Speaker
Description
Ensuring sustainable economic development that supports and protects humanity's long-term existence is one of the most pressing challenges of the 21st century. Through its transformative character, education serves as a catalyst and a key determinant in achieving this goal. Environmental education is essential as a conservation tool that facilitates collaboration among researchers, decision-makers, community members, and other stakeholders, contributing to the formation of sustainable behaviours and policies. This study analyses the impact of education on environmental performance and sustainable economic well-being, exploring the interactions between educational investment, ecological indicators and parameters of financial well-being. The research’s methodological approach is based on a quantitative analysis of data collected from 27 member countries of the European Union for the period 2014-2024, encompassing factors such as public expenditure on education, consumption of renewable energy, and the rate of CO2 emissions. The preliminary results highlight a close link between educational investments and improvements in environmental indicators, as well as the quality of life, underscoring the potential of education to contribute to global sustainable development. This study presents an integrated perspective on the role of education, aligning with international efforts to support the achievement of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. The statistical analysis, based on Pearson and Spearman correlations, highlighted significant relationships between investment in education and environmental performance, as well as between education and living standards. Ultimately, the results suggest that countries that allocate a higher proportion of GDP to education generally have higher renewable energy consumption, lower CO₂ emissions and longer life expectancy. These results support the hypothesis that education plays a significant role in shaping sustainable behaviors and achieving the globally established Sustainable Development Goals.
Keywords
Environmental education, sustainable development, economic well-being, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
JEL Codes
I25, I38, Q56, O44.
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by a grant from the Romanian Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digitalization, the project with the title „Economics and Policy Options for Climate Change Risk and Global Environmental Governance” (CF 193/28.11.2022, Funding Contract no. 760078/23.05.2023), within Romania's National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) - Pillar III, Component C9, Investment I8 (PNRR/2022/C9/MCID/I8) - Development of a program to attract highly specialised human resources from abroad in research, development and innovation activities.
