UNESCO APEID Seminar 11 - 14 February, 2004, Kesennuma, Japan

Concerning the invitation of guest speakers to the Seminar

The realization of a sustainable society is an urgent subject for people all over the world, and it cannot be achieved without various ESD, Education for Sustainable Development in the long term. In the 20^th century, ESD in Asian countries has been developing. We believe that the 21^st century is the time when each country and region should promote ESD and people should consider themselves as citizens of the earth, beyond the notion of nations, to enjoy the achievement of ESD together and overcome its new problems.

In order to actualize the expectations above, the United Nations finds a necessity in fulfilling fundamental education, higher education and environmental education, as well as educating citizens persistently. The United Nations designated the ten years from 2005 to 2014 as "the Decade of ESD", and intends to promote the activities of education, cooperating with various governments, International institutions, NGOs, other organizations, enterprises and so on.

The aim of this seminar is to give experts opportunities to learn among themselves about supporting systems of ESD, after understanding the DESD plan designated by the United Nations. Through this seminar we would like attendants to bring all sorts of examples about supporting systems for school education by experts in the Environmental Education field, especially about supporting systems for training teachers in that field, and to exchange information in order to grasp the present situation and clarify the subjects of school supporting systems in Asia in DESD.

We believe we need to keep making a great deal of effort to support specific regions or groups of people in order to realize a sustainable society concretely.

We hope to have attendants who approve of the aims of the Seminar.

The attendants we hope to attract

• Experts from research institutes who practice training programmes for teachers and educating programmes for talented people in the field of Environmental Education
• Experts from research institutes who develop learning materials for teachers and students in their regions.
• People who are able to make presentations about experiments, their results, and problems to be solved in the field of Environmental Education.

Our requests for speakers

• We would like each speaker to make a presentation about the present situation of training teachers and educating talented people in each country or region in the field of Environmental Education.(a country report)
• The time for presentation is 20 minutes and simultaneous translation from English into Japanese and Japanese into English is under consideration.
• After the seminar we intend to make proceedings as a booklet, so we would like each speaker to bring a manuscript for the proceedings.
• We would like each speaker to bring printed matter, videos, CDs and other materials about Environmental Education programmes in practice in each country and region.

Expenses

Transportation fees and expenses for the stay during the seminar will be paid by the sponsor.