 Now we're turning again to a new topic, one that we haven't yet covered in our program, a special presentation on education for a happy and sustainable planet. I'm now going to ask my colleague, Florencia Librisi, head of partnerships and programs at the SDG Academy to connect. Over to you, Florencia. Thank you so much, Lauren. Hello, everyone, and happy Earth Day. Great to be part of this 24-hour webinar to celebrate Earth. So I'd like to welcome you all to our session, Happy Learning Education for a Sustainable and Happy World. My name is Florencia Librisi and head of partnership and program at SDG Academy, and I'm delighted to moderate this session, Organize the SDG Academy. The SDG Academy is the flagship education initiative of SDF10, which aims to ensure that current and sustainable and future generations of educators and policymakers have the right source of high-quality educational content for the SDGs to be able to advance sustainable development everywhere. The SDG Academy engages a community of educators and learners offering educational content and peer exchange and learning to advance sustainable development everywhere. So far, this initiative has garnered over 300,000 enrollments across the platforms from more than 180 countries. And we want to ensure we continue to increase our global reach. So some of our resources you can see in this slide, we have over 30 moves available on edX, over 1200 videos on our SDG Academy Library, a community of practice, etc. So just to invite you to go and take a look and serve yourself. So this session today, we're extremely excited. We would like to discuss the topic of education for sustainable development. There you have a happy image of our courses. And education is a main driver to achieve all of the sustainable development goals and therefore happiness. So according to the World Happiness Report, there is a strong correlation between achieving sustainable development and self-reported measures of well-being. Moreover, generosity, trust and strong sense of community are equally important as income when it comes to happiness. So then how do we teach the values, knowledge and skills needed to achieve sustainable development and therefore happiness? So education for sustainable development promotes the development of knowledge, skills, understanding, values and actions necessary to create a sustainable world. Ensuring environment protection and conservation, promoting social equity and economic sustainability. This includes integrating key sustainable development interdisciplinary issues into teaching and learning, such as climate change, biodiversity, disaster risk reduction, how to address poverty among others. But it also requires a shift in the way that we teach and learn. And to be more learner-centered, action-oriented, transformative and to empower learners to change the behavior and take action for sustainable development. So in this sense ESD promotes competencies like critical thinking in matching future scenarios and making decisions in inclusive and collaborative ways. Global citizenship education in a similar way aims to empower learners around the world to take active roles both locally and globally in contributing to a more peaceful, tolerant, inclusive and secure world. So by helping develop the core competencies to allow them to actively engage in a world and nurturing respect for every human being as a member of a common humanity. Global citizenship education help learners around the world to become responsible and active global citizens. So why it's important education for sustainable development and global citizenship education? So embarking in this journey to sustainable development and delivering progress on the SGS requires this profound transformation in the way that we think and in the way that we act and the way that we learn. So in order to create a sustainable, happier world, individuals must become sustainable change makers and global citizens. They need to acquire the knowledge, skills, values and enable them to tackle the sustainable challenges of our time. Those are we've been hearing these 24 hours and will continue to hear. And especially under COVID times. So for this recent education for sustainable development and global citizenship education had to be understood as an integral part of quality education inherent to the concept of lifelong learning. And in that sense is that SGS is explicitly recognized, I'm sorry, in the SGS as part of target 4.7 of SGS4 together with global citizenship education. These are mutually reinforcing approaches and key intervals to the SGS. And they aim to produce specific cognitive, social, emotional and behavioral learning outcomes that empowers individuals to contribute to advance the SGS and reveal better, greener and sustainable and happier world after COVID-19. So we are extremely excited and honored to have a remarkable panel joining us today. And we want to give a warm welcome to our panelists, to our audience. Thank you for joining us. I would like to ask you that please submit your questions as speakers are sharing the presentation so we can integrate those questions into our conversation. So I'd like to turn on now to our next speaker which is Alexander Leicht, Chief of the Section of Education for Sustainable Development at UNESCO. Alexander, how are you? Happy Earth Day. Thank you very much. Hello, Florencia. I'm fine. Thank you very much. Happy Earth Day. Wonderful. So let me ask you a question. So UNESCO's working VSD field is guided by the new framework of Education for Sustainable Development 2030 which aims to build a more just and sustainable world through strengthening the ESD and contributing to achieving all of the SETs. So could you please share with us and the audience how this framework translates into the specific priorities and measures that UNESCO is undertaking? And particularly, this is the 50th Earth Day today. So we'd love to hear more