Quick Navigation : Background | Programme Structure | Activities | Contacts | More information

The purpose of the Regional Environmental Education Programme is to enable environmental education practitioners in the SADC region to strengthen environmental education processes for equitable and sustainable environmental management choices. The Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (DEAT) supports and contributes towards enhancing and strengthening environmental education policy, networking, the development of resource materials and capacity-building.

Background on SADC Regional Environmental Education Programme

In 1993, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Environment and Land Management Sector (ELMS) initiated a programme to support environmental education processes in the southern African region. The Council of Ministers ratified the proposal and agreed that the Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa (WESSA) should act as implementing agency of the programme. Following approval in August 1996 the document was finalised in December 1996 (Harare) and submitted to the Swedish International Development Developing Agency (Sida) for funding. Sida found the Programme's recommendations appropriate for responding to the urgent need for environmental education processes in the SADC region and agreed to fund the first three years of operation from July 1997 to June 2000.

In 2001, after participatory discussions the programme document was further developed and approved by the National Network Representatives in April 2001. Sida has recently agreed to fund the second phase of the programme from 2002 to 2005. Denmark, USAID and IUCN - The World Conservation Union, also funds different components of the programme.

Programme Structure

The purpose of the Regional Environmental Education (EE) Programme is to enable environmental education practitioners in the SADC region to strengthen environmental education processes for equitable and sustainable environmental management choices. This is achieved through enhanced and strengthened environmental education policy, networking, resource materials and training capacity. The SADC Regional EE Programme consists of four major components, each with its specific objectives as follows.

POLICY: Strengthen and broaden the Regional Environmental Education Network
The objective of this component is to create an enabling environment for regional and national environmental education policy and to support the development and implementation of local level environmental and environmental education policy within the SADC region

NETWORKING: Strengthen and broaden the Regional Environmental Education Network
The objective of this component is to support environmental education processes through enabling decentralised networking of environmental education practitioners within the SADC region.

RESOURCES: Development of relevant resource materials for the region
The objective of this component is to support the development of capacity within the SADC region to access, use and develop appropriate environmental education resource materials.

TRAINING: Development and strengthening of training capacity in environmental education
The objective of this component is to support the development of capacity within the SADC region to respond to environmental issues through improved environmental education processes and training activities.

Activities

The SADC Regional Environmental Education Programme supports environmental activities in various SADC states. This support ranges from local school initiatives in remote rural regions of Zambia to high-profile environmental courses for industry involving senior government officials and the private sector in Malawi. Increasingly support for programmes in the SADC region has shifted from courses at the Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa centres to workshops and training programmes in the various countries.

EE Newsletter
The EE mail is the official newsletter of the SADC Regional Environmental Education Programme aimed at sharing ideas and information to enable networking amongst environmental educators in the SADC region. The EE mail is produced twice a year in both English and Portuguese.

A key focus of the Regional Environmental Education Programme has been to support networking among environmental education practitioners in the region. This networking has worked well where collaborative partnerships have been established to achieve specific projects. Many of these partnerships and projects build on relationships that have been formed over the last twenty years.

ContactsH

Below are contacts of the National Network representatives who are appointed through SADC ELMS national focal points. They are part of a Regional Environmental Education Network (REEN) and are responsible for ensuring that the programme is implemented in their countries and in the SADC region as a whole.

More information