Final report from the conference EU as Global Actor

The final report from the conference ‘EU as Global Actor’, which was held in Lund Sweden on 28-29 September, has been published today. The conference was part of the Swedish presidency of the European Union and the EU’s year of Creativity and Innovation, and manifested common approaches and asked challenging questions.

The purpose of the conference was to express the EU’s view on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and relate it to lifelong learning and the EU’s key competences. How does the EU relate to global agreements on ESD with the UN framework and the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development? What impact do these agreements have on pedagogical practices?

The challenge of ESD is to make the concept sustainable development real and to turn words into actions – this was a common theme throughout the conference. The conference demonstrated agreement in the value of establishing communication between political decisions and pedagogical practices. Such an integrated holistic view requires collaboration between different fields of knowledge, policy and organisations – globally, nationally, regionally and locally.

The conference gathered 400 policy makers, researchers, NGO representatives, teachers and school leaders, whom together represented almost 30 countries.

For full documentation of EU as Global Actor Conference please go to www.lucsus.lu.se/lundcalling