about how you're supporting environmental protection, which is key for happiness and well-being. Thank you. Thanks very much. And I'm very, very glad to be able to be here and contribute from the perspective of UNESCO. I think it's a crucial connection that the event is making really with this between sustainability education and well-being and happiness. And I would argue that really education for sustainable development together with related approaches such as global citizenship education and all of target 4.7 of the sustainable development goals really stands per se for the connection between happiness and education because it's really the skill. Target 4.7 really promotes the skills and the knowledge that helps everyone to contribute to sustainable development. That means that it helps everyone to engage really in meaningful actions and in contributing to a better world. And that in itself is also very closely already related to well-being and happiness. And then of course target 4.7, education for sustainable development specifically, is really the education approach that helps us create a better world in very simple words, address climate change and then create a more livable environment and social and natural environment. That also means that it's basically creating the conditions for well-being and for also individual happiness. So for me and for us really, education for sustainable development in target 4.7 really stands for this humanistic and holistic aspiration of education that we as UNESCO are so happy to see at the center of the 2030 agenda in STG4. As you mentioned, we have a new framework basically on education for sustainable development. Of course UNESCO has been the lead agency on ESD for quite some time. We've led the decade until 2014, this 10-year campaign and then had another program framework and we're just about to launch this new ESD4 2030 framework. And the key emphasis really of this framework is the massive transformation that is needed. We really want to move beyond seeing education for sustainable development as an add-on, as an additional subject or as an additional skill or as an additional knowledge component in existing subjects. We really believe that all of education in a way, the whole framing of education needs to be informed by education for sustainable development because only in this way will we do justice to the big transformation that is needed really across the globe. So basically transformation really this new framework focuses on transformation in two different ways. First of all, individual transformation, what kind of skills and knowledge and values to individuals have to have to become themselves sustainability change agents, how they can really change their individual lives and how does education have to be designed in order to bring about this individual lifestyle and behavior change. Of course that means that education as it has been traditionally run is not sufficient because cognitive knowledge is not sufficient to affect this huge change that is needed. We're really looking very specifically on sort of the pedagogical processes that can help bring about this tipping point from a kind of more, say, consumer-oriented life to a more sustainable lifestyle. So that's the individual level. And then we're focusing very much on the really, on the societal level and on the big structures that need to change for sustainable development. And I think in the past, maybe education interventions for sustainable development have more focused on this individual level, individual lifestyle change, which of course is important and remains important. But we really want to make a step forward and really focus on the big structural questions because of course, only if, for example, economic structures change, can we really speak about proper progress towards sustainable development. So that also means that we need to empower people, learn as citizens to really engage with the political process and really make sure that at the political level, big changes are happening towards sustainable development beyond sort of also making lifestyle changes in their personal lives, of course. So I think all of that shows already that, or confirms this point that I have mentioned, that education for sustainable development is really a framing for education overall. It cannot be like one strand that goes along with other traditional kind of education strands. Of course, this whole new ambition that we're trying to promote through this new framework is also dependent very much on the SDG framework because here we have really a globally approved, by all member states approved or endorsed framework for a very, very ambitious agenda towards sustainable development. Just before I come to the end of the first brief intervention, how do we put this into practice? We have five action areas. We want to change education policies. We want to change the way education institutions are designed and run. We want to change how teachers are empowered with the right kind of skills to teach sustainable development. We want to support young people through non-formal education to become change agents for sustainable development. And we want to create activities at the local level, at the city or at the community level. We are building partnerships around these five areas, and we have a strong emphasis on country-level engagement. So we are mobilizing governments and we're working with a number of governments to really develop initiatives at the country level that link education for sustainable development and the wider SDG implementation. So go also beyond the education sector. Just to spend just my last minute about your additional question about the environment. Of course, environment is the key element of sustainable development in a way the whole history of sustainable development really comes because we have realized that there are dramatic pressures on the natural environment and