Education for Sustainable Development
In order to achieve the Framework Convention on Climate Change and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the Hanns Seidel Foundation, with the involvement of political decision-makers, promotes a sustainable strengthening of environmental awareness and behavior in China.
China's rapid economic development has led to a significant improvement in living standards. However, this development has been accompanied by dramatic environmental damage. Meanwhile, one-fifth of China's arable land is contaminated with heavy metals, and according to the Chinese Ministry of Water Resources, over 50% of the groundwater in the catchment areas of China's main rivers is unusable for human consumption. The acute environmental problems and the high degree of pollution of natural resources affect all areas of life. However, the most vulnerable groups, who often live in the economically less developed areas of China, are the most affected.
As mediators of knowledge and values, educational institutions and administrations play an important role in promoting social change. They contribute to the transfer of knowledge and the implementation of political guidelines for sustainability. In doing so, they promote the development of a sustainable society across socio-demographic lines. In this context, modern “Education for Sustainable Development” (ESD) presents universities, schools, teachers and various levels of administration with new challenges. Complex topics are to be taught in an interdisciplinary and comprehensible way, so that the population is simultaneously encouraged to act independently and think critically.
Higher and middle-level administrative institutions, universities, teacher training centers and schools must enable their staff to implement these new tasks. However, in view of the lack of environmental awareness, this is a major challenge: for example, in a survey conducted by the Hanns Seidel Foundation (2016), 36.2% of the teachers surveyed stated that they did not contribute to the development of environmental problems.
For more than 30 years, the Hanns Seidel Foundation has been working with Chinese ministries, provincial governments and educational organizations in general and vocational education. One focus is on work in structurally weak regions, where sustainable models for self-help are demonstrated.
Since 2015, education for sustainable development (ESD) has been an essential part of the foundation's work in China. This also contributes to the fourth UN Sustainable Development Goal of 'Equitable and Quality Education'. Between 2015 and 2017, a total of 15 German-Chinese teaching and learning modules were developed for ESD lessons, and teachers from 27 pilot schools in five different provinces received training in sustainability.
In addition to educational staff, a further target group of senior administrative staff has been included in the training and further education in the context of the sustainable and integrated development of rural areas since 2018. The aim is to develop new participatory action patterns in selected pilot projects and villages, and to document and evaluate them.