SEMINAR: The Green Schools Movement around the World: Stories of success and frustration

The green school movement under various names (Eco Schools, Enviroschools, Green Schools, Sustainable Schools, ResourceSmart Schools etc) began as a response to needs identified at the 1992 United Nations (UN) Conference on Environment and Development, or even longer ago if the schools that participated in the OECD ENSI projects are included. The movement focuses on a whole school approach, which aspires to include everyone (students, teachers and the local community), to improve school environments (including resource usage and the school’s environmental footprint), to motivate students to seek resolutions of environmental problems, particularly at a local level, but also thinking globally, and to improve students' attitudes and behaviours as part of developing a sustainable mind set. This seminar will discuss work-in-progress findings from an international project which seeks to collect stories of the impact of the green schools movement in nineteen countries around the world (including six Asian nations) with a focus on the impact of the movement on the development and implementation of education for sustainable development in each country. In particular, each country’s story explains the history of the movement there, its current status, achievements, obstacles and broader impact.