Based in Sierra Leone, EFA manages the Tiwai Island Wildlife Sanctuary. Many years ago, Tommy Garnett identified Tiwai Island Wildlife Sanctuary as the perfect area in his region to raise awareness and inspire people to act for the conservation and restoration of their surroundings. The island is one of the last examples of what was once abundant rainforests in West Africa. Tommy recognized it the ideal location to feel, contemplate, learn about, and research a tropical rainforest in one of the most pristine state we can find. With the help of EFA, Tiwai Island has retained a rich and exciting biodiversity and is home to a population of pygmy hippopotami, over 135 different species of birds and one of the highest concentrations and diversity of primates in the world. Tommy’s work demonstrates that importance of having a clear vision when you embark on designing and implementing biodiversity conservation and land restoration projects. Focusing on experiencing and learning from nature, EFA could bring to bear the holistic approach that allowed Tiwai to demonstrate an integrated environmental, social, spiritual and economic approach that connects people from many different cultural backgrounds to nature.

Upcoming, the Innsbruck Nature Film Festival, INFF will take place traditionally in the picturesque Tyrol region city of Innsbruck (Austria) between 19 – 22 October, 2023. The Festival will celebrate its 22nd edition this autumn and IUCN CEC is glad to support the Festival for the second time. For more details check the INFF website.

IUCN CEC Regional Vice Chair for West Europe, Diana Garlytska says: “It was an enriching and beautiful experience to be a jury member of the festival last year. The city of Innsbruck is framed by the mountains and everything in the fresh alpine air seemed to support the festival’s spirit of celebrating the love for nature. As you look around you understand how tightly we humans are connected with nature. The Festival program includes from films to educational and cultural activities and beyond and touches on the importance of preserving the environment, the beauty of biodiversity, finding harmonious balance between economic activities and nature as well as other current topics.”

At CEC we believe that films, including documentaries, short films and animated ones, have an incredible power to communicate thought provoking messages, trigger behaviour change and instil empathy while also having a strong educational component. Thus, we are happy to encourage our members to meet in Innsbruck and experience INFF for themselves, or join another festival near you.

The CEC has embarked on an ambitious plan to communicate the importance of Nature-based Education (NbE) as a critical dimension of promoting planetary well-being. We all know that there is an urgent need to transform our education systems, capacity building and training practices to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals as well as to achieve conservation, climate and water-related global and national targets. Nature-based Education is at the heart of this endeavor. NbE is a learning approach that brings nature into the core of education and training practices. It emphasizes the importance of ecocentrism, environmental stewardship, and understanding while preserving ecosystem services with empathy and compassion through systems thinking. It is consistent with both traditional environmental education and education for sustainable development, while it expands the vision to more explicitly emphasize the importance of meaningful connections with nature to help understand how everything depends on its well-being and vice versa.

We want educators and others to encourage individuals to learn from, connect, relate to, experience, and understand nature and our place in the planet’s living systems. We need to empower learners to make informed decisions and take responsible actions for environmental integrity, economic viability, and a just society, for present and future generations. We  strive to build a holistic and integrated perspective of how the planet works and how we, as human beings, should learn to relate to the living systems of Earth, while emphasizing the need to respect cultural diversity and learn from indigenous and traditional knowledge. 

CEC wants to bring  nature into the center of education, and education into nature. The environment and living systems can become our teachers, learning spaces, and inspiration, serving as a pathway to deeply understand and solve our most pressing environmental challenges and nurture learners with a profound sense of empathy, responsibility, community, and care. We recognize that this will take systemic change. We will need to reexamine our formal and non-formal education frameworks and practices. We need to green our schools, universities, and business training facilities. We must ensure we have  amazing, equipped educators and trainers, excellent eco-centered, systems thinking-based curricula, and proactive politicians and enabling laws and policies. It will require new funding sources and mechanisms, partnerships, and synergies. Encompassing these all, this vision is grounded in a recognition we need to be connected to nature; we need to love and understand nature.

A White Paper - Case for Change on this critical issue is being prepared and we will share it with you for comments in the coming months. We hosted a full day meeting at the GEF Assembly Meeting in Vancouver, Canada on August 21st and a panel on August 22nd. We need to build our partnerships, understanding and have a coalition of the willing to advance this ambitious work and will be hosting more meetings to connect and amplify. 