on the planet. So it's basically a crucial part of all our work safeguarding the natural environment and how can we provide the right kind of skills and right kind of knowledge for that. That also means that the major theme that we are handling and that we are trying to address is climate change and how to mobilize education to address climate change both at the level of global policy but also at the level of countries and of schools. And one of the things that we're doing sort of more focused on the environmental pillar on the sustainable development is we're just at the moment putting together a big report where we review around 50 countries and their curriculum frameworks and their education sector plans with regard to how the environment specifically with focus on climate change and biodiversity are integrated into education at the country level on that basis we will develop recommendations on how to scale up that work. So I think I'll end here and I look forward to the discussion. Thank you. Thank you so much, Alexander. It's vital to the UNESCO's role on this and it's very ambitious all the work that you're doing. So we're staying in terms of the structural changes, right? I'm moving it. This is a really very complex changes that we need to undertake and that clearly you're pointing out to many different aspects from policy, education and institutions, teachers, supporting communities. This is really a wonderful insight. So I would like now to bring Monica Florelle as well, our next speaker, which is Monica Florelle is the CEO of the Ban Ki-moon Center for Global Citizenship. Monica, are you there? Yes, I am. Absolutely. Great. If you would like to enable the camera, you're more than welcome. Sure. Thank you. I'm fine. I'm doing okay, although it's all strange. The whole situation, of course, affects us all and some more severely than others. But I'm happy that SDSN is pulling this together. SDG Academy hosting this session. Thanks so much. Birthday is hopefully a reason to celebrate memorabilia. And I know we need to try to ensure that we build for, continue to build for sustainability and for happy world, even acknowledging the difficult times that we're in right now. So, Monica, I would love that you share some of your great words. So I had a question for you. We hear about global citizenship education and how it is in terms of nurturing respect for everyone and a sense of belonging to a common humanity. So would you like to share with us how what is your understanding of global citizenship education and in the case of the Ban Ki-moon Centre, how the centre supports it around the world? Sure. And I do hope that my presentation can be put up. Is that a possibility, Florencia? Yes, perfect. And can I ask you then to switch the slides? So let's go to the next slide. Many of the listeners might not yet know that Ban Ki-moon, the former Secretary-General, has actually made it his goal to use the years that are given to him still to particularly focus on education, that global citizenship education. You see him here with one of his very close friends, Dr. Heinz Fischer. He's the former President of Austria. And I'm happy that I can claim both of these gentlemen are my bosses. I'm the CEO of the Ban Ki-moon Institute. Next slide. We are, of course, our framework. Naturally, it's the SDGs. And the SDGs are definitely something that Ban Ki-moon will be remembered for, as much as the Paris Climate Agreement will be one of his legacy points truly. Next slide. The Ban Ki-moon Centre is not only one centre, it's a whole sort of network of quasi-international organisations. The headquarter is in Vienna, but we have offices in Korea, in China, in Kazakhstan, and in the US. So it's a wide network, and we can fortunately tap into many great minds and also practitioners from all of these spheres. We are hoping for Latin America and Africa to soon open. Let's see. We are young. We are working with a big group of partners, the ones that you might recognise are maybe Global Citizen, this very active NGO that just staged an amazing concert a couple of days ago, that included Elton John and Lady Gaga and Chris Martin, and all for the veterans of being active as Global Citizens. You might also recognise the Scouts, so we are definitely connected with them and the Junior Chamber International and many others. Next slide. So our pillars of work are leadership, mediation, advocacy and education. But what we are keenly interested in right now is obviously the pillar of education. And hence, let's move to the next slide and I think we can almost skip the next slide because we have discussed it already. What is our understanding of GCD and ESD? It's very much aligned with what UNESCO is stipulating in all of its documents. When you're asking Ban Ki-moon what GCD is, he says it is a mindset that is currently not prevalent with global leaders. He sees the Trumps, the Erdogans, the Orbanes, and he really pinned points to them of this world as not having Global Citizen understanding. So he says we need to invest into the next generation to become proponents of global citizenship and knowledge about the sustainable development goals simply because it's our only plan. We only have one planet, it's Planet A. We don't have a Planet B and we only have a Plan A and no Plan B and our Plan A are the sustainable development goals. So our understanding is obviously to empower people to be active and to take a leading role in the global challenges and particularly youth. Next slide. Happiness, of course we can go to the theme of happiness. I think happiness is underlaying all of this. We will not achieve happiness for a majority of the people on the globe if we are not equipped with the right, I'd say, skills to tackle the future with the right knowledge to know what the decisions are that really help the world and we will also not be happy if we don't have the values that we can carry as human beings and that all of