OMEP contributes to UNESCO's Global Expert Symposium on Education for Sustainable Development Beyond 2030
Munich, Germany, 1 - 2 September 2026 - OMEP took part in the UNESCO Global Expert Symposium "Education for Sustainable Development Beyond 2030: Foresight Consultation," held in Munich and hosted by the German Federal Ministry for Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth together with the German Commission for UNESCO. The symposium brought together a select international group of experts to shape the Munich Foresight: Education for Sustainable Development Beyond 2030, a vision paper that will feed into the 2027 World Conference on ESD in Kenya and the expected Nairobi Consensus.
OMEP World President Adrijana Višnjić-Jevtić joined the Advisory Group of experts convened for the consultation, contributing a think piece and taking part in three working sessions dedicated to shaping a shared vision for ESD, translating it into bold action, and making the case for its future direction.
In its submission, OMEP's Proposal for Action on ESD in Education Beyond 2030, OMEP argued that early childhood must be explicitly recognised within the global ESD agenda. Sustainable habits and attitudes toward nature, resources, and other people begin to form long before compulsory schooling, OMEP noted, making early childhood education and care the most effective and most cost-effective point of intervention for lasting sustainability behaviour. OMEP called for early childhood to be included in future education policies, monitoring systems, curricula, professional standards, and sustainability initiatives, and proposed raising early childhood's share of ESD research from under one per cent to at least five per cent by 2035.
The proposal also set out concrete steps for policy, practice, and partnership: separate reporting of data for children under compulsory school age, a common set of participation and quality indicators, sustainability requirements in registration and licensing, outdoor time and sustainable daily routines from birth, and stronger collaboration between early childhood settings and families. On competencies, OMEP highlighted the need to pair early sustainability learning systems (thinking, cooperation, ethical responsibility) with age-appropriate digital and AI literacy, and called for sustainability to become a compulsory element of initial and continuing professional development for early childhood eteachers everywhere, including in less-resourced and informal settings.
The resulting Munich Foresight paper, discussed and revised over the two-day consultation, frames ESD beyond 2030 around five domains of transformation - engaging with complexity, rethinking knowledge, connecting to different realities, participation and engagement, and enabling lasting sustainability transitions and calls for ESD to be anchored as a cross-cutting priority across global education frameworks. OMEP's contribution ensures that this next phase of ESD explicitly carries a life-course, early-childhood perspective forward toward the 2027 World Conference on ESD in Kenya.