As we prepare this work, we are collecting materials and identifying people interested in providing support. If  you want to get more involved, please send Natalia Segovia an email. 

To help inform our Nature-based Education research and policy recommendations, you are invited to contribute to the compilation of a shared CEC database. If you are aware of any international, regional, and/or national legislation, strategies, regulations, curricula, and policy papers that place a strong emphasis on Nature-based Education for sustainability at any level of formal and non-formal education, please share by answering the questions and uploading the docs or links via the following platform or send Daniel Sziva an email.

At the Commission on Education and Communication we believe that youth empowerment and engagement is only meaningful if placed consistently and strategically in all the activities that we do. Therefore, CEC’s youth strategy is implemented by three Co-Chairs on Youth and Intergenerational Partnerships, young professionals Kenza Khallafi (RVC for North Africa), Marie-Philippe Ouellet (RVC for North America) and Diana Garlytska (RVC for West Europe). These three wonderful professionals, engaging with our many youth colleagues, have been working to codify our extensive experience within CEC and #NatureForAll in creating meaningful youth engagement at regional and international events. CEC and #NatureForAll have been produced over 10 Youth Dialogue spaces, that we generally call a Youth Oasis. For example, we worked with partners to create and manage these spaces at the 3 regional World Parks Congresses held in Peru (2019), Malaysia (2022) and Rwanda (2022), as well as at at the IUCN WCC in Marseille, France (2021) and the IMPAC5 in Canada (2023). Based on this extensive experience the team is producing a 10 step guide to help you create these important engagement and empowerment spaces. The document is to be piloted as a support tool at the upcoming ICENCA Meeting in Armenia. At the same time it is expected to replicate the use of the Guide to ensure meaningful youth engagement in the Regional Conservation Forums throughout 2024 and the World Conservation Congress in 2025. More to come!

One of the key motivations of IUCN Commission members is engaging with other members to learn and exchange their expertise while networking internationally. Yet, more often than not, these opportunities do not allow for the deep engagement that a subregional gathering has to offer. Thus, the work of IUCN agents of change like the IUCN Interregional Committee for Europe, North and Central Asia (ICENCA) is so important. The ICENCA was only formally approved by the IUCN Council in June 2022. This year the first ever ICENCA meeting will take place in the heart of the picturesque Caucasus in Yerevan, Armenia from October 16-18, 2023. It will bring together IUCN staff, members from all Commissions, IUCN member organizations and other conservation professionals for a rich set of talks, presentations and engagement opportunities. To register, please click the button below. Diana Garlytska from our team will attend, so please contact her if you plan to attend or have any questions! 

We are excited to have worked with the wonderful hosts of the Festival, the Foundation for the Preservation of Wildlife and Cultural Assets, to help deepen youth engagement opportunities within the ICENCA Meeting along the film program and associated Animal Carnival Parade. Young professionals attending the event can expect morning meetings at the Youth Oasis and end-of-the-day debrief sessions each day along with numerous youth-centred expert sessions. With the support of FPWC, we also anticipate the intergenerational “morning coffee meetings” with high-profile experts. All these efforts aim to ensure meaningful youth participation, networking and learning opportunities for young professionals. 

Stay tuned for program developments and looking forward to seeing you in Armenia! And remember, if you attend this regional gathering, you can also attend the SunChild 12th International Environmental Festival who we partner with through our new MoU with the Green Film Network

Active youth participation in policy development, networking and learning are all very much in line with CEC perspectives on meaningful youth engagement. Thus, one of the Co-Chairs on Youth and Intergenerational Partnerships, Diana Garlytska, is co-organizing the RCOY Eastern Europe that will take place in Warsaw, Poland between September 22-24, 2023. Details on how to apply to become a delegate and contribute to the regional youth statement can be found below.

One of the key themes of the conference is nature education. We need to ensure that the educational systems we build support young people to develop the green competences and skills to prepare them to enter the labor market. This is essential to foster the holistic social and economic systems we need to support nature. The Regional Youth statement that will be produced at RCOY will feed into the Global Youth Statement prepared by YOUNGO to present at UNFCCC COP ‘28 taking place later this year in Dubai, UAE. Join RCOY Eastern Europe to have your say on nature education and more!