Date/Time: 21 June, 2022, 11:00-12:30 (GMT+2)

The conservation of biodiversity has long had a contested relationship with the field of education for sustainable development (ESD). Many scholars have posited that ESD seeks to center anthropogenic systems within an understanding of the biosphere in education initiatives. However, in recent years a more nuanced view of ESD’s role in biodiversity conservation that conceptualises biodiversity conservation and human development initiatives complimenting rather than competing with one another has taken root.

This session 'Enacting Biodiversity Education and Transformative Learning within Communities: Lessons and Actions from the Global RCE Network', at the Sustainability Research & Innovation Congress 2022, will delve into innovative solutions developed by Regional Centres of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development (RCEs), and how their model of multi-stakeholder networks has been utilised to work with communities on biodiversity education and conservation initiatives successfully within an ESD framework. The session will be a dialogue offering both insights on individual conservation projects and overarching analysis of the projects conducted on biodiversity within the entire RCE network. This presentation will detail how working together with a variety of partners, individual RCEs have implemented projects in a range of biodiversity conservation areas focusing on the protection and restoration of ecosystems, habitats, and species.

The projects highlighted have served to educate, engage, and spur action in communities to protect biodiversity, underscoring the transformative role that education can play in realising biodiversity conservation. In this presentation, RCE members will reflect on working with RCE projects on biodiversity conservation in the field, providing insights into responses taken in the face of local biodiversity issues, and reflecting on how projects can be modified and/or improved upon. At the end of this presentation, both RCE members and UNU-IAS staff will make recommendations of actions that can be shared and upscaled across other regions and communities, and reflections on how similar projects can be replicated, improved, and scaled up.

Register for online attendance here.