ACUP reinforces its commitment with Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)

More than 30 participants attended the 2nd Seminar on ‘Education for Sustainable Development in graduate studies’ held last July 9 at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. This seminar was organized by the Fundació Autònoma Solidària in collaboration with ACUP, UPF Solidària, EduAlter and the GDEE Project lead by the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunyaand with the financial support from the Ajuntament de Barcelona. Representatives from higher education institutions and civic society organizations gathered with the aim to promote and include the ESD in formal education in the universities. During the meeting, the report ‘‘Education for Development at University: Promoting the critical and committed education in formal studies ” was launched, displaying a diagnosis regarding the situation of ESD at the Catalan universities, including implementation actions, opportunities and strategies.

Based on the results of the first conference held last January, this edition focused on defining the next concrete steps towards ESD at the Catalan universities. Participants had the opportunity to expose and share their proposals through an interactive process. One of the main results of the discussion is that all participants agreed on demanding ACUP and lafede.cat to closely collaborate and to lead the process of fostering ESD at system level. The proposals for actions were built around two main axes: the political field, which aims to institutionalize ESD within university strategies and policies and, the pedagogical axis that seeks to facilitate the introduction of this issue within classrooms. In order to obtain a holistic approach two crosscutting issues which include the participation of the students and the proposal to work as a network to strengthen cooperation among stakeholders were adopted.