UNESCO

New Zealand National Commission for UNESCO

The New Zealand National Commission for UNESCO is responsible for coordinating New Zealand's participation in the United Nation's Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. The Commission has entered into a partnership agreement with phase2 with the aim of empowering our organisation to engender public discussion and debate about strong sustainability in New Zealand.

UNESCO mission statement

As a specialized agency of the United Nations, UNESCO contributes to the building of peace, the eradication of poverty, sustainable development and intercultural dialogue through education, the sciences, culture, communication and information.*

This year phase2 will focus on utilising our paper Strong Sustainability for New Zealand: principles and scenarios to work towards this goal. Our work will revolve around:

the production of educational resources based on the publication
engagement with civil society to promote and facilitate public awareness debate about Strong Sustainability
development of research materials to continue honing and shaping the model for Strong Sustainability, particularly around transition to it, and to inform future versions of the paper.

The UNESCO partnership agreement requires phase2 implement the New Zealand UNDESD Strategic Plan (PDF file attached below). To achieve this deliverable our approach has been to actively work with others, including participants at the 2006, 2007, and 2008 UNDESD stakeholders' forums.

* The strategy for achieving the mission is represented in a one-page diagram from the Recommendations by the Executive Board on the Draft Medium-Term Strategy for 2008-2013 (PPT file attached below).