Today’s Early Years children are an emerging generation in a world facing many challenges to our natural environment and societies.
These challenges have been brought about by human actions, so we need to act differently if we want our children and future generations to enjoy a healthy, fairer, more stable world.

We need to act sustainably.

Overcoming these challenges will take generations so it is important that we support our youngest children in taking their first steps as they discover the importance of both the natural world and fair, inclusive communities.

The resources below have been designed to help early years providers embed Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in their settings. Although these are often complicated subjects, we have broken them down to explore the foundational knowledge and awareness in fun age-appropriate ways which children can build upon throughout their lifelong learning journey.

Please begin by watching the introduction to Education for Sustainable Development video. >>

This will provide a more detailed explanation of how and why we need to embed ESD in our settings.

You will find a Climate Action Plan Toolkit to help you in meeting the DfE’s requirement that, “By 2025, all education settings will have nominated a sustainability lead and put in place a climate action plan”.

In addition, we have now added our first in a series of online learning resources, “Introducing Climate Awareness to Young Children”, to support practitioners in understanding and explaining sustainability in an age-appropriate way with ideas for fun activities and setting made resources.

The next online learning resource will focus on biodiversity.