“Educating the educators” as a strategy for enhancing education on cleaner production

During the last ten years, much progress has been made in initiating Cleaner Production and related Preventive Environmental Management (PEM) training activities within many countries. Much of this work was facilitated through special National Cleaner Production Centers, established through national support or through the facilitation of organizations such as UNEP, UNIDO, The World Bank, and other regional development organizations. Most earlier PEM training was predominantly short-term and was not embedded within a deeper academic framework. Although much has been accomplished as a result of such training, deeper and broader educational programs are needed. The Faculty at IIIEE at Lund University in Sweden decided to develop an innovative “Educate-the-Educators” (ETE) Program on Cleaner Production and on related PEM approaches. This paper summarises the goals, objectives and results of the first ETE program at IIIEE. The three-week educational program was attended by 32 educators from 22 different countries. This included participants from China, India, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, New Zealand, South Africa, Zambia, Ethiopia, Bahrain, Turkey, Jordan, The Czech Republic, Hungary, Russia, Mexico, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, Trinidad–Tobago, Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia. According to the participants, the intensive educational program was very useful in preparing them to integrate Cleaner Production components into the course(s) and curricula in their home institutions. The participants are now actively engaged in initiating follow-up activities within their academic institutions.