The Role of Higher Education in Transforming Climate Education & Environment Lifelong Learning for All

This event is part of the Transforming Education Summit, taking place at UN headquarters in New York on 16–19 September 2022. Solutions Day on 17 September aims to mobilise support to launch or scale up initiatives connected to the summit.

Participants will showcase transformative climate education and lifelong learning initiatives at all levels of education. The session will pay particular attention to the role of higher education in bridging diverse sectors and key stakeholders to implement a whole-society approach to mainstreaming climate education towards net-zero by 2050. The consolidated outputs from the session will contribute to the new UNU-IAS initiative to develop a postgraduate degree specialisation on the Paris Agreement on climate change, to be launched in 2023.

Objectives include:

• To initiate a high-level dialogue on a whole-society approach to climate actions towards net-zero by 2050, including school and adult education, community actions, industries and international organisations.
• To explore key factors supporting a whole-society approach by sharing relevant policy implementation, promising examples and initiatives in the whole-society based climate education and lifelong learning across generations from the member states and leading HEIs institutions.
• To establish multi-sector partnerships aiming to enhance UNU’s new postgraduate programme to be a whole-society driven climate education.

Participation

This event is open to attendees of the Transforming Education Summit. It will be streamed live on UN Web TV.

Programme

13:00–13:05 Opening Remarks

• Xiaomeng Shen (Vice-Rector in Europe, UNU; Director, UNU Institute for Environment & Human Security)
• Stefania Giannini (Assistant Director-General for Education, UNESCO)

13:05–13:20 Framing Presentation

What Bhutan can teach the world about being carbon negative

• Karma Galay (Officiating Secretary, Ministry of Education, Bhutan)

13:20–14:05 Panel Discussion

Part 1 — The roles of higher education from the perspectives of the panels’ respective sectors in transforming climate education and actions towards net-zero by 2050

Part 2 — Key success factors in their respective whole society approaches to climate education and lifelong learning

Panelists:

• Markus González Beilfuss (Undersecretary, Ministry of Universities, Spain)
• Youssef Nassef (Director, Adaptation Division, UNFCCC)
• Melissa Brown (Senior Director, Environmental Innovations Initiative, University of Pennsylvania)
• Brittany Vermeulen (RCE Youth Coordinator, RCE Greater Western Sydney)
• Philip Osano (Centre Director, Stockholm Environment Institute Africa, Kenya)
• Shinobu Yume Yamaguchi (Director, UNU-IAS)

14:05–14:25 Q&A

14:25–14:30 Closing Remarks 

• Maki Hayashikawa (Director, Education 2030, UNESCO)

Speaker Profiles

Information on the speakers is available to view or download.