5 Reasons Why ICSE 2025 is a Pivotal Global Event for Education and Green Jobs

Introduction

The climate crisis is not just an abstract threat, but a reality for billions of us. The world is changing in front of our eyes because of extreme heat, flooding, and ecological collapse, and change needs to be immediate and continual. While technology and policy have both played crucial roles in alleviating the crisis, the importance of education in securing a sustainable future is often overlooked.

We urgently need sustainability education now more than ever, because as we prepare youth to become competent human beings in a world that is continuously changing, we also need to educate them with the knowledge, values, and skillsets to build and maintain green economies; there is an emphasis on climate change education, ecological literacy, evolving the processes of academic curricular frameworks, as well as creating these new schemes of work constructively responding to the future labor supply chain needs informing and composing green jobs in India and beyond. 

Enter ICSE 2025.

As the 7th International Conference on Sustainability Education, ICSE 2025 unites a diverse global community of educators, development leaders, youth activists, industry leaders, and academics under the theme of Sustainability Education for Green Jobs on September 17th- 18th, 2025, at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. This revolutionary conference isn’t just another academic event on the calendar—it’s a dynamic, solution-based platform moving purposes and actions from local to global.

So, what is ICSE 2025 all about? Why should educators, policy makers and business leaders be interested?

Because ICSE 2025 is more than a conversation – it is a movement that connects learning to a livelihood and classrooms to climate action. Here are five compelling reasons ICSE 2025 is a significant global forum for a sustainable future that reimagines education and creates jobs.

1. Bridging the Gap Between Education and Green Employment

One of the fundamental problems for education systems today is the divide between classroom learning and real-world jobs. Traditional curricula do not fully embrace the emerging green economy, and ICSE 2025 seeks to address that divide with a platform for policymakers, education, employers, and private green sector players to realign classroom learning outcomes to meet the growing demand for green jobs.

What is in store:

• Interactive panels with employers in renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, green construction, and private green sector companies.
• Case studies from actions taken by states (and provinces) based on previous ICSE case studies that led to policy changes and changes in curriculum.
• Roadmaps that merged pathways for vocational and academic studies into sustainable employment opportunities.

While the focus on green jobs in India targets a young population with growing economic ambitions, it also identifies how the up-skilling of people in environmental work can lead to unemployment reductions while accelerating climate action as best as possible.

Previous conferences have produced resolutions that have produced significant innovations in curriculum in various provinces, such as how Maharashtra integrated climate resilience modules in technical institutions and Kerala created state-sponsored green job incubators.

This year, ICSE 2025 hopes to ramp up the conversation (similar to the aspirations of the conference), by providing help to institutions in all regions of India and to institutions of higher learning internationally and develop inclusive and accessible programs to support students to work for a sustainable future. Additionally, the event’s focus will be on marginalized youth and underrepresented communities, so that there is no one left behind in the transition to a green economy.

ICSE 2025 creates direct pathways from sustainability education to green jobs, making sure education is not just informative, but transformative.

2. Focus on Climate Change Education

The second pillar of ICSE 2025 is a daring commitment to develop climate change education ready to be implemented at all levels of education. While societal awareness about climate change is increasing, educational systems have yet to respond. This is changing—and ICSE 2025 is leading the way.

Sessions at the conference will include: 

• Workshops for teachers to apply climate resilience, carbon literacy, and ethical education into their lesson plans.
• Curriculum shares from India and internationally are seeing positive contributions from climate education.
• Opportunities to discuss aligning national policy with global frameworks such as SDG 4.7 and the Paris Agreement. 

The event will showcase success models growing, from successfully demonstrating Ladakh’s eco-schools, which use their snow and solar session projects as learning labs, to an app that facilitates digital storytelling by children in urban slums to learn about pollution, biodiversity, and sustainability through their language.

Importantly, ICSE 2025 will demonstrate that climate change education isn’t just for science teachers. Sustainability can, and ought to, be taught everywhere, in every discipline—arts and humanities, economics, and history. 

