Issue #55: February 2016

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Issue 55: February 2016

 

Message from the Global RCE Service Centre:

 

Dear colleagues and friends,

The open call to host regional and global RCE meetings closed on 29 February 2016. We received several expressions of interest. For the regions Africa and the Americas, the Global RCE Service Centre is still in the process of evaluating different proposals, but you can already find the details for the Europe and Asia Pacific meetings below. Regarding the global RCE conference, we will share more details in due course.

Asia Pacific RCEs meeting hosted by RCE Cha-am, 27 June -1 July 2016, Cha-am, Thailand

The Asia-pacific RCEs are scheduled to meet during 27 June to 1 July 2016 in Cha-am, Thailand for a three-part gathering hosted by RCE Cha-am. The RCEs will be participating in the International Conference on Climate Change, Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) during 27-28 Juneand will hold the 9th Asia-Pacific RCE Meeting on 29 June. The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Capacity Building Workshop on Policy Support Tools and methodologies will be held on 30 June to 1 July where a number of Asia-Pacific RCEs will be participating.

Inquiries regarding the conference should be addressed to Ms. Areeporn Sittiyanpaiboon, Coordinator of RCE Cha-am (ccbes.siep@mail.com or areeporn_siep@yahoo.com. More information on the Asia-Pacific RCE Meeting and the IPBES Capacity Building Workshop will be shared soon.

European RCEs meeting hosted by RCE London, 23-24 June, 2016, London, UK (Date and programme TBC)

RCE Applications

146 RCEs have been acknowledged globally as of March 2016. Organisations that are interested in initiating the RCE process and applying to become an RCE are requested to submit an application (Guidelines for RCE applications) and an application summary by Tuesday, 31 May 2016 to the Global RCE Service Centre. The Global RCE Service Centre will then provide comments and feedback by 15 July 2016. Thereafter, candidates can re-submit their revised final draft by the 16 September 2016.

UNU-IAS does not require a specific format to be followed for the main application document, as long as all required information is provided. You also can refer sample applications of acknowledged RCE Wales and RCE Crete. Applications and application summaries should be sent to the Global RCE Service Centre.

Sincerely,

The Global RCE Service Centre

UNU-IAS

 

Upcoming Events

 

8th European Conference on Sustainable Cities & Towns

27-29 April, 2016, Bilbao, Spain

Early bird registration is open until 4 March for the 8th European Conference on Sustainable Cities & Towns, the flagship conference on local sustainable development in Europe. Read more.

10th MMUST International Conference: Universal health coverage: Innovative strategies towards attainment of SDGs

24-26 May, 2016, Kakamega, Kenya

The 10th MMUST International Conference on Health will focus on the following sub-themes: Global health, health systems, education and communication, politics, and society, culture and health. Read more

66th UN Department of Public Information (DPI)/NGO Conference

Education for Global Citizenship: Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals Together

30 May – 1 June, 2016, Gyeongju, Republic of Korea

The topic for this year’s conference is Education for Global Citizenship. Conference participants will strive to define culturally appropriate international and regional messaging, learning and advocacy strategies, partnerships and governmental accountability frameworks including financing for development. Read more

World Education Congress: Quality education for sustainable and inclusive growth

23-24 June, 2016, Mumbai, India

During the World Education Congress participants will discuss "Evolving Trends in Education". The congress will examine modern as well as traditional knowledge systems.Read more

7th Global Forum on Urban Resilience and Adaptation

6-8 July, 2016, Bonn, Germany

Resilient Cities is the global platform for urban resilience and climate change adaptation, organized by ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability and co-hosted with the City of Bonn, Germany. The programme of 2016 focuses on inclusive resilience strategies, financing the resilient city, measuring and monitoring progress, resilience and adaptation planning, governance and collaboration, resource management, and resilient infrastructure. Read more

2nd Global GAP Partner meeting

5-6 July, 2016, Paris, France

The second global meeting of the Partner Networks of the GAP will serve to review the progress achieved and challenges encountered by the Partner Networks, find and assess synergies and collaboration established among partners, reflect on the first implementation results and the challenges encountered and solutions found. The partners will also discuss, and commonly define and share appropriate scaling up mechanisms for the GAP. Finally the future work of the Partner Networks towards the Global Forum in 2017 will be structured and planned.

Rethinking sustainability models and practices: Challenges for the new and old world contexts

13-15 July, 2016, Lisbon, Portugal

This event will be preceded by the 1st Luso-Brazilian Symposium (11-12 July) on Sustainability Models and Practices. The major theme will focus on the current sustainability strategies, policies, practices and approaches and the need to rethink their roles and applicability in different socio-cultural and economic contexts. Read more

For more events visit our ESD calendar.

 

Open Calls

 

2016 UNESCO-Japan Prize on ESD

UNESO has launched the call for nominations for the 2016 UNESCO-Japan Prize on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Endowed with US$150,000, it honours outstanding efforts of individuals, institutions and organizations engaged in ESD. Read more

Sejahtera Fellowship at the Sejahtera Centre for RCEs in Asia Pacific

The Sejahtera Fellowship will allow a researcher to stay in Tongyeong, Republic of Korea for a few months and conduct research of his/her interest to produce a research report. Applications for the 2016 Sejahtera Fellowship will open in March 2016 for the research term of April to November 2016 and is offered to a member of the Asia Pacific RCEs Sejahtera network.

More open calls and vacancies can be found in the CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT section on the RCE portal.

