World conference on education for sustainable development opens next week in Japan

NEW DELHI: Unesco's director-general, the Crown Prince of Japan and Princess Lalla Hasna of Morocco — the President of the Mohammed VI Foundation for the Protection of the Environment will open the World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan on November 10, 2014.

The conference will mark the end of the UN Decade of ESD (2005-2014) will create a roadmap to launch the Global Action Programme (GAP), a follow-up to the decade that will propose new goals and objectives, priority action areas and strategies.

Under the banner "Learning Today for a Sustainable Future", more than 1,000 participants from over 100 countries are expected to attend, including representatives of UNESCO Member States, NGOs, academia, the private sector, individual experts, youth and UN agencies. So far, 56 ministers and 17 vice-ministers, mainly representing ministries of education, have confirmed their attendance.

The conference will host four plenary sessions and a high-level roundtable over a three-day period. Thirty four workshops, 25 side events and 44 exhibition booths will give stakeholders and partners an opportunity to showcase their work and discuss specific ESD issues. Successful initiatives from all over the world will help to generate future action under the GAP.

At its closing, the conference will announce the Aichi-Nagoya Declaration, which will be an important contribution to the new sustainable development goals that come into effect in 2015. It will also provide input to the World Education Forum, taking place in Incheon, Republic of Korea, next May.

The conference on ESD in Nagoya is co-organized by UNESCO and the Government of Japan, and hosted and funded by the Government of Japan.