Minister of State for Environment Malik Amin Aslam said on Thursday that purposeful education is the key to meet the sustainable development challenges.
He was speaking at the launch of the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014) in Pakistan, jointly organised by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) and World Conservation Union (IUCN).
The minister underlined the need of an integrated education system and enthusiastic participation of communities, public and civil society organisers, teachers and general public in it.
He, however, regretted that very little has been done and much was talked about at seminars and conferences on ideas of achieving such objectives through education.
Amin Aslam said his ministry was cognisant of the importance of education and has been vigorously engaged with the ministry of education for the incorporation of environmental issues in the curriculum from class I to X.
He said provision of purposeful education was a great challenge especially for developing countries like Pakistan.
The minister said that the quality in education was lacking due to the non-implementation of plans and he hoped that the UN, with a focus on Education for Sustainable Development, would support to bring about a positive change.
The coming decade, he said, would be the decade of implementing various international conventions on environment after the decade of nineties was instrumental in reaching those conventions following the Rio Summit in 1992.
Federal Secretary Education Sajid Hasan, speaking on the occasion, pledged his ministry's full support for the ESD.
However, in its implementation, he underlined the importance of locally relevant teaching and learning processes.
Earlier, welcoming the participants, Abdul Latif Rao, Country Representative of IUCN Pakistan, briefed about the concept of DESD and the growing importance of ESD in both formal and non-formal educational sectors.
He also highlighted the initiatives that his organisation has undertaken in this field and laid a great stress on the need of partnership-building for attaining national objectives in ESD.
Jorge Sequeira, Unesco country representative, on the occasion highlighted the organisation's current and future initiatives for the DESD.
He said there are no cut-and-dried ESD models to be replicated in a country like Pakistan.
A presentation on the basic concepts of the ESD and its applications in formal and non-formal education was made by Hasan Rizvi and Zohra Rehmat Ali from the Education, Communication and Knowledge Management Programme of IUCN-Pakistan.
A toolkit on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) for teachers, trainers and community organisers in Urdu was also launched on the occasion.
Comments
Comments are closed.