Beyond 2030: shaping ESD for safe and just futures
Daniel Fischer joined the UNESCO Global Expert Symposium on ESD Beyond 2030 in Munich (1–2 September 2026) — a good occasion to share learnings and think ahead about how ESD can shape transformative education contributing to safe and just futures beyond 2030.
From 1 to 2 September 2026, the Global Expert Symposium on ESD Beyond 2030 convened in Munich. The event was co-hosted by UNESCO, the German Federal Ministry for Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, and the German Commission for UNESCO. As part of the invited group of experts and practitioners, Daniel Fischer contributed to two days of dense exchange on the direction Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) should take as the 2030 Agenda approaches its final phase.
The Munich meeting was a good occasion both to share what we have learned from a decade of implementing ESD and to think ahead: how ESD can continue to evolve to shape transformative education that contributes to safe and just futures beyond 2030. The discussions will feed into the UNESCO position paper "Munich Foresight: Recommendations for Education for Sustainable Development Beyond 2030" and, from there, into the UNESCO World Conference on ESD in Nairobi, Kenya, in January 2027.
The symposium was also a welcome opportunity to reconnect with Dr Charles Chikunda from Rhodes University and to share about the ongoing work in our joint SSATL-ESD project on teacher leadership for ESD across Sub-Saharan Africa — one of the concrete contexts in which the questions debated in Munich are being worked out in practice.
Further reading: UNESCO news article on the Munich consultation.
