RCE Bulletin 31: January 2014

Submitted by admin on Mon, 2014-01-20 11:17

Issue 31: January 2014

Message from the Global RCE Service Centre:

Dear colleagues and friends

We hope you all have had a wonderful start to 2014. Here at the Global RCE Service Centre, 2014 has already brought us many positive changes. First, we welcome seven new RCEs to the RCE family: RCE Harare (Zimbabwe), RCE Changwon (Republic of Korea), RCE Waikato (New Zealand), RCE Uppsala (Sweden), RCE Lithuania, RCE Greater Portland (USA), and RCE Shenandoah Valley (USA). A warm welcome to all of you!

In addition, the United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies, which houses the Global RCE Service Centre, was recently merged with one of its sister institutes, the UNU Institute for Sustainability and Peace. The newly merged institute is now known as the UNU Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS). We are pleased to announce that our ESD Programme Director, Dr. Kazu Takemoto, has been appointed as Director of this new institute. Dr. Takemoto will continue his role as Director of the ESD Programme and expresses his sincere thanks to all of you for your continuous support in promoting ESD. Please join us in wishing him a hearty congratulations! (For more information on his appointment, please visit:http://unu.edu/media-relations/releases/dr-kazuhiko-takemoto-of-japan-named-director-of-new-unu-institute-for-the-advanced-study-of-sustainability.html#info.)

In other staffing news, Yuko Ichikawa has recently joined the ESD Programme as a programme support assistant, with a special focus on ProSPER.Net. Yuko brings with her a vast amount of experience in both international organizations and academia. She is very much looking forward to working with the entire ESD community, including both the RCE and ProSPER networks. Please join us in welcoming Yuko to the team!

This month we also say goodbye to Anna Dirksen, who has been leading the ESD Programme team's communications efforts at UNU-IAS since 2011. Despite her departure from the team, she will continue to support the ESD and RCE community in her future endeavours.

With much appreciation,

The Global RCE Service Centre

Upcoming Events

Youth Unite for Voluntary Action 2014 (YUVA Meet 2014)

3-4 February 2014

The annual youth initiative ‘Youth Unite for Voluntary Action 2014’ (YUVA Meet 2014) will be held from 3-4 February 2014 in Delhi, India as part of Delhi Sustainable Development Summit (DSDS:http://dsds.teriin.org/2014/). YUVA Meet aims at enabling youth to voice their opinions on a variety of sustainability issues and this year’s YUVA Meet will focus on the theme of “Innovation for a Sustainable Future – Transforming Learning into Action”.

Taking this opportunity, UNU-IAS will be organizing RCE Youth Session on 5 February 2014 in conjunction with YUVA Meet. We hope that this will give us an opportunity to follow up on some action points that were discussed during the thematic session on Youth during the Global RCE Conference in Nairobi, Kenya. If you have further questions, please contact rceservicecentre@ias.unu.edu.

ISCUS - International Students Conference on Urban Sustainability

24-25 February 2014

TUNILIVRE-Curitiba and its partners: the RCE-Curitiba-Paraná and the UTFPR-University Tecnological Federal of Paraná-Studio Cities & Biodiversity Project are very pleased to invite the colleagues of all RCEs to the ISCUS - International Students Conference on Urban Sustainability, which will take place in Curitiba - 24 and 25 February 2014. Please check the main information at the site http://www.unilivre.org.br/iscus/ as well as the themes to be focused. Other details will be add to the site soon. The International Students Conference on Urban Sustainability (ISCUS) aims to provide an opportunity for students from different countries to exchange knowledge and promoting research. By gathering presentations from undergraduate and graduate students on case studies, research and practical experiences on subject matters, it will also encourage the strengthening of international networking between students and the institutions.

1st Regional Conference on Campus Sustainability

7-9 April 2014

The 1st Regional Conference on Campus Sustainability (1RCCS) will be organized by Universiti Malaysia Sabah with the collaboration of Universiti Malaya, Higher Education Leadership Academy (AKEPT) and Palawan State University. Organizers welcome all delegates to this beautiful state of Malaysian Borneo.The conference will focus on a broad range of topics related to campus sustainability. The conference organizers invite posters and papers relevant to the theme of the conference “Building Sustainability Edge through Institutional Strategy”. More information is available here: http://www.ums.edu.my/ecomc/.

7th RCE Asia-Pacific Meeting

26-28 August 2014

The 7th RCE Asia-Pacific Meeting will be hosted by RCE Penang in Malaysia from 26-28 August 2014, in conjunction with the International Symposium on Sejahtera Living, Sustainable Community. Further details will be shared with RCEs in due course.

Latest News

Competition: Indian Himalayas Climate Adaptation Programme (IHCAP) of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation

The Indian Himalayas Climate Adaptation Programme (IHCAP) of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation in partnership Thirdpole are jointly organizing a competition for best media reports on climate change in the Indian Himalayas and invite entries from professional journalists. The thirdPole.Net launched in partnership with Earth Journalism Network, works in collaboration with multiple partners across the Himalayan region to bring regional and international experts, media and civil society together for discussion and information exchange. The competition is being organized to encourage appropriate reporting of climate change related issues in the Indian Himalayan Region and in turn to enhance climate change awareness among public. For eligibility information and more information about the awards, click http://ihcap.in/eawards2014.html.

Climate Change Awareness-Raising Campaign

Many of you have indicated the usefulness of the UNFCCC Climate Change and ESD Campaigns in your regions. Following up on this priority, please consider action that has been developed in collaboration with the UN Alliance on Climate Change Education, Training and Public Awareness - a participatory climate change awareness-raising campaign. We would greatly value your opinion, and invite you to take a few minutes to fill the following surveyhttps://www.surveymonkey.com/s/UNClimateAllianceSurvey. The first page of the survey gives a little more information on the subject, while on the last page respondents can subscribe to a newsletter to be the first to hear about the campaign they have helped create!

New Publications and Resources

New Publication: Sustainability Assessment Tools in Higher Education Institutions - Mapping Trends and Good Practices Around the World

Much has been written about sustainability in higher education, but despite the progress achievedover the years, and the plethora of publications on sustainable development produced to date, there are still many conceptual and practical gaps which need to be met. One of them is the need to map trends and good practice in higher education, and the ever-present need to document and disseminate them. The book ‘‘Sustainability Assessment Tools in Higher Education—Mapping Trends and Good Practices at Universities round the World’’ is anattempt to fill in this gap. The aim of this book is to provide a contribution to the state of the art thinking about current sustainability practices, with a focus on assessment tools, being used or applied in higher education institutions. As the UN Decade on Education for Sustainable Development (2005–2014) is coming to an end in 2014, this book provides a concrete contribution towards showing how sustainable development principles may be implemented in practice, and the sort of action that is needed in the coming decades. For more information, click here: http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-02375-5.

New Video: 2nd Regional Conference of RCEs in the Americas

The 2nd Americas Regional RCE Conference took place from 28 February 2013 to 2 March 2013 in Lima, Peru. Hosted by RCE Lima-Callao, the meeting brought together more than 50 participants from six RCEs across the Americas, in addition to more than a dozen special guests from UNESCO, UNICEF, the government of Peru and other local partners. While downloads of the presentations have been available online, RCE Lima-Callao is proud to release a video of the highlights from the conference. You can view the video here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkvx2wl1azE.

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

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

Visit the ESD Programme's News and Events page regularly for up-to-date news and event information.

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