humanity actually should be united upon. One of them surely is the Golden Rule. Ban Ki-moon, his quote on happiness, maybe some of you read it but for the sake of time let's move to the next slide. Because what does make us happy? What makes Ban Ki-moon happy? What makes the Ban Ki-moon Center happy? It's definitely the practical work with all of the amazing fellows out there. So we have created online classes for example for those of you that are interested to dwell more on the subject matter of be it global citizenship, be it the SDGs being women empowerment. You can check out our website. We have had more than a thousand, six thousand subscribers already, SDG Academy of course is a great partner in all of this and we are happy that more and more online content is provided to all those that are interested. And yeah, next slide. We are also engaged in doing women empowerment fellowships. This might also be very interesting and very tangible for some of you out there. It is cohorts that we are inviting for trainings to Vienna. They are trained on SDGs, trained on communications, trained on many other things. Also on global citizenship and they implement micro projects in their regions and we have approximately 100 fellows already which belong to our network. So look out for it if you want to apply to one of those. It's posted on our website. Next slide. Similarly, what we are doing is mentorship programs where we are linking young Muslim ladies who are particularly hard struck by certain prejudices, particularly in Europe and we're linking them to experienced mentors, female mentors and are also implementing with all of these mentorship pairings, SDG micro projects in their local community. Next slide. Another thing that we do is the scholarship programs. So we have Ban Ki-moon scholars, global citizen scholars. They are already renowned champions actually in their regions on SDGs. So one does a recycling project, the other one an energy project yet another one a water project and what we are trying to help them with is to amplify their messages, to scale their efforts and to introduce them to like fora and to also financiers and funders who can actually chip into their work. So our scholarship program is really in high demand and we have lots of applications and can pick people from Africa, Asia, Middle East to support them every year just a couple but at least some. Next slide. Of course we are also very keen on having youth involved in peace processes because we believe that belongs strongly to this creation of a secure and sustainable planet. So we are working with the U.N. Youth Envoy and with the African Union Youth Envoy and with the OSCE, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and really seeking to have youngsters in the rooms of decision making in peacemaking agreements and that of course is a long haul but we have Security Council resolutions that are supporting it and yet the work is ongoing and definitely not yet completed but we are happy for all the proponents that are helping us in this. Next slide. With UNESCO we are publishing publications obviously and you will see that much of what we're discussing here today has been reflected by many publications. One that might be of interest to several of you is the one on how can you actually teach for activism and the long term that we used was the transformative engagement and transformative and responsible engagement but it's literally a code for how can you teach activism? How can you empower people to be active global citizens? So that's an interesting read maybe for some. Next slide. And I will soon come to an end I promise. So apart from the workshops that we are conducting with all sorts of groupings in Vienna and with our network partners next slide we are very keen for you to engage with us particularly on SDG knowledge particularly on GCEDs so global citizenship values and 21st century skills. If you want to check us out you have got the website here and obviously all of our social media handles and I hope that we can be united in this journey on more global citizenship around the world. It's needed. Absolutely. Thank you so much Mika. It's remarkable all of the work that you're doing around the world focusing in local context but with global citizenship mission so thank you so much for sharing. We will soon engage in a discussion with all of the speakers that first we would like to bring now our last panelist but not least Oren Bismoni-Levy is associate professor of international and comparative education and director of the Center of Sustainable Features at City College Columbia University. Hello Oren. How are you doing today? I can hear you perhaps you're muted. Yeah. Wonderful. Yes. Okay. Hi everybody. Thank you Florence here for the introduction. What an honor to join you all in this panel together with Alexander and Monica earlier. I am excited for this discussion. I can't stop thinking about how wonderful it is that we are spending Earth Day together talking about these important issues of happiness community building sustainability environmentalism the planet doing everything with so many people that are joining us with almost zero ecological footprint because we are doing it from home using this online technology. This is very cool. Thank you Oren. Thanks so much. We're pleased to have all of you and the great audience. So Oren, your scholarship and teaching focus on the ESD issues and Columbia University and you also direct the Center for Sustainable Futures. So could you please share with us some of the examples of ESD in action perhaps through the research projects that are conducted by DC or Descendants. Great. Thank you for the opportunity. So I'm happy to share with you that we are launching the center today. We were planning to do that on Earth Day and there is no better way to do it by sharing what we are doing with your audience. The Center for Sustainable Futures is a new development