UNU promotes educational centers for sustainable dev’t

Dr. A.H. Zakri, director of the Institute of Advanced Studies of the United Nations University (UNU-IAS) in Yokohama, Japan, was recently in Manila to attend the ASEAN-EU University Network Programme (AUNP).

The theme of the third roundtable was "Regional Cooperation in a Globalizing World Enhancing University and Private Sector Cooperation, Partnerships and Institutional Linkages."

Zakri spoke about education and sustainable development, promoting the UN Decade for Education for Sustainable Development against the backdrop of environmental degradation.

This effort is backed up by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a four-year study (2001-2005) undertaken by 1,360 experts from 95 countries to assess the state of the world’s ecosystems.

The Millennium report, launched in March this year, revealed that:

• First, in the last 50 years, humans have changed the ecosystems of the world more than any other period in history due largely to the demand for food, fresh water, timber, fiber and fuel.

This has resulted in the threat to biodiversity, with some 10 to 30 percent of mammal, bird and amphibian species now facing looming extinction.

• Second, capture fisheries and freshwater services are now well beyond levels that could be sustained and will significantly be diminished.

• Third, the degradation of ecosystems, through the spread and emergence of new diseases, is hampering efforts to meet the UN Millennium development goals, such as cutting the percentage of hungry people by 2015.

• Fourth, the policy and institutional changes necessary to reverse ecosystem degradation do not largely exist.

Taking up from the fourth finding, the UNU-IAS homes in on the need for a multi-disciplinary effort to make sustainable development a constant goal in community and national institutions.

The UNU-IAS is taking the lead in setting up focal points around the world that will be an evolving center for cooperative efforts for sustainable development.

Called Regional Centers of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development or RECs, they could find home in government, university or private organizations.

Pilot centers exist in Barcelona (Spain), the Greater Sendai and Okayama (Japan), Penang (Malaysia), Rhine-Meuse region (Germany), Toronto (Canada) and one in Fiji for the Pacific Island countries.