Welcome to EEASA
The Environmental Education Association of Southern Africa is a voluntary membership based multi-sectoral and multi-organisational association of educators, researchers, policy makers, students and practitioners. The day to day running of the Association is run by a voluntary elected Council, and administered by a secretariat. It is open to all who engage with the relationship between the environment and social processes including politics, economy and development.
The Association has been an integral part of the sub-regional evolvement from nature studies, to environmental education, education for sustainable development and its various manifestations, e.g. green economy. EEASA drew on the pioneering role in the practice of environmental education played by other NGOs including the Kalahari Conservation Society in Botswana, the Wilderness Leadership School, the Wildlife Society of South Africa, and the Mlilwane Trust in Swaziland.
EEASA News
Thank you of our EEASA 2025 Local Organising Committee
EEASA Update
SAJEE: Transforming Education for Sustainable Futures – Global South view
A world that is rapidly changing and confronting planetary limits and global injustice calls for ‘ ’, as multispecies feminist theorist Donna Haraway puts it.
That is, an education that is bold and innovative, and does not turn away but turns towards the times we find ourselves in. That collectively imagines new ways of being here and in the future, that upholds justice, ecological balance, and sustainable ways of living with the planet, its people, and the non-human world.
The South African Journal of Environmental Education, hosted by the ELRC, has just released an exciting new , .
The Special Issue is a culmination of a UKRI-GCRF-funded research project, which saw the University of Bristol partnering up across four sub-regional hubs: South Africa, Rwanda, Somalia/Somaliland, and India. This formed a TESF Network+ that worked with 67 projects over three years, and the issue offers us a glimpse into some of the imaginative educational projects that have emerged.
The issue was released in two Volumes: 40(1) in 2024, and 40(2) earlier this month. Take a look via the AJOL website:
EEASA 2026, Lilongwe, Malawi
Transforming teacher education policy and practice for sustainable development in Southern Africa: Sustainability Starts with Teachers
UNESCO’s Regional Office for Southern Africa are happy to announce that the NEW website on Education for Sustainable Development for teachers and teacher educators in the Southern African region is NOW LIVE!
The portal kicks off at time UNESCO and partners are working on fostering distance education to ensure learning never stops in the face of the global COVID-19 pandemic.
The website provides course materials, news, stories of change, policy briefs and an interactive learning space, developed under the Capacity Building Programme for Teacher Educators on Education for Sustainable Development called, “Sustainability Starts with Teachers”. The web portal was developed in partnership with Rhodes University and will support the upcoming online Sustainability Starts with Teachers regional course to be launched in September 2020. Go to the Sustainability Starts with Teachers website for more information.
ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION IN A TIME OF CRISES
Please write for the Southern African Journal of Environmental Education. We are launching a 2020 Special Edition on EE in a time of crises: Insights for and from environmental education scholars. What do environmental education scholars make of the Covid19 pandemic and the reactions to it? What does it mean for our practice? For whom and how and what we teach, and research? To find the call details, click here.
Publications: The publication teams have produced another set of publications. These include the EE Bulletin issue 43; EE Bulletin issue 44 and the Southern African Journal of EE Vol 34 (2018). The journal is now available on Africa Journal Online (AJOL). To see articles and previous volumes, click here. For more information on EE Bulletins click here.
Some Achievements
Albeit being a voluntary organisation some of the accomplishments include the voluntary hosting of the EEASA annual conferences by countries in the region including the 4th World Environmental Education Congress (WEEC) that was hosted in South Africa; developing and publishing various publications including monographs, bulletins as well as the accredited annual Southern African Journal of Environmental Education (SAJEE); and contributing to the inception and development of major regional Environmental Education /Education for Sustainable Development projects that have become stand-alone programmes such as the SADC Regional Environmental Education Programme (SADC REEP) coordinated by the SADC Food Agriculture and Natural Resources Directorate.
EEASA plays a major role in providing a platform for developing and channelling a critical southern African EE/ESD bottom up/ broader voice to be developed and heard globally. Following a vibrant consultation and engagement with the 2005-2014 UN Decade on Education for Sustainable Development (UNDESD) as reflected in EEASA’s annual conferences and publications, EEASA has committed to the UNESCO Global Action Plan (GAP) as a way forward post the UNDESD. Although EEASA has committed to all 5 priority areas, UNESCO has invited EEASA to be a member of Partner Networks of the Global Action Programme on ESD participating in priority 3 (Building capacities of educators and trainers – increasing the capacities of educators and trainers to more effectively deliver ESD.) EEASA’s priority 3 commitment is:
“Increasing capacities of educators and trainers through encouraging re-orientation of teacher education programmes in southern Africa in partnership with the SADC Mainstreaming Environment and Sustainability in African Universities (MESA) Chairs, the SADC ESD Teacher Education Network, SADC REEP Network, ESSA, WESSA, and RCEs using cluster and institution based training workshops and online initiatives. Also, to promote and implement the use of eLearning and mLearning in disadvantaged areas, even those where electricity and internet connectivity are lacking – to enhance access to quality ESD materials in partnership with SADC.”
These commitments will be explored, deepened, monitored and reported on through EEASA’s annual conferences, publications and other activities (UNESCO funded a project for Out-of-School Youth in Namibia where they take two courses that we named “Education for Sustainable Development for out-of-School Youth” and “Micro-Gardening (Horticulture)”. These two courses are for skills development where we focus on ESD (specifically on water and energy management) and food security where the youth learn how to produce vegetable using well managed water. These two courses are running on the mLearning system that I presented in Japan and we selected to offer the two courses in a rural school in Omusati region. The school don’t have electricity from the national grid and without the Internet; we use solar energy. The out-of-school youth use the system in the afternoon when the school closes and the school learners use it during the morning up to 13:00 (school closes this time). We have already learning materials on the system for ESD (a lot of learning materials including the integration of ESD in some subjects offered in the Namibia curriculum), Mathematics, ebooks for kids to foster literacy and many more.)