Education and Environment Consultant

UNESCO is the lead UN agency on education for sustainable development (ESD) while UNEP is mandated by UNEA resolution 2/3 to support governments to integrate environment and sustainable education across curricula in collaboration with other UN entities. The two concepts are overlapping with some epistemological specifies but with similar purposes. ESD aims at empowering learners through providing knowledge, skills, values and attitudes, and building necessary competencies, including system thinking, anticipatory, normative, strategic and collaboration competencies, and critical thinking, so that they can take informed decisions and make responsible actions for environmental integrity, economic viability and a just society with empowered people of all genders, for present and future generations, while respecting diversity. ESD is an essential contribution to all efforts to achieve the 17 SDGs, enabling individuals to contribute to sustainable development by enabling them to transform their behaviour and promote societal change. Environmental education (EE) aims to develop and promote innovative holistic approaches based on sound scientific basis for building knowledge, skills, values and attitudes of learners. This study will focus on this common purpose of both concepts that is to build knowledge, skills, values and attitudes required for sustainability. To increase engagement from governments on this agenda of promoting sustainability through education, UNEP and UNESCO are coming together to promote sustainable development as the core component of education through ESD and environmental education. OVERVIEW OF THE FUNCTIONS OF THE POST Main tasks:  The purpose of this study is to map and analyze existing inter-ministerial collaboration in view of promoting ESD and environmental education at the national level in up to 20 countries covering the five geographic regions of UN where positive and progressive work on the ESD/EE agenda is being taken forward. More specifically, the consultant will:

1. a) Review the existing studies and materials produced by UNESCO and UNEP as well as other key players in ESD and EE. A brief summary overview of the existing material should be included in the final report. This literature review will include:

b) Work with a pre-selected list of 20-30 countries prepared by UNESCO and UNEP to identify up to 20 countries which have: 1) already put in place an inter-ministerial cooperation mechanism around the issues related to sustainable development and environment, and/or 2) have good working relationships between education and environment ministries and thus display potential to develop strong inter-ministerial cooperation on the subject matter.

1. Develop a study design
2. Contact the education and environment ministries in the selected countries to collect information to complement the desk review. UNEP and UNESCO will facilitate the contacts with the concerned ministries.
3. Draft a report in English (20-30 pages excluding annexes).

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Advanced post-graduate degree (Master’s or higher) in education, social sciences, international development, and other related fields.
• Expertise in the areas of education for sustainable development and/or environmental education. If the person is versed in different countries’ models of ESD/EE, it will be an asset.
• Work experience in policy formulation with government agencies including ministries of education and environment.
• Research: A strong track record of generating research reports / technical notes with experience in collecting and/or analyzing and triangulating complex data sources, managing both quantitative and qualitive data.
• Writing: Excellent writing skills in English for producing technical reports while also being able to produce engaging advocacy material.
• Communications: Able to communicate well with different audiences.
• Innovation: Ability to think creatively about how to present information and material to have maximum impact.

DESIRABLE QUALIFICATIONS

• Knowledge of another official UN language.

SELECTION AND RECRUITMENT PROCESS All applications should be submitted in English to esd@unesco.org by 10 June 2021 COB in GMT (No need to register and apply in this system.)  Please label the subject line ‘Consultancy work for the ESD study’. Interested candidates are kindly requested to submit the following documents in their applications: •    CV and a cover letter highlighting the relevance of the qualification and experiences of the candidates to this consultancy work; •    List of publications and projects for last 5 years; •    Number of days required for accomplishing the tasks. For any inquires and additional information, please contact: esd@unesco.org.