Biodiversity conservation, while a complex global endeavour, often requires locally appropriate solutions to be effective. Education plays a key role in mainstreaming biodiversity in society by influencing knowledge, perceptions, and attitudes towards conservation, which in turn form the foundations for pro-environment behaviour change at both the individual and collective levels. Asia is a diverse continent that contains tremendous variation in natural and social characteristics; at the same time, Asia supports some of the most threatened ecosystems and species in the world and has experienced high levels of biodiversity loss. We argue that the current environmental and conservation training across diverse Asian contexts is inadequate to meet the complex, interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral challenges that conservation here faces. The education needed to nurture the next generation of conservationists and enable them to tackle environmental challenges unique to Asian countries are currently lacking in three critical aspects: interdisciplinarity, critical thinking, and leadership. We draw on our experiences as wildlife conservation researchers and practitioners who are from and work in Asia to explore opportunities for improving conservation education in higher education and advance degree courses in environmental and conservation sciences.

  Transformative education is mandatory for achieving the biodiversity plan. As the section K of the Kunming Montréal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) states, to effectively implement the framework and achieve behavior change, “transformative education” will require the integration of biodiversity into formal, non-formal and informal education program and curriculum. There are considerable possibilities to transition into transformative education, we need to envision the future, inspect current education systems, and think about what needs to be changed, to be kept and established in order to achieve the transformative education we want. To envision the future for environmental education (EE), the author uses Yue Ming Elementary School which has practiced the Ocean Sustainability Environmental Education in Yilan County, Taiwan as an example to review what approach it takes under the shifting EE, and its interactive relationship with various factors including legislation, changes of parents’ attitude towards education and communities in the social-ecological context. This contribution does not intend to set up a benchmark and tell readers what transformative education should look like. Instead, this work focuses on the interrelationships among diverse factors and provide readers merely one example and one possibility of how EE may and could look like on the pathway to achieve global biodiversity goals.

  Nature-based Education (NbE) offers a transformative approach to the current planetary health crisis by integrating nature into the heart of learning. This paper examines the benefits, enablers, and challenges of implementing NbE globally, with a focus on its application in Asia. By weaving together the ecological, cultural, and educational dimensions, this narrative explores how NbE fosters a profound human-nature connection, promotes sustainability, and supports holistic development. Highlighting successful models like Japan’s Forest Schools and Bali’s Green School, the paper underscores the importance of local adaptation and collaboration. The paper concludes with recommendations for scaling NbE across Asia, emphasizing policy innovation, community engagement, and partnerships.

  Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Universiti Technologi Malaysia and Akita International University have been offering a project-based learning (PBL) course, focusing on the green economy in Sabah, Malaysia. The course objectives include intercultural academic exchange, and multi-disciplinary understanding and problem-solving of the real-world green economy issues on the actual sites around Kinabalu Park and Crocker Range Park. Students work in groups with members from three universities. Students evaluate the course’s academic, intercultural and interpersonal experiences highly. We discuss challenges in offering this course in terms of the balance between duration and costs, amount of guidance and students’ discretion, academic and personal experiences, and issues related to risks. We end with a discussion on the value of the PBL for biodiversity conservation in Sabah and potential future improvements.