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EcoSchools Canada: Creating a path to further the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals
Learning about the importance of environmental protection and stewardship has become a pressing issue for school communities in Alberta and across Canada. Thanks to the EcoSchools certification program, measuring and understanding a school’s environmental impacts is more accessible than ever before.
The EcoSchools program is a bilingual environmental education certification framework for K-12 schools in Canada, and is available free of charge to publicly funded schools. Each year, schools create environmental action plans made up of curriculum-linked, student-led initiatives such as walking to school, bringing a waste-free lunch, and conserving water. By completing these actions, schools earn points towards a certification level from Bronze to Platinum. Certifications are guided by a standard used by 77 countries in the global EcoSchools network.
In the 2020-21 school year, EcoSchools Canada rolled out the EcoSchools Certification Application (ECA), a new online platform in which schools register, build their action plan from a library of 45-plus actions, and track their progress toward certification. features is its Impact section, where schools can view the differences their actions are having on their environmental footprints through nine key metrics like energy and water use, waste diversion rates, hours of outdoor learning achieved, student leaders engaged, and measuring carbon pollution. A comprehensive overview of how these metrics were selected and calculated is available in the report Connecting EcoSchools Actions to Greenhouse Gas Emissions (available at ecoschools.ca). Available to schools year over year, these metrics enable them to track and monitor their progress over time.
The ECA also serves to create a community of students and educators by allowing individual users to view the collective impact of these nine metrics for all participating EcoSchools across Canada. This connection to other educational communities supports a deeper understanding of how climate literacy can build behaviours toward protecting the environment.
School participants in the EcoSchools program are also contributing to Canada’s climate targets for achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted by the federal government in 2015 as all 45-plus actions in the program are connected to the SDGs. Published in January 2022, Furthering Sustainable Development Goals with EcoSchools Canada (available at ecoschools. ca) reports the progress that the program and its participants have made in achieving the SDGs. Currently, the program strongly supports five SDGs, with emerging connections to an additional six. The report also emphasizes the program’s ability to amplify students’ and educators’ work, and support curriculum activities already in place. Where SDGs provide a clear path towards a more climateresilient future, the EcoSchools program provides the tools to support school communities in achieving their goals.
In Alberta, a key driver of program uptake and success has been partnering with the Alberta Council for Environmental Education (ACEE). As a well-established organization in the province, ACEE is a strong advocate for sustainability education and has supported students and educators in pursuing EcoSchools certification. Despite the challenges of the pandemic, the 2020-21 school year was a dynamic one for environmental education, seeing 40 schools in Calgary alone register for the program, three of which achieved top tier Platinum status in their first year. All participating schools in Alberta logged a collective 142 completed environmental actions, over 4,800 hours of outdoor learning, and planted 657 trees. As the EcoSchools program continues to engage students in Alberta, ACEE will play a critical role in supporting school communities to achieve their climate goals.
Participating in the EcoSchools program can create positive, lasting impacts in your school community. For more information on how to get started with the EcoSchools program, visit ecoschools.ca. Alberta schools are also encouraged to connect with ACEE at abcee.org for region-specific opportunities. Begin building your school’s sustainable future by joining the EcoSchools movement today. n
