Education for SUSTAINABILITY , Support

It seems that the word sustainability is fashionable because we listen very often, but it may be that behind the term has many interests and that the true meaning is being set aside.

Sustainability is the term that defines the balance that should exist between environment, economy and society. For the environment is in balance with society and especially the economy, governments, businesses, schools, municipalities, associations and individuals have to make the effort to care for and respect our environment and our planet. Some have already begun, others however, remain in words, trying to clean up its image.

In many areas of society, education has a great weight. Therefore, we must think about arean and curriculums that we want to be developed in the educational system.
Because in recent years, interest in the environment has grown, concern has come to education. Each country and each center is managed in their own way, In Euskal Herria, for example, we have the Agenda 21 program. In other places have green Schools, Schools-nature, the program CO2nnect, etc. SUPPORT The consortium was founded with the intention of incorporating these experiences and programs.

SUPPORT has 31 partners from 15 countries and they are working since 2007 trying to promote Education for Sustainability Quality (Ed.S). It is managed by the Norwegian government and receive subsidies from the European Commission. They organize an annual international conference, which was organized in Bergen this year and whose main was “Redirect school for a sustainable future.”


At the conference this year, have got experience of schools around the world and there have been projects with young people from Romania, Cyprus, Malaysia and Estonia have won several awards within the program CO2nnect. In the current year teachers and students developed activities related to transport and CO2 emissions putting them in practice in their schools and communities.

The objectives are:
1 – Measure the amount of CO2 generated by the school bus.
2 – Collect research related to climate change and develop concrete actions that can reduce CO2 emissions.
3 – To publicize the work done in town halls and participate in decisions related to CO2 emissions.

Summarizing the ideas that have arisen in these days, one can say that they talked about the damage that has resulted in the development. Once detected, they talked about how to organize activities related to sustainability within the school. Finally, we discussed how to introduce these activities in local dynamics.