UNESCO Launches its new "Teaching Resource Kit for Mountain Countries"

UNESCO has produced an environmental education kit for secondary school teachers and their pupils living in mountainous areas. In order to better understand the complexity of mountain ecosystems, the kit offers a creative approach to environmental education: it is designed to arouse pupils’ curiosity, to appeal to their artistic sensibilities and wishes to serve as a tool for a more effective transmission of scientific information and environmental knowledge.

Three large chapters cover themes on Discovering the ecosystem and its biodiversity; Maintaining plant cover; and Preserving water resources. Each chapter consists of various practical units for outdoor learning activities at different levels depending on age and scientific knowledge. Some more advanced lessons can even be used for higher education levels as testified with the previous UNESCO Teaching Resource Kit for Dryland Countries (released in 2007).

The kit was developed under UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme and has been diffused through the UNESCO Associated Schools Network world-wide. Free pdf versions are available for downloading, see website at http://www.unesco.org/new/en/natural-sciences/about-us/single-view/news/educational_resource_kit_for_mountainous_regions/. UNESCO is grateful to the Flemish Government of Belgium which funded the kit.

Hard copies of the kit can be ordered through UNESCO Publishing (for English, see http://publishing.unesco.org/details.aspx?Code_Livre=4819; for French, see http://publishing.unesco.org/details.aspx?Code_Livre=4820 ). A Spanish version will be available in late 2011.

For more information, please contact;

Dr. Thomas Schaaf

Chief, Ecological Sciences and Biodiversity Section

Division of Ecological and Earth Sciences

Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme

UNESCO

1, rue Miollis

75732 Paris cedex 15

France

Tel: +33-1-45.68.40.65

Fax: +33-1-45.68.58.04

E-mail: t.schaaf@unesco.org