This collaborative approach to values-based, interdisciplinary learning will equip students with critical thinking, compassionate thinking, and systems thinking—the lenses through which the leaders of a climate-uncertain future will come to view that future/long-term thinking. And it is consistent with the broader vision of sustainability education for green jobs: to not only prepare students for the job market but to prepare them for the future.

3. A Global Platform for Youth and Changemakers

Young people are key players in the sustainability revolution, and they often struggle to find platforms that want to hear their ideas and take action. The ICSE 2025 makes youth that key change, giving youth the key role indirecting the agenda. 

We expect participants from over 50 countries at this global conference, and we will deliver the following:

• Youth Leadership Tracks with opportunities for mentorship, funding, and pitch sessions for sustainability startups.
• Youth Innovation Showcases, to allow youth to highlight their climate tech solutions, green applications, community clean-up models, and agroecological business plans.
• A youth-led Declaration on Green Jobs, with our youth leaders co-writing with us and shared with global stakeholders (e.g., UNEP and UNESCO).

These activities will provide a platform not only to highlight the creativity of young changemakers but to connect young changemakers with green jobs in India and abroad through customized placements through internships, fellowships, mentorship and, employment matchmaking. 

It is important to note that ICSE 2025 is committed to diversity and inclusion, and will aim to focus on youth from indigenous, rural and underrepresented communities. By amplifying the voices of all young people, the conference is fostering a global community of sustainability ambassadors. 

The focus on amplifying diversity aligns with the global goals for education, making ICSE 2025 exceptionally appealing among global education conferences in 2025, making it the premier hub for intergenerational innovation and impact.

4. Industry and Academic Collaborations for Green Careers

Sustainability education into employment-ready training is more than just updating classrooms—it needs to be implemented at all levels of academia and industry through active real-world partnerships. One of the most powerful themes of ICSE 2025, will be the focus on building strategic, collaborative partnerships that can create result-driven outcomes connecting education with the increasingly fast changing green economy.

The symposium will include high-level conversations with sustainability executives, human resources leaders, academic department chairs, and trainers to help identify skills gaps, co-create training models and pathways, and employment pipelines for green jobs.

An important aspect of this theme will be to create green skills councils and associated certification programs co-branded with industry leaders that will facilitate learners obtaining competencies that employers value most. Green skill councils will also be essential in standardizing training and developing scalable training delivery models for green workforce development.

Delegates will also explore examples of successful public/private partnerships wherein companies fund academic green research labs, fellowships, and participate in curriculum development to create qualifications in high-growth domains, such as:

• Renewable energy (e.g. solar technicians, smart grid engineers)
• Circular economy (e.g. waste managers, sustainable-based product designers)
• Green construction (e.g., eco-architects, building auditors)
• Agroecology (e.g., soil scientists, agritech innovators)

By being effective in academic rigor and industry relevance, ICSE 2025 is establishing a global benchmark in preparing learners for jobs in a sustainable future.  This integrated approach means students graduate not only with knowledge but the life skills and opportunities to thrive in the green economy.

5. Policy Impact and Global Roadmaps

A major strength of ICSE 2025 is its ability to create policy impacts. Unlike many conferences which may result in broad recommendations, ICSE 2025 is focusing on outcomes that are truly actionable for supporting real change in sustainability education and the development of green jobs.

One of the flagship projects will be the New Delhi Declaration 2025, which will be a policy document with specific, actionable recommendations for sustainability education that we can count on to receive full implementation as an element of the national curriculum. The New Delhi Declaration will serve as a playbook for actors in government and educational institutions that support the mandate for preparing learners with the skills for a sustainable future.

The conference will also provide the platform for the Global Green Jobs Education Roadmap, which will be developed with a variety of expert contributions from UNESCO, UNEP, India’s Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), and a host of leading think tanks from all over the world, to support education systems globally to begin responding to the demand for skilled workforce in the green economy.

Lastly, ICSE 2025 will provide the point of inception for regional alliances that will collect, monitor, and report on indicators related to education and employment as it relates to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The regional alliances will create and support collaboration, transparency, and accountability of initiatives at the local, national, and global levels.

