This book gathers interdisciplinary reflections from researchers, educators, and other experts on the subject of biodiversity closer to education and learning. The book also highlights its role as an added value to strategic principles for healthy ecosystems and sustainable human development. It promotes critical thinking and foster practices and attitudes for Education for Sustainable Development reconciling education with principles of human behaviour and nature. Readers especially find this book a timely resource in light of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011–2020, the Aichi Targets, and the new EU biodiversity strategy “Our life insurance, our natural capital: an EU biodiversity strategy to 2020”. Along with the challenge of ecosystems and public health, biodiversity conservation is essential for humanity’s continued security and sustainability, as it touches on all aspects of people’s lives.

Drawing on experiences and insights from 16 megadiverse countries, this report examines how biodiversity is being mainstreamed in four key areas.

Globally, there is a need to promote and empower practical action towards better environmental conservation and greater sustainability; education aspires to achieve and motivate this – one mind at a time. This book advances a future-oriented vision of the development of environmental sustainability education in settings outside the high-school. It provides practical guidance for teacher practitioners and policy makers in community-oriented environmental sustainability education. It promotes a modern holistic approach to sustainability learning in and by the community through participative engagement with sustainability issues. Its special foci include working with volunteers and citizen scientists, through museums or through re-purposing Higher Education. Its approach emphasises the implementation of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals and cooperation with environmental management professionals. This book’s cosponsors include the International Association for Headwater Control and FAO – European Forestry Commission’s Working Party on the Management of Mountain Watersheds, as well as the International Environmental Education Conferences, Eger, Hungary and the Hungarian Academy of Science’s Subcommittee on Future Studies. Community education has long been a goal for environmental management, whose practitioners realise that interventions, such as biodiversity conservation, are only truly sustainable when supported by the local land-user and stakeholder communities; this depends upon these stakeholders’ understanding why intervention is necessary.

This Book presents innovative and state of the art studies developed in Environmental Education in different countries to highlight this theme and promote its implementation all over the world. It will give a scientific perspective of Nature-based solutions to promote environmental education in all citizens and a more educational perspective as to how this approach can be implemented at schools and universities. Not less important is that includes science communication as a key factor for training and disseminating about the environment. The invited authors are recognized experts with excellent work developed in Environmental Education. This contributed volume presents innovative and creative work in the area giving a step forward in the implementation of Environmental Education, namely as a target of 2020 United Nations Agenda for Sustainable Development. The invitation of authors from many different countries allows the creation of a network and subsequently the book will bring concrete ideas as to how to develop operational capacities to bring added values to Environmental Education at an international level.

The German Alumni Summer School 2018 on ‘Education, science and cooperation between German Alumni for sustainable development and biodiversity conservation in Sub-Saharan Africa’ was jointly organized by the Faculty of Geography-Department of Cartography, GIS and Remote Sensing, the Faculty of Biology and Psychology-Department of Conservation Biology, and the Karatina University, Kenya – School of Natural Resources and Environmental Studies. This summer school was funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and targeted to the German Alumni from Sub-Saharan Africa as well as scientist and experts from various discipline. The European Union being confronted with mass migration from Sub-Saharan Africa is currently working on a new political and economic strategy for Africa. Moreover German Government initiated and proposed a new level of equal cooperation between Africa and western countries in areas such as education, trade, business development and energy. The main idea is to limit the effects of climate change and avoid climate refugees, to prevent mass migration and to help create a future for Africa’s youth’, and underscores the current status and efforts of German development policy towards African countries. Sub-Saharan Africa comprises of 49 states with the highest population growth, and by the end of the 21st century the population is likely to triple. The average economic growth rate for Sub-Saharan Africa countries slowed down from 5.1% in 2010 to 1.4 % in 2016. Africa is still the world’s poorest continent and widespread poverty is the primary cause of malnutrition and health problems. Catastrophes like famines and the recent hunger in Horn of Africa are additionally induced through climate change and land grabbing. Corruption, armed conflict, political and ethnic tension, terrorist activities, unstable state structures, national debt, dependence on global commodities markets, and inequitable world trade mechanisms are mainly responsible for this unstable and threatening situation. Biodiversity loss and diminishing of African wildlife due to habitat loss and poaching are as well the serious concern and calls for action.

This book examines the difficult and wide-ranging issues relating to how we understand our environment, our place in it, and how we choose to act. This comprehensive text provides an overview of these developing key issues, illustrating how - through schooling, higher education, professional training and development, and awareness-raising - people can bring about change, as well as engaging in debate and critique of issues. The book builds on existing work across a number of fields, as well as on original international research, in order to model the complexity of the problems, the institutional contexts in which they arise, and the interrelationships between these. Areas explored include the policy context, the links between sustainable development and learning, the economic and moral interdependence of humans and nature, the management, assessment and evaluation of learning, and globalisation. The book suggests ways in which those responsible for learning can target their efforts appropriately, matching straightforward solutions to simple problems, and designing complex interventions only where these are needed. This text will be a valuable resource for anyone studying Masters degrees and MBAs that focus on environment or sustainable development, and for professionals dealing with problems on a day-to-day basis. Though a free-standing text, its analysis is supported by a companion reader: Key Issues in Sustainable Development and Learning: a critical review.