Our work advocating for Education for Sustainablity

AAEE is a member of the Australian Education for Sustainability Alliance (AESA) and has been contributing to the advocacy for EfS across the nation.  (You may have been a part of the campaign to save sustainability education in NSW – and the recent success in that state).

Queensland has been facing our own challenges to EfS, and your National and State representatives have been involved in advocating for EfS through AESA.    We recently attended a meeting with the Minister for the Queensland Department of Environment and Heritage Protection (Minister Powell) at Parliament House, Brisbane

AESA was represented by Jo Kelly, Co-convenor AAEE Queensland Chapter; Gemma Plesman, Australian Youth Climate Coalition Queensland;  Daniel Bevis, Acting Industrial Advocate Queensland Teachers Union.

In summary, AESA asked of the Minister:

Building on the foundations, frameworks, action plans and initiatives established under successive governments:

1)    To advocate the importance of environmental education and the strong policy record the coalition has on supporting sustainability in schools within the Liberal National Party including AuSSI.

2)   For your department to host the AuSSI (QESSI) program in Queensland and bring together the Ministers for Education, Agriculture, Tourism and Resources to support the initiative.  The Victorian model demonstrates precedence of the Department for Environnment to play a key role within environmental education.  Environmental education within schools provides your Department a gateway to achieving transformative change in the community around energy efficiency, waste minimization, water efficiency and biodiversity.

3)  To allocate funding to the QESSI program from the Queensland state government (as the coalition government has recently done in Victoria; $8.3 million) of $10 million over four years, making a public announcement of your Departments support.

Whilst the Minister was supportive of the work of all parties towards EfS, he took our requests under advisement, to be addressed formally by letter.

We received a written response from the Ministers office in October, and the funding request was denied.  However the two other key points were not addressed, and the Queensland Chapter is currently drafting a further response.  Anyone who wishes to be involved in future discussions are welcome to participate, contact Jo : jokelly48@gmail.com