at Teachers College, the largest school of education in the U.S., the largest and oldest. If you can go back to the earlier slide what we are using an old postcard here of Teachers College, a postcard that was created sometimes in the early 19 sorry somewhere in the early 1920s and with a little bit of graphic design we are adding the green dots and green ideas to what is already happening at the college. The college is the graduate school of education, health and psychology. We are really hoping that in the coming years all the departments will engage with sustainability, broadly defined, the economics, the social, then the environmental in the way we teach, the way we do research and the way we serve the community. Next slide. If you think about the Center and Vision Regenerative World in which we achieve a balance between planet, people and prosperity, the PPP here is another way to think about sustainability or the three pillars. Next slide please. The mission is to promote learning, awareness, attitude and skills to work individually and collectively toward long-term sustainability of complex living systems. As Alexander said earlier sustainability, especially within the education context cannot be achieved only through improving the knowledge or understanding. We need to work on the soft side of sustainability which include awareness, attitudes and skills. And when we talk about skills and behaviors it's not something that we can do only individually at home by improving our recycling or the way we engage with energy at home but it's also how to work collectively in groups, smaller groups, organizations, nations, international coalitions to really achieve solutions of sustainability issues like climate change. The Center basically supports and conduct original research and I'm going to talk with you about our main approach to this is research-practice partnership. We do mentoring, we train students and we use data to inform evidence-based policy, practice and communication. Next slide. Wonderful. Let me tell you about our approach to partnership. We established a couple of years ago a partnership between Teachers College and the New York City Department of Education Office of Sustainability. I will call it the DOE for now just to make it more efficient. The partnership evolved from our interactions we had with the DOE starting in the spring of 2014 and more recently due to or following a change in the leadership at the DOE we saw an opportunity to really establish a partnership that brings together the skills that our students and our faculty have at the college with the knowledge and expertise and the questions and the inquiries and the problem that people at the DOE are experiencing. So this network, this New York City partnership for sustainability education is doing a lot of work. Today I'm going to focus on how we build communities and how we work on relationship in schools and between schools in order to bring about this change. Next slide. So I'll give you a quick context. Alexander was talking about the frameworks that UNESCO put forward for more than 10 years already on sustainability. But the main issue is how local education systems at the national level at the city level are taking this framework and implementing it and making them reality. So here I'm focusing on what the New York City, one of the global cities in the world is doing and starting in 2009 they decided to establish an office of sustainability within the division of schools facilities. The office is looking on issues like recycling, energy, green curriculum and the policy instrument that is very unique here and I'm more than happy to talk about it in Q&A is to require every public school to appoint a sustainability coordinator, sustainable coordinator which is an add-on position and usually without pay. So the question here about happiness is how do you bring together people to do this kind of work without necessarily using money to incentivize them? Okay that's the bigger question that we are dealing here. Next slide please. So throughout our partnership we've been looking at who are these coordinators and we figure out that 44% of them are teachers, 30% are assistant principals and then we have one fourth that are other. Could be the secretary, the librarian, the coach, etc. You can see here that we have a mix of people that care about the topic and comes from different perspectives and we are trying to leverage the different perspectives they bring to the issue of sustainability. Next slide. Here you can see the first piece is that over the past couple of years we are seeing a growing interest in this position. More and more people are volunteering to do this role rather than waiting to be appointed. Next slide. Not only they are volunteering they are also willing to continue to serve in this role even without paying. You can see that more than 90% are saying that they are definitely willing or probably willing to continue with this role in the next year. We ask them why. Next slide. You can see a quick world cloud suggesting these are the reasons these are the motivations why people want to join this movement even though they are not necessarily compensated for pay. So you can see that they are focusing on the importance of the issue for students. They look at issues like community. They look at issues they believe in the topic. They like working with students. There is a lot of emotions feel, emotions, happy. A lot of these worlds are coming up again and again in this world cloud which suggests to us that one way to bring people to this movement educators is to show them how much they can gain they and the students can gain from doing this sustainability work. It's not an add-on it's in a new framework a new way to look at what is happening in schools. Next slide. Here we ask we ask the coordinators what sustainable school is or does. Click again. We'll have a red box. You can see here that the