The State of Our Schools Whitepaper was launched on February 12th, 2018 following a roundtable of the Emirates Coalition for Green Schools, a national initiative launched by EmiratesGBC aligned with the Global Coalition for Green Schools.

The whitepaper provides recommendations for transforming UAE’s schools into sustainable learning environments, provides a definition for green schools in the UAE, assesses the current state of the UAE schools, and identifies which stakeholders must be engaged to determine an effective course of action.

A key result of the whitepaper showed that a very limited number of schools, fulfil the definition of a green school in the UAE. The White Paper points out that with 1,316 schools in the UAE and over a million students enrolled, the nation has significant potential to achieve green schools by educating and influencing the future advocators of sustainability – the students.

With each of the 1,300 plus schools in the UAE having at least one or more operational buildings, transitioning the considerable number of school buildings to green schools would allow the nation to make considerable progress in reaching local targets and the COP 21 commitment of limiting global warming to less than 2°C.

A green school provides a healthy environment for occupants, conducive to learning while optimizing environmental performance and encouraging environmental literacy.

The State of Our Schools whitepaper is supported by Dubai Supreme Council of Energy, TAQATI, and Etihad ESCO.

Click on the image below to download the whitepaper.