions by member States to the “trust fund” but recently missing. Participants were encouraged to think about the possibilities to support the continuation of the SC work financially – taking into account the role of the national governments as well as networks and other social actors which have been recognized in the Draft future implementation framework as important stakeholders in ESD processes.