Asia Pacific Coordinating Committee Agrees to Close Inter-RCE collaboration in the Region

On 9 May 2017, five RCEs and the Global RCE Service Centre joined in the first Asia Pacific RCE Coordinating Committee Meeting through Skype. RCE Greater Western Sydney (RCE GWS), RCE Iskandar, RCE Penang, RCE Tongyeong, and RCE Waikato discussed the role, structure and communication of the Committee. Mario Tabucanon (UNU-IAS) explained the envisioned tasks of the Committee to

• advise on the agenda of the AP RCE annual meeting;
• provide a platform for AP regional collaboration, and
• co-ordinate and report inter-RCE activities

The participants hoped to have a Pacific and a Japanese member at the Committee in the near future. In terms of structure of the Committee Munirah Ghazali (RCE Penang) and Mario Tabucanon emphasized the need of a rotating Chair to organise these meetings and set the agenda as well as having a rapporteur for each meeting. Munirah Ghazali agreed to chair this Committee during 2017 with Jen Dollin (RCE GWS) as rapporteur and communicator. The Committee will come together three times a year with email as the main channel of communication.

Asia Pacific RCE Meeting 2017

The Global RCE Service Centre is currently in the process of coordinating the next Asia Pacific (AP) Regional Meeting, which most likely will occur during the last quarter of 2017. A thematic RCE conference is also in the planning towards end of the year.

Inter RCE-Activities: Case Studies

During the 2016 AP RCE Meeting in Cha am, Thailand, RCEs submitted three Action Plans for the themes ‘Community’, ‘Higher Education’, and ‘Schools and Youth’. Unfortunately, the designated contacts for each of these plans did not respond to follow-up emails. Betsan Martin from RCE Waikato requested that climate education needed to be acknowledged specifically in each of these plans. The participants agreed that this could be a basis to develop more regionally integrated AP-RCE initiatives.

At the end of 2017, the Committee agreed to develop an Asia Pacific RCE Case Study to showcase the good work in the region. In order to do so, all RCEs will update the Action Plans and share them in a google documents folder.

The Committee is scheduled to meet again on August 8 2017.