The UN Secretary-General calls the climate crisis ‘a battle for our lives’, as we still struggle to transform our societies to reach the 1.5°C-degree path recommended by the Paris Agreement. 

The Greening Education Partnership is a global initiative that takes a whole-of-system approach to address the climate crisis by harnessing the critical role of education. As a collaborative platform for governments and stakeholders- including inter-governmental organizations, civil society, youth, academia, and private sector- the Greening Education Partnership aims to deliver strong, coordinated and comprehensive action and prepare every learner with the skills, values, attitudes and beliefs to tackle climate change.

By forging a strong multi-stakeholder alliance, it aims to provide expertise, resources, and diverse solutions that deliver on greening schools, curricula, and communities to foster climate change adaptation and sustainable development. 

It builds on the longstanding work of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and its approach to holistic life-long learning, in particular SDG 4.7 and 13.3. Article 6 of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and Article 12 of the Paris Agreement which stresses the importance of climate change education.

The Greening Education Partnership aims to empower learners from early childhood through adult education by collaborating with other global initiatives that support the greening and digital transitions –ensuring foundational learning, gender transformative and inclusive approaches, and making education systems climate-smart and crisis-resilient. 

Key issues

• Around half of 100 countries reviewed in a recent UNESCO survey had no mention of climate change in their national curriculum
• While 95% of surveyed primary and secondary teachers felt that teaching climate change is important, less than 30% expressed a readiness to teach it.
• 70% of young people say that they do not feel ready for climate change based on what they have learned. 

Objective

To ensure all learners acquire knowledge, skills, values, attitudes and action to tackle climate change and to promote sustainable development.

Goals

• Taking a life-long learning approach starting from early childhood to adult education, collective action will be channeled around four systematic pillars for transformative education:
• Greening Schools to ensure a whole-institution approach, including greening teaching and learning, climate-ready school facilities and operations, inclusive governance, and community engagement 
• Greening Curriculum to ensure relevant and quality of learning content and pedagogy on climate change education 
• Greening Teacher Training and Education Systems' Capacities to strengthen policy, planning, finance, and implementation. 
• Greening Communities to become climate resilient through lifelong learning.

Strategies and activities

The Greening Education Partnership will foster better coordination and stronger collaboration among its members to enable synergies through:

• Collaboration: among stakeholders to avoid duplication and foster strategic implementation and allocation of resources.
• Knowledge management and research: To facilitate sharing of good practices, development of strategic evidence and foresight to support implementation as part of fostering a community of practice.
• Advocacy and communication: To raise awareness and leverage further commitment and action at global, regional and country levels.
• Monitoring of progress: To strategically and effectively steer the actions undertaken by the members, including on the impact of the actions.
• Resource mobilization: To increase coherence and reduce fragmentation of the actions at country level while improving the overall effectiveness of the results.

Activities and events

• Education World Forum side event
• Bonn Conference side event
• Capacity building webinars 
• Climate Change Conference COP events (including Greening Education Partnership Annual meeting, high-level events on education, education pavilion)

Participating countries

A growing membership of over 60 countries have joined the Partnership, expressing interest to contribute to at least 2 or more of the 4 pillars of action.

Conveners

The Greening Education Partnership was convened by UK, Japan and UNESCO. It is being led by Member States and Partners through Advisory Group and 4 Working Groups and is supported by UNESCO as its secretariat.

Partners

A growing membership of over 700 organizations have pledged their commitment, including UNEP, UNFCCC, UNICEF, ILO, WFP, IRENA, UNITAR, UNU, European Commission, GPE, Dubai Cares, Aga Khan Foundation, Office of Climate Education, Microsoft, Huawei, Plan International, Education International, FEE.

How to engage 

Member States, key stakeholder organizations can express their interest and willingness to join the Partnership through the expression of interest form linked below. 

• Member States: Fill in the form
• Stakeholders: Fill in the form

For questions, please reach out to UNESCO Section for Education for Sustainable Development at gep@unesco.org

• Greening Education Partnership web page
• Education World Forum 2023: UNESCO mobilizes ministers on greening education and digital transformation

Follow the conversation on social media #GreeningEducation