@UNESCO
United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development

This Conference is being organized by the Centre for Environment Education (CEE) India for the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India (MHRD-GOI), during the Biodiversity COP 11 in Hyderabad, India. The Conference is held in partnership with UNESCO, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), Government of India.

The objectives of the conference are to:
1. reflect upon the scope, issues and challenges of education for biodiversity conservation in the context of ESD;
2. share experiences and best practices in biodiversity conservation education worldwide;
3. provide inputs to point 3.2 of the agenda of COP 11 “Review of progress in providing capacity building support to Parties, promoting communication, education and public awareness and strengthening of the clearing house mechanism and technology transfer and cooperation”;
4. provide inputs and serve as a Prep Com for the 2014 DESD End‐of‐Decade Conference with a focus on mainstreaming of biodiversity conservation into ESD.

The Conference will bring together about 300 participants including educators, teachers, students, policy makers, practitioners, UN agencies, non‐governmental organizations and community groups, academics and religious thinkers that work in the field of Biodiversity and in Education for Sustainable Development onto a common forum towards debate on people’s understanding of biodiversity, the importance of biodiversity for sustainable development, and linkages between biodiversity conservation, sustainable use, equitable sharing of benefits from genetic resources and the goals of ESD.
The conference will have 5 Plenary Sessions and 4 Thematic Workshops. The plenary sessions will set the tone, give the context and have expert presentations. They will set the tone for the deliberations at the Workshops. The themes for the workshops are:
1. Biodiversity and formal education
2. Biodiversity and non‐formal education
3. Education for biodiversity conservation and rural livelihoods
4. Education for biodiversity conservation in urban and industrial areas
The recommendations will be shared and discussed with members of COP 11 in a side event on 17 October.