 

Latest News

 

Japanese RCEs meet to discuss 2016 strategies

The Japanese RCEs meeting was held on 3 February 2016 in Yokohama, Japan hosted by RCE Yokohama. The new RCE, RCE Hokkaido Central was welcomed by all other six Japanese RCEs (RCE Greater Sendai, RCE Yokohama, RCE Chubu, RCE Hyogo-Kobe, RCE Okayama and RCE Kitakyushu). Each RCE reported on the activities implemented in 2015 and shared their strategies for 2016. Read more

RCE Graz-Styria reflects on local, regional and national GAP initiatives

A year after meeting in Okayama at the Global RCE Conference, RCE Graz-Styria and SEKEM Austria organised the event “The implementation of the GAP on ESD: Local initiatives and transnational knowledge exchange". More than 150 experts, students, pupils, scientists, NGO representatives, politicians and civil servants gathered at the University of Graz on 21 of January 2016, to learn more about the GAP and discuss further steps to foster ESD on a local, national and transnational level. They also reflected with local, national and international partners on the current GAP implementation in Austria. Read more

EduCamp ESD Teaching Kits

The EduCamp kits are novel tools to support student-centred teaching methodologies. They assist teachers in implementing ESD in their in/outdoor activities. There are five teaching kits in the areas of Our World, Biodiversity, Agriculture, Energy, and Water. All of the materials provided in these four books focus on the implementation of student-centred pedagogical approaches on ESD topics through experiments, class discussions, debates, role plays, games, and other methods. Read more

UN General Assembly reaffirms role of ESD

The General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution recognizing Education for Sustainable Development as “a vital means of implementation for sustainable development”, taking note of UNESCO's final report on the UN Decade of ESD, and reaffirming UNESCO’s lead. Read more

#KnowYourGoals Campaign by SDSN-Youth

In partnership with Eco Boys and Girls, Oikos International, Project Everyone, Action/2015 and The World's Largest Lesson, the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network - Youth (SDSN-Y) launched the ‪#‎KnowYourGoalsglobal campaign. It has now spread over 42 countries and has reached more than 10,000 individuals.

Indian Cities Assess Potential for District Energy

ICLEI South Asia, in collaboration with United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), has initiated a project to help Indian cities accelerate their transition to low-carbon and climate-resilient development through modern District Energy Systems (DES). Entitled “Renewable Energy Efficiency in Buildings & Cities: Assessing Potential for District Energy Systems (DES) in Indian Cities”, the project aims to provide technical assistance and capacity building activities to local governments and stakeholders in India to develop a replicable modern district energy approach, particularly for district cooling, that can be further scaled up across the country. Read more

Global Education Conversation 2016 – watch the outcomes of the Education World Forum

The Education World Forum took place from 17 to 20 January 2016. The event saw ministers and their senior advisers representing over 80 per cent of the world’s population gather to debate future education policy. Watch the video: Global Education Conversation 2016 .

Can you imagine a Clean World?

A Clean World is exactly what Let's Do It! World is after, when organising a World Cleanup Day 8 September 2018. They intend to engage the whole world from for one big World Cleanup Day, to collect trash. Let’s Do It! A world a civic-led mass movement that began in Estonia in 2008 when 50,000 people united to clean up the entire country (10,000 tonnes of waste) in just five hours. Since then, with the help of volunteers, the model—one country in one day— spread around the world. To date, 112 countries and 14,5 million people have joined and cleaned up more than 500,000 tonnes of illegal waste. In order to prepare for World Cleanup Day, Let’s Do It! World are looking for people and partners, using existing know-how on sensible waste management practices and seeking for more, to create a Clean World plan. Read more

ESD recognized in COP21 agreement

The critical role of education in climate change was given the stamp of approval at the international climate conference, COP21, in Paris in December. Article 12 on education states that “parties shall cooperate in taking measures…to enhance climate change education, training, public awareness, public participation and public access to information.” Read more

 

ESD Books, Publications and Other

 

The Open Government Guide Special Edition: Implementing the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda

To support OGP countries’ pledge to use future national action plans to spur progress across the 17 SDGs, the OGP Support Unit and the Transparency and Accountability Initiative present this special edition of the Open Government Guide. Read more

Manual for evaluating and monitoring partnerships, UNESCO and WEF

This manual is for practitioners of multi-stakeholder partnerships for education. These are voluntary initiatives involving government, business and civil society players to seek to bring about positive change in education towards the Education for ALL goal. Read more

UNESCO Guide for evaluating and monitoring community-based projects

Although published in 2009, this guide is still useful for anyone setting up, planning or working with community development projects. Read more

A call for joint action to achieve the SDGs: Advancing integrated solutions to accelerate change

Joint statement by important organizations (UNEP, UN Habitat, ICLEI, CBD, WRI, WWF, IUCN, and the Inter-parliamentary Union) to commit to the multi-stakeholder partnership approach and to scale up action towards the SDGs. Read more

 

This is a publication of UNU-IAS RCE Global Service Centre.

If you wish to contribute to the monthly bulletin or have news, upcoming events, or publications, you would like to share, please use this form. You can mail it to the Global RCE Service Centre: rceservicecentre@unu.edu. Submissions must be made by the 15th of every month. In addition, we encourage you to continue using the RCE Portal to exchange ideas, share expertise and resources and deliberate emerging sustainability issues towards ESD implementation at a global level.

Please send your comments, suggestions and materials to rceservicecentre@unu.edu.