As you are aware, the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) is coming to an end in 2014. As a follow-up to the Decade, UNESCO has developed the Global Action Programme (GAP) on ESD, which was endorsed by the 37th session of UNESCO’s General Conference in 2013 and will be launched at the World Conference on ESD to be held from 10 to 12 November 2014 in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan. The Programme will also be forwarded to the United Nations General Assembly at its 69th session in 2014 for consideration and appropriate action.
The GAP has five Priority Action Areas aimed at (i) policy-makers, (ii) institutional leaders, (iii) educators, (iv) youth and (v) local authorities. To successfully launch and implement the Programme, whose focus is on multiplying and accelerating concrete actions on the ground, UNESCO is inviting stakeholders across the world to register their Launch Commitments for the GAP in advance of the World Conference on ESD.
Launch Commitments are concrete plans to undertake specific ESD activities to support the GAP and will be announced on the UNESCO website and at the World Conference. They will help identify partners with whom it will form partner networks and will also provide an important basis for the periodic reporting on GAP implementation planned by UNESCO.
As part of our commitment to inform and influence policy and practice in the area of higher education for sustainable development, the CA Secretariat will submit two Launch Commitments to progress the Rio+20 Treaty on Higher Education and the UE4SD Project.
We would also like to encourage CA individual member institutions to register their Launch Commitments or visit the UNESCO World Conference on ESD website.
The deadline for the registration is 15 August 2014.