About ESD
From the Decade of ESD to the Global Action Programme
In 2005, the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development was launched to enhance the role of education in promoting sustainable development. It has generated many success stories to be scaled up, with many intergovernmental agreements on sustainable development now duly recognizing the importance of education. At the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in 2012 (Rio+20), the international community agreed to “promote education for sustainable development, and to integrate sustainable development more actively into education beyond the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development”. In 2013, the 37th session of the General Conference of UNESCO endorsed the Global Action Programme (GAP) on ESD as the follow-up to the Decade. The GAP was launched at the UNESCO World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development held on 10-12 November 2014 in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan. Member States adopted the Aichi-Nagoya Declaration on Education for Sustainable Development to support the implementation of the GAP.
To date, ESD has been integrated into many global frameworks and conventions related to key areas of sustainable development, such as:
| climate change (Article 6 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and its work programmes); |
| biodiversity (Article 13 of the Convention on Biological Diversity, and its work programmes); |
| disaster risk reduction (Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015: Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters); and |
| sustainable consumption and production (Sustainable Lifestyles and Education Programme, of the 10-Year Framework of Programmes on Sustainable Consumption and Production 2012-2021). |
