Eco-Schools & the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

There are two aspects to learning sustainability – learning about the issue and engaging with the issue. Hands-on engagement with the issue helps develop the skills to take-up a given problem, and through a positive attitude, attempt to solve it.

The Eco-Schools programme empowers children to live in a world that is connected and changing, a world that they will engage with as adults. The programme is Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in action and aims at providing every child with the opportunity to acquire the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values necessary to shape a sustainable future by integrating priority sustainable development issues into teaching and learning. The programme provides the hands-on experience of problem-solving skills (critical and creative thinking, decision making etc.), which then become competences of an active citizen.

With the enormous challenges before humanity, there is an important need for taking positive action. Our images of the future define and limit our performance. The quote by Henry Ford summarises it beautifully: “Whether you think you can, or think you can’t, you’re right.” The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide us with a vision of our common future. They set before us an Agenda to engage with for a sustainable Earth. ESD has the power to help more people share the same positive image of the future we want. The role of any Quality Education is to prepare for the societal norms and needs. The SDGs agreed by all the nations are a societal expectation on how we would like to see the development of humanity in harmony with other life forms on Earth.

In 2018, Eco-Schools published 'Positive Actions for the Sustainable Development Goals'. The publication aims to facilitate the team involved with the implementation of the Eco-Schools – teachers, students, school management, National Operators and other stakeholders who are working with teachers to understand how the Eco-Schools programme contributes in meeting the SDG targets. ESD in a way is civic actions that help understand issues better. It makes issues tangible.

The teachers’ role in the entire process is to facilitate and guide rather than teach. The positive actions suggested in the publication establish the connections with the SDGs, and the list of positive actions are the behavioural outcomes contributing to making a progress towards an SDG through the process of ESD.