Rationale:

“Overcoming poverty, gender equality, health promotion, environmental conservation and protection, rural transformation, human rights, intercultural understanding and peace, sustainable production and consumption, cultural diversity, and information and communication technologies – these are the key themes under the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UNDESD) that has been declared for the years 2005-2014.

Education for sustainable development centers on awareness of sustainable development issues, enhancing knowledge, influencing values and attitudes, and encouraging responsive behavior and learning that leads to action. Information is a major component of education and a continuous campaign for massive environmental awareness is indeed necessary. Under the country’s local response to the UNDESD, included in the National Environmental Education Action Plan for Sustainable Development is a national program that would encourage schools to establish sustainable and eco-friendly schools.

The school system is a vital part of our basic learning and is seen as a powerful vehicle for change. The school population, comprising of the students, teaching and non-teaching personnel, constitute a sizeable percentage of the national population. As such, any program focused on advocacy and other multi-faceted program of activities done within the school system especially relating to environmental concerns needs to be documented, encouraged, and recognized.

Sustainable and Eco-Friendly schools may be described as environment-friendly schools that have initiated and integrated in their instruction, research, extension and/or administration, programs which are environment-related.

A wide variety of environmental initiatives on the following areas can be adopted in pursuit of sustainable eco-friendly schools:

developing environmental policies for the school
physical cleanliness, orderliness and beautification of the school
energy conservation and demand management
water conservation/water management (maintenance of potable water)
paper conservation/paper recycling
waste reduction, waste segregation, recycling and composting
air, water and soil pollution control
seedling production/vegetable gardening and marketing
reforestation and/or nursery establishment
establishment of a botanical garden
herbarium
establishment of bio-park
environmental audits of school’s operations and facilities
integration of environmental themes into the school curriculum
conduct of in-service environmental training for faculty members
development of environmental support instructional materials
offering of environmental degrees/certificate programs
environment and natural resource-related research works and studies
linkages and exchanges on the environment with the following sectors: national government agencies, non-government organizations, religious organizations, local government units, business and industry sector, among others
environmental awareness and community education
holding of green fairs and environmental exhibits/sale of green products
holding of seminars and/or conferences/symposia
holding of eco-tours or ecological destinations
healthy lifestyle campaigns

Some of these programs can take the form of: litter watch; beach eco-watch; tap watch; bantay-ulan; bantay-dagat; bantay-gubat; land care, and the like.

Objectives:

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