harnessing nature for sustainable development

Educar para restaurar el equilibrio en la Tierra

May 18, 2015 Irina Bokova and Christiana Figueres

PARÍS – 2015 es un punto de inflexión para la comunidad internacional, con el establecimiento de una nueva agenda para el desarrollo mundial y las negociaciones para alcanzar un acuerdo universal frente al cambio climático. Se trata de elementos de una agenda común que hay que cumplir con éxito y la educación es esencial si queremos erradicar la pobreza, promover la dignidad humana a la vez que restaurar el equilibrio en el planeta.

En ese camino, la mayoría de los ministros de educación del mundo tienen ante sí una gran oportunidad: el Foro Mundial sobre la Educación que se celebrará en Incheon, República de Corea, del 19 al 21 de mayo.

La educación es la base de la sostenibilidad. Invertir en educación es revertir la pobreza en oportunidades, es mejorar la salud, fortalecer la resiliencia y favorecer el crecimiento. La evidencia es irrefutable.

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Irina Bokova

Writing for PS since 2015
3 Commentaries

Irina Bokova is Director-General of UNESCO.

Christiana Figueres

Writing for PS since 2015
13 Commentaries

Christiana Figueres is a former executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, where she oversaw the landmark Paris agreement on climate change.

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 4 Comments on this article

Georges RADJOU Aug 5, 2015

I am 360 agree Education for sustainability should be the first pillar of our paradigm change.
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Mr Econotarian May 20, 2015

In "The Elusive Quest for Growth", William Easterly notes that while schooling did increase in the East Asian countries experiencing growth miracles, educational attainment actually increased more in sub-Saharan Africa, which experienced dismal growth. Furthermore, he notes that Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union compared favorably with Western Europe and the United States in years of schooling attained, yet per capita incomes in those countries were substantially lower. Easterly also cites the work of Peter Klenow, a Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis economist, who finds that variations in human capital growth (such as education) explain less than 10 percent of the variation in growth rates across countries.

Enhancements in Economic Freedom are the only path to development, "sustainable" or otherwise. That is what the poor, bottom billion of the world really need. Perhaps that is what needs to be taught, that freer markets lead to more development, and the education and "sustainability" will follow.
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Michael Public May 19, 2015

Your intentions are a noble one, but too often in Africa I have seen that education does not bring with it a better value system. Rather it brings better tools for the educated class to suppress the uneducated as a kind of slave class. Values are spread not top down in a classroom but rather bottom up, let a man with no values work with a man with values and he will never remain unaffected. The unrealistic idea of removing all barriers to immigration in every country would be the best way to achieve spread of value systems.
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David Hjalmarsson May 19, 2015

I agree, we need to better prepare future leaders and policymakers alike (but also informed and empowered citizens). To do that, we need to do something about the field of economics. In short, we need more pluralistic economics.
The world is facing a series of new and global challenges, some of which, like climate change and resource depletion, are the greatest of our times. In order to effectively and efficiently meet these challenges, we need visionary, knowledgeable, and, not least, critical policymakers equipped with more diverse toolkits. For example, students should be introduced to ecological economics, discuss the ‘beyond GDP’ initiative, and critically learn about multiple schools of thoughts.
In some sense, our growth models have been tremendously successful, but it is becoming clearer that they have failed in terms of accounting for multiple aspects of well-being, and, not the least, of sustainability.
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