educators what really in their view what really makes a sustainable school is not whether they have a fancy solar panel or some kind of a green roof it's really about involving stakeholders in the schools parents, students, teachers and others when this is happening coordinators in New York City believe that the school is sustainable. Moving on. Green team is one way to create community in the school. A school-based green team is bringing together students, teachers and stuff in the school that care about this topic. You can see in this chart that we have a trend in New York we are seeing more and more schools reporting that they have a green team and you can see the second piece less and less school saying that they are planning to do it because they are already established. And the good news next slide is that green teams makes a difference. When we ask coordinators to report about their green teams engagement you can see here an upward trend. Schools that have high engagement of the green team the educators they are reporting on more successful environmental education program more communication of sustainability initiatives more recycling and more energy conservations. Green teams are a way to build relationship and communities of action within the school. Next slide. I want to end up with this beautiful diagram. In this diagram it's a network research that we've done to ask schools where did you learn from who are you learning to do the work you do on sustainability. And this diagram each dot is a school in New York City. The different colors represent the different boroughs. Red for example is Manhattan and you can see that we are starting to see some kind of a professional network of schools approaching other schools to learn how to do sustainability work. This is really important if we develop the professional capital. If we amplify good practices not only from UNESCO but also on the local ground schools will start working and learning from each other and that will bring the change that we are all really looking forward. Next slide. I promise I'm ending. Quick reflection in time of social isolation when we are at home and feeling very lonely sometimes. I think what I'm trying to do what we are trying to do in the center for sustainable futures is to really build communities starting with students and teaching teachers and educators in the school and then amplifying it and letting other people know what we are doing so we can collaborate together and I really hope that this community building exercise building relationship and the social infrastructure will help us to address the most important challenge of our days climate change. Thank you. Thank you Oran. That's a great note to put all of these wonderful content in a specific context which is the one that we are leaving right now with COVID-19. So I would like to invite our other two speakers as well to come in again and perhaps we can remove these slides. So we have a conversation all of us. Alexander and Monica great. Wonderful. Great. Well, so I mean we have very important things in terms of the systemic change and the structural change that we need to do in order to make this happen. The role and role of youth global citizens ESC as key issues in terms of knowledge but also in terms of attitudes values will help from the importance of leadership and also community. And we're facing these very difficult times with COVID-19. So I'd like to turn these questions to all of you and we can so we can build on each other. So what do you think is ESP possible response right now with current COVID-19 crisis and when it comes to values education as well as the opportunities presented by the rapid shift to remote learning. Maybe we can start again with Alex and then Monica and Lauren. Okay, thanks. Thank you very much, Florencia. I think that's really the topic that's on everyone's mind at the moment. I think first of all, of course, there's the immediate response to to the fact that so many kids are out of school, really. And here UNESCO has launched a global coalition of many, many stakeholders, technology firms, multilateral players and others to support countries to sort of immediately respond to the current situation. That means, for example, provide online learning opportunities. But I think when we talk about the sustainability and ESD and the COVID crisis, I think we mean we need to think more about the long-term implications, what it means and what kind of lessons can we draw for our work. And from my perspective, just very, very briefly, I think it's really five key points. The first one is that resilience and risk responsiveness are key. And I think here ESD has a lot to contribute because many of the ESD competencies, like anticipatory thinking, for example, thinking about future scenarios, is really something that can help us prevent such a crisis from happening again. So that's the first point. The second point is very important to make it. Oren has alluded to it already. Climate change won't go away. At the moment, everyone's buying this on something else, but we cannot lose sight of the fact that the real big challenge, the challenge of our times is climate change. And I think we need to work together to make sure that that stays on the agenda immediately after the immediate crisis goes away. The third lesson for me is that we have seen now in the last couple of weeks that really rapid, dramatic, extreme action by governments is possible. If you want to, you can stop economic activity immediately. You can immediately make sure that everyone stays at home. So of course, the immediate question that we ask ourselves, why is the same commitment not there for climate change? Why don't we not, you know, as we can see, you can almost do it within days, basically, to change the course of the economy. I'm overstating it, of course, but I think we need to insist that this kind of dramatic change that is happening now is also