The Environmental Management Bureau (EMB) convened on June 28-29 environment experts from the academe and the business community for a two-day forum to discuss current “green” practices of schools and communities and related emerging trends.
EMB Director Ely Anthony Ouano said the forum was held to draw up strategies and craft action plans to expand and accelerate work on the greening of schools and communities nationwide.
“By staging this forum, we hope to engage the active participation of students, teachers, parents and communities, government agencies at the national and local levels, NGOs, business and media to work together to make better use of our environment and natural resources,” Ouano said.
Speakers were experts from the Miriam College-Environmental Studies Institute, Regional Center for Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development in Cebu, Management Association of the Philippines, and the Philippine Association of Tertiary Level Educational Institutions in Environmental Protection and Management, the League of Cities of the Philippines and the University of the Philippines-National Institute for Science and Mathematics Education Development.
The forum was a follow-up on the updated National Environmental Education Plan Sustainable Development for 2005-2014. It also forms part of the Philippine initiative in support of the declaration of 2005-2014 as the United Nations (UN) Decade of Education for Sustainable Development which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in a Resolution in December 2002.
Spearheaded by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) it drafted a proposal that summarized the four pillars of education through the following:
1) recognition of the challenge – learning to know;
2) collective responsibility and constructive partnership – learning to live together;
3) acting with determination – learning to do;
4) the indivisibility of human dignity – learning to be.
It has also identified eight key action themes for the UN decade namely, overcoming poverty; gender equality; health promotion; environment; rural development; cultural diversity; peace and human security; and sustainable urbanization. – Benny Enriquez