Her Royal Highness Princess Lalla Hasnaa, President of the Mohammed VI Foundation for Environmental Protection, took part as guest of honor, on the personal invitation of Madame Irina Bokova, Director General of UNESCO, in the UNESCO World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development, from 10-12 November, 2014 in Nagoya, Japan.
This conference, which marks the end of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014) aims to take stock of 10 years dedicated to education, training and research on sustainable development, and to define a strategy for the post-2014 period.
For this occasion, Her Royal Highness Princess Lalla Hasnaa delivered an address at the Conference opening alongside various personalities, including His Imperial Highness Prince Naruhito and the Director-General of UNESCO, Ms. Irina Bokova.
After thanking Ms. Irina Bokova for her invitation, as well as the Government and people of Japan for their warm welcome and hospitality, Her Royal Highness recalled the Kingdom’s commitment to promoting education and awareness about sustainable development, a commitment inscribed in Morocco’s new constitution and expressed by a legal framework with the national environmental charter.
Her Royal Highness Princess Lalla Hasnaa recalled that the national environmental charter also recognizes the role of civil society, and that within this framework the Foundation’s efforts and her personal commitment are devoted to education for sustainable development.
This commitment is reflected by Morocco’s implementation of international educational and awareness programs, such as Eco-Schools, which is today developed in partnership with the Ministry of Education. The Eco-Schools program is progressively being expanded to all schools of the Kingdom, and aims to make education for sustainable development an integral part of school curricula.
Aware of the need to promote awareness in all directions, Foundation conducts various projects (coastal protection, air quality improvement, global warming mitigation, promotion of responsible tourism, and the rehabilitation of parks, historic gardens and the Marrakech palm grove) where it concentrates its efforts on education and awareness raising among everyone, children and adults, in order to contribute to changing behavior and cultivating good practices for environmental protection, based on concrete and practical examples.
About a thousand participants worldwide met in Nagoya, including representatives of the UNESCO Member States and UN Agencies, representatives of NGOs, academics and experts.