REPORT OF UNESCO EXPERT MEETING ON - APCEIU

Redefining the General Concept of ESD on Environment and
Economic Perspectives
Shuichi Nakayama
Professor, Hiroshima University of Economics
Chair, Education Sub-Committee of
the Japanese National Commission for UNESCO
1. Preface
“There must be a strange feature in our world today that the environmental awareness on the one hand, is
growing very rapidly among the people. On the other hand, it is the fact that the environmental disruption in
some parts of our world is steadily taking place. We have to aware that there must be a monster machine to
disrupt our environment in another place of our growing awareness of better environment. We have still in
trouble to get a way for a sustainable planet Earth.” (A column of newspaper in Japanese, “Our Earth, Now-
Looking towards a Sustainable Society დ , The Nihon Keizai Newspaper , 26 March 2006).
The purpose of this paper is to redefine the concept of the environmental and economic perspectives of ESD
after examining the official documents regarding the promotion of ESD.
2. The Earth Charter(2003) – A Guidepost of the principles of ESD -
The Earth Charter is one of the fundamental philosophical documents for SD as well as ESD. It has a subtitle
as “Values and Principles for a Sustainable Future”. After about seven year’s discussion in the world
community, the Earth Charter Committee finally declared it in June 2000 in Den-Haag, Netherlands.
UNESCO adopted the Charter at the General Conference in 2003. The official web-site of the Earth Charter
explains more as followings.
(http://www.earthcharter.org/innerpg.cfm?id_page=106)
In 1987 the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development issued a call for creation
of a new charter that would set forth-fundamental principles for sustainable development. The drafting of an
Earth Charter was part of the unfinished business of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit.
In 1994 Maurice Strong, the secretary general of the Earth Summit and chairman of the Earth Council, and
Mikhail Gorbachev, president of Green Cross International, launched a new Earth Charter initiative with
support from the Dutch government. An Earth Charter Commission was formed in 1997 to oversee the
project and an Earth Charter Secretariat was established at the Earth Council in Costa Rica. For more
detailed background information please refer to ABOUT US/The Initiative/Overview of Activities.
Meeting at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris in March 2000, the Commission approved the final version
of the Earth Charter.
The Earth Charter’s four basic values and 16 principals for a sustainable future are arranged as under.
(1) Respect and care for the community of life,
1) Respect Earth and life in all its diversity
2) Care for the community of life
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