News
UNESCO Hosts Regional Workshop to Accelerate Greening Education Across South Asia
New Delhi, 27–28 May 2025 - UNESCO, in collaboration with the Centre for Environment Education (CEE), organized a two-day Regional Workshop on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in New Delhi, bringing together participants from Bhutan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Maldives, and Sri Lanka.
The workshop was part of UNESCO’s broader efforts under the ESD for 2030 framework and the Greening Education Partnership (GEP), aimed at making every learner climate ready. Ministry of Education officials, educators, and civil society representatives came together to explore how sustainability can be embedded across curricula, teacher training, and school operations. The workshop provided a platform to share national progress, discuss common challenges, and co-develop actionable roadmaps to advance Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and integrate Greening Education into education systems.
Through Education for Sustainable Development—or ESD—we can empower every learner with the knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes to become agents of positive change. This workshop is part of our global effort under the ESD for 2030 framework and the Greening Education Partnership—to “get every learner climate-ready".
Using the guidance from the Greening Curriculum Guidance (GCG) and Green School Quality Standards (GSQS) posters, the workshop enabled participants to systematically map and align over 240 key ideas and 190 actionable items across three learning domains including cognitive, socio-emotional, and behavioral to their respective national education systems. Through collaborative group work, country representatives explored how core concepts such as climate science, sustainable lifestyles, resilience building, and climate justice could be integrated into subject domains and age-appropriate curricula. Simultaneously, they assessed their national progress in implementing the four dimensions of green schools including school governance, facilities and operations, teaching and learning, and community engagement and began drafting action plans to embed these standards into school practices and policy frameworks.
This enabled participants to examine how education systems in their own countries could integrate sustainability principles into curricula, teacher development, and school environments according to global standards.
Country teams highlighted creative teaching methods and school practices already in place, from hands-on activities like seed balls making to crafting garments from recycled materials for classroom projects. These examples illustrated how whole-school approaches can help foster environmentally conscious learners.
This workshop helped us to develop a clear idea about ESD and build intensity to develop national ESD framework.
This workshop will expedite the issue on green curricula and green schools’ issue.
It was great to learn how South Asian countries are greening their curriculum.
As sustainability challenges grow more complex in the South Asia region, the workshop underscored the importance of regional collaboration, policy alignment, and institutional transformation. Member States committed to continuing this work beyond the event, through regular sharing of progress, peer learning via ESD Global Network, and deeper integration of Greening Education strategies into national plans.
The workshop concluded with country teams outlining their next steps for ESD implementation including baseline mapping, policy integration strategies, and multi-stakeholder engagement—to ensure that education systems across South Asia are fully climate-responsive, inclusive, and future-ready.
