The Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO) and the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training (MEFP) have launched the public participation process for the draft Environmental Education for Sustainability Action Plan (PAEAS). The public information period will be open until May 26.
The preparation of the PAEAS aims to define the strategic lines of environmental and sustainable education (EAS) in Spain for the next five years, offering a consensual framework from which to reinforce, with tools of social and cultural influence – communication, education, training and participation – those policies that must face climate and environmental challenges.
The preparation of the PAEAS seeks to define a participatory framework in which, based on the diagnosis of the current situation of environmental education in Spain, the strategic areas of action are identified, as well as the objectives, main measures and specific actions to be developed by the different sectors and agents involved.
CONTRIBUTIONS FROM EXPERTS IN ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION
The first step to address this work of preparing the PAEAS has consisted of the development of an extensive process of consultation and participation of more than 300 experts in environmental education and professionals from a series of sectors that maintain a close link with environmental education in our country. The base document gathers the visions and ideas of these experts.
In this first phase, which took place from the end of 2019 to autumn 2020, a work organised by sector was defined, based on the White Paper on Environmental Education in Spain, published 20 years ago, during which the new challenges in terms of sustainability have made clear the need to coordinate new initiatives in the field of environmental education for sustainability. in a context in which the demand for environmental knowledge by citizens has increased.
Thus, a work organized from ten areas of environmental education for sustainability in Spain has been defined. The priority lines of action in each of the sectors were collected, incorporating into the PAEAS a multisectoral and broad vision of environmental education that is proposed to face the environmental crisis and the challenges for sustainability in the coming years.
Once this phase has been concluded and based on this participatory work, a Working Group made up of MITECO and the MEFP has worked on the drafting of the Plan.
DRIVING CHANGE THAT RESPONDS TO ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES
This Action Plan establishes a consensual framework in which six operational axes and 61 key actions are proposed to be developed by the General State Administration, different public sector bodies, autonomous communities, local entities and the private initiative in the field of EAS, within a period of 5 years from its approval. as well as work guidelines and proposals for action for other sectors and agents involved.
The axes that form the backbone of the EAAP consist of ensuring that public policies incorporate the EAS, improving the programmes and activities of the EAS and integrating sustainability into the education and training system. Other axes would be to professionalize and consolidate the EAS, promote the scenarios and spaces of intervention and implement processes of participation, communication, dissemination and citizen action.
The ultimate objective of the Plan is to promote a cultural and systemic change that allows an adequate response to contemporary socio-environmental challenges in a coordinated, participatory way and with institutional and social co-responsibility, accelerating the ecological transition.
A NEW SOCIAL AND LEGAL CONTEXT
The Government’s Declaration on the Climate and Environmental Emergency, approved by the Council of Ministers on 21 January 2020, committed the Executive to approve an Environmental Education Action Plan for Sustainability.
On the other hand, the approval last December of Organic Law 3/2020, of 29 December, amending Organic Law 2/2006, of 3 May, on Education (LOMLOE) incorporates for the first time explicit references to Education for Sustainable Development and Education for Global Citizenship (global). reflected in the United Nations 2030 Agenda, to which Spain committed itself in December 2015.
In this context, the need to promote an innovative EAS, aimed at addressing new challenges and accompanying the fair ecological transition, involving citizens, so that they are an active part in this process, is evident.