happening for sustainable development. Fourth, very briefly, we cannot question global connectivity. I think we see some of the solutions, some of the countries try to find solutions by sort of sealing themselves off. But of course, I think from ESD, we need to continue to insist that global challenges can only be addressed at the global level. The last point is a very, very concrete connection, I think, between the COVID crisis and the coronavirus situation and the ESD themes is that safeguarding nature really helps protect us because the more we protect wildlife sort of spaces to live for wild animals, the less likely it is for other viruses to jump over. So that's my quick five points. Thank you very much. Thank you, Alexander, really important. Monica may even may turn over to you so we keep building these ideas. Yeah, building on the idea, actually, in my case, it's three points that I would like to summarize for ESD and the importance in the COVID crisis. And let me summarize it or structure it by the Greek idea of logos, ethos, and pathos. We know that logos appeals to our cognition and I know from my own experience that this crisis has taken lots of my cognitive capacity and our institutions have been very much bogged down with how do we communicate it? Well, how do we actually reach those that might not know all of the information that is flurring around? And we too have gone through the motions of anxiety, of fear, of everything that is connected also to being connected and having the influx of information that we probably are even overwhelmed by. So, ESD is definitely, I mean, it's definitely needed in the future that we keep on to think critically, to teach how to think critically, to basically distinguish between fake news and facts, between opinions and facts and this crisis has definitely shown that even in the short run that's an absolute necessity. So, we were logos-wise definitely challenged on an individual level and on a community level. When it comes to ethos, I would also say that when it comes to our value system, all of us were challenged by exactly the questions that ESD is trying to instill in individuals and communities. Challenged by how can we basically balance the economic downturn towards and the benefits to protect a certain segment of society, particularly vulnerable ones and when do we pull the trigger? When do we change again? When do we open up again? So, our values as human beings have been challenged is one life more valuable than another? Do we need to protect our elderly more than we need to protect let's say the young startups? So, again, the questions of ethos of our value system are at the fore and hence to be incorporated into our curriculum, to have them in all of the pedagogical interventions be it at primary secondary or tertiary level seems essential. I mean, we are now confronted with these massive questions and then when it comes to pathos I mean, I don't know about you but of course, emotional life has been hard struck by this whole thing and ESD and GCD both are insisting that we do need to have the emotional component the soft skills emphasized in the future because the moment you're talking about humans and machines we are afraid that we will lose out as humans against the machines but the one unique quality that we bring for now even no matter how great the algorithm is is our emotions and pathos is exactly what makes a good speech what makes an appealing argument and what makes unfortunately also a crisis so heartfelt by everyone yet I want to close on a chance that I see in the pathos because now for the first time at least in my life our generation as it exists our generations as they exist right now share a story we have a united experience and yes from different perspective and yes with different severity and but yet we do we do feel there is a bond of humanity just now happening with COVID and ESD is the perfect and GCD they're the perfect platforms to pick that up and actually amplify wonderful Monica thank you for that Oren what is your take on this it's very tough to follow after Monica's comment that was fantastic I've been thinking about this over the past month and I think one of the things that COVID-19 is suggesting is a challenge to the way we thought about or visualized the idea of sustainability I don't I'm not sure anymore I was critical before but even more now that the three pillars are equally in size I don't think that the economic the economy the social and environmental are really equal in size I think we need to start reflecting as Alexander said the government show us that they are bigger than the economy and if they want they can shut it down in order to protect life and public health and we might want to think about the relationship between the three pillars in a more nested way rather than in an equal way I think we are all living in one planet so far we don't have any other way we don't have any other planets we have one planet many societies in it and the economy is only a way to manage resources it cannot be larger than the social and it cannot be large under the planet so I really think that we need to reconceptualize a little bit the relationship between the three pillars after COVID-19 another aspect more related to education is I totally agree with Monica it's the issue of the social emotional aspect of learning I really think that as schools are now moving online there is more and more need from the students and the family not necessarily for the teachers to convey knowledge through a different medium but rather to offer family and kids the type of support emotional learning on how to digest this new reality this is what schools are all about I think in this time it's not about just moving them online it's doing something else with the medium and the last point is really about digital literacy I think that many people on the planet over the past month learned how to read charts in ways that