Asia-Pacifi c Contributions to the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development

The concept of a United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Devel-opment (UNDESD) has its roots in the Asia-Pacifi c. Arguably, so far, more countries within the Asia-Pacifi c have engaged in advancing the DESD agenda than any other region in the world. This paper focuses on regional, sub-regional and national efforts to promote learning for sustainable devel-opment under the banner of DESD. Most of the efforts have served to pro-mote the concept through launches, conferences and meetings of experts and practitioners in ESD. There is now a need to turn these meetings into opportunities for critical refl ection about how to improve and extend current best practice and to reach out to those stakeholders who are yet to engage with this agenda. The paper argues that the successful implementation of the DESD requires long-term strategic efforts that will motivate engagement beyond 2014. Monitoring progress and assessing achievements will im-prove decision making and action taking, and will deliver key strategic out-comes sought through the Decade