Education is a human right, a public good and a public responsibility.
The United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed 24 January as International Day of Education, in celebration of the role of education for peace and development. The lack of access to education for girls, for example, is a very real issue which Malala is active in advocating for change to.
The World Environmental Education Day is 26 January – is an opportunity to highlight the importance of education to achieving environmental sustainability.
The main goal of the World EE Day is to identify environmental issues both globally and locally and to raise awareness about the need for participation in order to conserve and protect the environment, mitigating the various levels of impact caused by climate change.
The first Environmental Education Day was celebrated every 26 January since 1975. That year, the International Workshop on Environmental Education was organised in Belgrade and attended by experts from more than 70 countries.
The event established the principles of environmental education within the framework of United Nations programmes. The outcome of the event was the publishing of the Belgrade Charter, which embodies the fundamental demands of environmental education, the goals of which are as follows:
“To develop a world population that is aware of, and concerned about, the environment and its associated problems, and which has the knowledge, skills, attitudes, motivations and commitment to work individually and collectively towards solutions of current problems and the prevention of new ones.”
It is important to understand the causes and effects of climate change, realise that sustainable development is the way to meet people’s current needs without compromising the capacity of future generations and take stock of the fact that protecting the environment means ensuring our own survival. It is also vital that we understand what renewable energies are and how they can help us take care of our planet, and that water is a natural, limited and scarce resource that is essential to life on Earth.
Groups advocating for Environmental Education include:
United Kingdom –
United States of America –
Canada –
* sources : https://www.unesco.org/en ;