Previous iterations of ICSE have already triggered significant policy change; for example, ICSE 2020’s resolutions led to the shift of another policy and expand environmental education in India’s reformed National Curriculum Framework, and ICSE 2023 spurred an idea for a novel green internship experience in several state universities. 

In 2025, we will go a step further with a collective creation of an digital dashboard that will be free and open-access and will bring together outcomes, goals and accountability. I view this combination of grassroots ownership with high-level policy leadership as the foundation for ICSE 2025 being one of the most transformative global education conferences of 2025 and creating a bridge between local community action, and global expectations.

Conclusion

Twenty-first-century challenges—climate crisis, loss of biodiversity, economic inequality call for collaborative, courageous, creative education systems that give rise to a generation of problem solvers, innovators, and caring citizens. ICSE 2025 is not just a chance—it is a call to action. ICSE 2025 is a conference presenting the brightest minds and the most committed hearts working together to compose systems of sharing equity, resilience and regeneration between humanity and the earth. Whatever your position – educator, youth leader, policy maker, entrepreneur – ICSE 2025 is the place where you can make a difference, and where your work can make a change in the world. If you are interested in changing the education system, advancing green skills, or developing the skills of the future in the next generations for the jobs of the future, you must come to ICSE 2025.

Visit: https://www.icse-esd.org.

Date: September 17-18, 2025.

Venue: India Habitat Centre, New Delhi

Join educators, innovators, and changemakers from across the globe at ICSE 2025 – Where learning meets livelihood, and education powers the world.

Frequently Asked Questions:

1. What is ICSE 2025?

The 7th International Conference on Sustainability Education (ICSE 2025) is a global initiative in exploring the global phenomenon of sustainability education as we move forward in developing sustainability education in the context of green job development. ICSE 2025 will take place in New Delhi, India in September 2025. ICSE 2025 will connect educators, policy makers, youth leaders, business leaders and researchers to one another to support each other as we transform our education systems together to lead to the future of sustainability.

2. Why is sustainability education important at ICSE 2025?

Sustainability education supports the development of knowledge, skills and values that are necessary to help learners respond to climate change, environmental degradation and social inequity. , The ICSE 2025 will highlight sustainability education because it directly supports our students’ preparation for green jobs emerging throughout India and the world and supports effective contributions to sustainable economies. 

3. Who is attending ICSE 2025?

ICSE 2025 will welcome and invite a wide range of participants, including: teachers, school and university administrators, policy-makers, industry leaders, private green sector players,  youth representatives and leaders, NGOs, and researchers. Anyone who is involved in climate change education, green skills education, and sustainable economic opportunities will find materials and networks at the ICSE 2025.

4. What major themes are being explored at ICSE 2025?

The major themes include: connecting education to green jobs; strengthening climate change education; building youth leadership for sustainability; building industry and academia partnerships that build green jobs; and building the national and global policy landscape. ICSE 2025 will focus on tangible outcomes such as:

1. Certification programs; 
2. Policy statements; 
3. Working together on co-initiatives. 
4. How does ICSE 2025 improve opportunities for green jobs in India?

ICSE 2025 will address the growing demand for skilled workers in industries that prioritize green jobs. The following sectors are either growing or are expected to expand significantly very shortly and require trained workers: renewable energy, circular economy, sustainable construction, and agroecology. By aligning to industries (education systems, post-secondary institutions, organizations, and industries) and data collection/evidence to increase the engagement of students, graduates, or workers in relevant skill councils or training programs, it will help to provide a backlog of demand with educational institutions to promote more altruistic employment opportunities related to the rapidly growing green economy in India. 

6. How do I get involved or register for ICSE 2025?

Interested participants can get involved by participating in ICSE 2025 and registering online through the ICSE 2025 website. Participants will have the opportunity to attend sessions, suppers, workshops, youth leadership tracks, and networking events. We recommend that people register early, as early registration will enable participation in and access to collaborative and learning opportunities.