III. Writing in the Discipline as a Platform in Education for Sustainable Development

UNESCO Intersectoral Platform: Education for sustainable development

• Mark Richmond, Platform Manager, DIR/ED/UNP

The ESD Platform aims to contribute to Member States’ efforts to improve the quality of education through integrating sustainable development issues and practices into all types, levels and settings of education. It focuses on such areas as policy, capacity development, knowledge enhancement and awareness-raising.

The launch of the ESD Intersectoral Platform provided the opportunity to strengthen the pre-existing internal coordination mechanisms on ESD, including the Intersectoral Working Group on ESD and the UNESCO Action Plan for the Decade for ESD. Taking the Action Plan as its foundation, the platform has defined its strategy, expected results and priority focus for this biennium.

Led by the Education Sector, the platform benefits from substantial contributions from all Programme Sectors and many field offices. It works with a wide range of partners including educational and research institutions, the media, the private sector and civil society.

In a recent initiative, platform created an intersectoral working group to establish a results-oriented monitoring mechanism, by developing performance indicators to assess the platform’s achievements, in close collaboration with the Bureau of Strategic Planning (BSP).

The preparation of a global monitoring and evaluation report focusing on the context and structure of the work on ESD is currently underway. In the area of capacity-building, a media training and resource kit on sustainable development issues for journalists has been developed.
Examples of field activities include a technical group for the National DESD Strategy established in Namibia and the launch of a project to mainstream ESD in the curriculum in Angola. In the Apia cluster, an implementation plan for the ESD intersectoral programme has been developed.
The platform seeks to ensure gender balance and sensitivity as well as to promote women’s involvement in planning, implementing and monitoring ESD activities. It will develop a conceptual framework on the linkage between gender and ESD.

The platform will support the operationalisation of the Regional Strategy of ESD for Sub-Saharan Africa by promoting synergies across regions and providing technical support, especially to on-going activities.