they never did before all the idea of flattening the curve all the ideas of how the growth in the numbers and what our different measures mean we have folks I'm listening to different news networks in the morning and I was telling my husband today it sounds like a research design class happening live in front of everybody so the idea of learning how to evaluate what is good evidence how to read this chart how to communicate with charts I think all this digital literacy visual literacy is something that we'll need to pay much more attention moving forward Thank you Oren for that and I think this is a good segue for the last four minutes to touch on the question of the future of ESC right and I'd love to perhaps turn it over from you Oren to then Monica and then Alexander very briefly that would be great I'd love to hear from that What is the question again for Oren Sia just to make sure about the future of ESC basically I mean you've been touching a bit of like what we did in the past and how we had I mean how to move it to the forward so in terms of what are the lessons learned that we had from past ESC initiatives how this important are the ways that we want to move forward with ESC and perhaps also we can dive a bit on that question of the future of ESC but also what is the role of the different stakeholders which we discuss a bit but perhaps we can make it kind of a final understanding Sure I'll try to be very brief because I'm eager to hear Alex and Monica on this so I think that one of the things we learned so far is that the great work that international organizations are doing is important and there is the need to do more translation work going what's the framework is and how to transit into action in different localities because although we all care about the global environment locally there are different ways that we can tackle the challenge especially in education education is very different in many countries so I think that there is more need to do more translation work on the ground I would like to see more partnerships between the different stakeholders within education and coming from a higher education institution I would like to see more higher education institution partnering with the local agencies in order to bring the change that we need in how we think about sustainability etc and I also want to see the other way around I want to see more conversation partnerships where we learn from those frontliners that do the work and we can learn from them what are we missing in our analysis of this phenomenon and the last point I think we need to re-evaluate some of our obsessions with the knowledge transmission aspect of education I'm in my other part of my little my scholarship I'm looking at assessment I think we have overdone it over the past 20 years the obsession with ranking and improving quality for this venue I think took us away from focusing on what is the role of education schools communities relationship in the midst of one of the most challenging thing called climate change I'll stop here because I'm eager to hear others Jordan, Monica, Albert you Sure, a brief comment on that one so what is the future of ESD? I would compare it right now we are talking ESD like with odd cuisine it's rude by particular chefs it is eaten by particular people and it is a concept that is alien to many and I would like to see ESD because I think the future is ESD so the question should be paraphrased it is ESD and GSD it should become a known cuisine it should be one cuisine that everyone wants to cook that everyone is craving for that everyone feels the flavor of and in fact that the overall dream would be that it becomes something for the educational system and for every learner like bread and water so to get away from this sort of elitist thinking of concepts but to the practical level of everyone just feeling it living it being an actionable part of the overall movement absolutely bringing the whole dimension of the human being that's beautiful thank you Monika Aleksander that's very little I think I can add of course ESD really is the overall framing for education as Monika has explained sort of more on the ambition side and then on the implementation side I agree with with Oren and that's a concrete sort of lesson that we have also learned that at UNESCO and we will try to to follow through in the coming years that we really while we continue continue to provide sort of global frameworks and of course global policy development is important because it provides a certain level of legitimacy we need to focus much more on the country level and here for us as an intergovernmental organization one lesson is really to emphasize much more the government commitment really we have in our sort of universe many many wonderful NGOs individual universities university networks school networks but in the end really governments are the ones that can make change in education at the country level so I think that is one very concrete lesson that we have for the implementation in the next couple of years and then the second and last point is that the SDGs provide a very good framework to make the bridges between the education sector and all the other sectors that are relevant for sustainable development I think it's already working relatively well the cooperation when it comes to the topic of climate change but there are so many others there's water there's biodiversity there's sustainable consumption so I think that is also a big task that we have all of us together is to make these connections and to build the right kind of partnerships wonderful Alexander for that I think that notes bring us back to the importance and the how ACG4 and our working education really enables all of the other SDGs to be advanced so we're reaching the hour so I want to thank so so much each of you for your interventions for participating with us and for sharing your expertise and knowledge with us and thank you so