Tomorrow Today

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UNEP’s environmental education activities

Ibrahim Thiaw, Director of the Division of Environmental Policy Implementation, United Nations Environment Programme

NEP’s environmental education and training (EET) activi-

ties aim to promote attitudes and value systems that

influence environmentally ethical behaviour by developing

understanding, skills and values that will enable people to partic-

ipate as active and informed citizens in the development of an

ecologically sustainable and socially just society. Environmental

education is fundamental to the achievement of the goal of sustain-

able development. Education, awareness raising and training are

essential to United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)

fulfilling its mandate of inspiring, informing and enabling nations

and people to achieve sustainable development.

MESA partnership

UNEP is a global leader in science-based environmental policy.

Globally, there is an urgent need to develop useful, high quality train-

ing and knowledge materials to assist universities and other tertiary

institutions in integrating environment and sustainability issues into

the teaching, research and management of their institutions. To excel

and be credible in science-based environmental policy, UNEP seeks

to strengthen its interactions with universities and to develop new

relationships as well. UNEP’s continuing successful engagement with

universities, for example under Mainstreaming Environment and

Sustainability into African Universities (MESA),

gives it

a comparative advantage.

Universities serve not only as a conduit to reach

the future generation but also as a pool of intellectual

capital that can be generated, utilized immediately and

linked to policy. Universities play a major role in socio-

economic and cultural behavioural change. In addition,

they are taking and will continue to take the lead in

the planning and implementation of future sustainable

development initiatives. The choice of universities is

strategic because:

• In their role as producers and transmitters of

knowledge, universities are vital in formulating,

influencing and implementing policies, guidelines

and management strategies in environmental

and sustainable development-related fields. Most

governments not only depend on experts from

universities, but also rely on and utilize research

outputs from them

• Universities’ core mission of teaching is an

instrumental process of building and developing

critically highly skilled human resources that

Participants at the 1st MESA Workshop, Nairobi, Kenya, 2008

Image: UNEP