Charles Hopkins

UNESCO Chair in Reorienting Education towards Sustainability

Charles Hopkins holds the UNESCO Chair in Reorienting Education towards Sustainability at York University in Toronto, Canada. Established in 1999, it was the world's first UNESCO chair dedicated to education for sustainable development (ESD). Through it, he leads two global research networks: the International Network of Teacher Education Institutions and the #IndigenousESD network, which integrates Indigenous knowledge into sustainability education. He works in close partnership with UNESCO, the United Nations University, and ministries of education worldwide. Before assuming the chair in 1999, Hopkins worked for decades as a teacher, principal, regional superintendent, and curriculum superintendent with the Toronto Board of Education, where he led the Island Public/Natural Science School and the Boyne River Natural Science School. He chaired the drafting and adoption processes of two global UNESCO ESD declarations: the 2009 Bonn Declaration and the 2014 Aichi-Nagoya Declaration. With United Nations University, he helped establish the Global Network of Regional Centres of Expertise in ESD. In 2026, he was elevated to Member of the Order of Canada, one of the country's highest civilian honours. Hopkins has lectured and presented papers in more than 90 countries and received honorary doctorates from Uppsala University in Sweden in 2006, the National University of Trujillo in Peru in 2011, and Okayama University in Japan in 2019. In 2022, he received the inaugural Clean 50 Lifetime Achievement Award and, in 2025, became the first Canadian to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE). He is regarded as a global pioneer in integrating sustainability into curricula and university practice.