7th Regional Meeting

The 7^th Americas RCE Meeting was hosted by RCE Cuenca del Plata in Posadas, Misiones, Argentina from 25^th to 27^th October with the support of the United Nations University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS). The theme for the meeting was ‘ESD, Conservation and Climate Change in the 2030 Agenda’.

Bringing together ten RCEs from seven countries and over 300 local participants from across the Americas region, in addition to RCE candidates and representatives from UNDP in Paraguay and Argentina and UNESCO in Santiago, Chile, this year’s meeting was the largest Americas Regional RCE Meeting to date.

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) took a central role as regional and local governments, UN organisations from around Latin America, NGOs, and members of the private sector came together to discuss how to best implement all 17 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the provincial and local level.

Participants from RCEs around the Americas presented ESD projects that they had been working on over the last year, focusing on education for wetland conservation, integrating the SDGs into teacher training, and human rights within Agenda 2030. The RCEs in attendance agreed to move forward on four issues together as a continental community: creating a regional RCE youth group (similar to the youth network among the Asia-Pacific RCEs); creating a database of educational material on planting and care of native flora; stocktaking of the current state of community inclusivity; and professional development of university educators on ESD.

The Global RCE Service Centre wishes to thank the team at RCE Cuenca del Plata for their efforts and superb organisation in making this event a success.

Outcomes from the meeting are below, and a full recap of the meeting is available here.