On February 19, 2026, the Shanghai Municipal Institute for Lifelong Education (SMILE) and Mingqiang Primary School in Qibao Town, Minhang District, Shanghai, jointly participated in the first Thematic Meeting of 2026 organized by the Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) Working Group of the UNESCO Global Network of Learning Cities (GNLC). The meeting was themed "Harnessing Digital Technologies and AI for ESD in Learning Cities."
The event featured keynote presentations from representatives of two learning cities—Shanghai, China, and Espoo, Finland. Participants from GNLC member cities also engaged in deep discussions on innovative pathways for empowering education for sustainable development through digital and intelligent technologies. The session was jointly moderated by Zhang Lingli, part-time researcher at SMILE, and Katie Jones, consultant to the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL).
As Shanghai's representative, Cheng Yuyan, a teacher from Mingqiang Primary School in Qibao Town, delivered a presentation titled "Practice and Exploration of AI-Empowered Climate Change Education in Primary Schools," sharing the school's cutting-edge achievements in this field. The school has been deeply engaged in integrating AI into climate change education for more than two years and previously co-hosted the First Seminar on Climate Change Education through School–Family–Society Collaboration. The case presented at the meeting demonstrated the core value of AI in breaking cognitive barriers, reshaping learning experiences, and fostering future-oriented competencies. By developing a cluster of "AI + Climate Education" initiatives, the school has created five major application pathways, namely environmental simulation, creative expression, empirical analysis, interactive dialogue, and immersive experience. These efforts have enabled students to move beyond knowledge acquisition toward problem-solving, significantly enhancing the effectiveness of climate change education.
The school has also established a comprehensive cognition-to-action chain of "understanding–empathy–inquiry–design–advocacy" for students, and built an integrated model of school–family–community collaboration and intergenerational climate change education. In doing so, climate change education at the school level has been meaningfully connected to broader community development. Meanwhile, the school remains committed to a student-centered approach, placing emphasis on ethical oversight of AI-generated content as well as the cultivation of students' critical thinking. Looking ahead, it plans to collaborate with multiple stakeholders to develop a municipal digital resource bank for AI-based climate change education and promote its practices through international ESD networks.
Kimmo Leinonen, Game Culture Expert from the City of Espoo, Finland, delivered a presentation titled "Building a Sustainable Future With Minecraft: Learning Innovation in Espoo," introducing Espoo's distinctive approach to integrating game-based learning into ESD. Leveraging its solid gaming industry foundation, the city has developed a learning model centered on Minecraft and has organized the "Builders of a Sustainable Future" Challenge on multiple occasions. The 2024 competition, themed "Sustainable Espoo 2040," was open to students from Grades 1 to 9. Participants were grouped by age, with learning tasks aligned to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Within the game environment, students design solutions for future sustainable cities, with outstanding concepts further refined in collaboration with city experts.
To support the implementation of this model, Espoo provides specialized teacher training, builds online technical support platforms, and convenes cross-department review panels to address challenges such as inadequate school equipment and teachers' insufficient technological preparedness. These efforts lower participation barriers and enable students to gain an embodied understanding of the ecological, social, cultural, and economic dimensions of sustainable development.
During the discussion session, participants explored key issues including feedback from families and schools, cross-sector collaboration, the popularization of digital technology education, teacher support, project evaluation, and international exchange and cooperation. The keynote speakers responded in detail, sharing practical experience in cross-sector coordination, digital competency training for teachers, integrating compulsory and elective courses, and addressing infrastructure gaps through school–enterprise cooperation.
As sister cities, Shanghai and Espoo demonstrate distinct yet complementary approaches to digitally and intelligently empowering education for sustainable development. Both cities have accurately identified the educational value of emerging technologies, setting a compelling example for international cooperation and exchange in the field of ESD.
At the meeting, the UIL also released a global call for educational practice cases from learning cities, covering areas such as biodiversity, ocean literacy, the Sustainable Development Goals, and digital tools, with a view to further promoting international exchange and mutual learning while enriching the global ESD case repository.
This meeting generated new insights into digital and intelligent empowerment for ESD, further deepened collaboration among Shanghai, Espoo, and other international learning cities, and injected renewed vitality into the joint advancement of global ESD.
SMILE has also actively participated in compiling the UNESCO publication Greening Communities Guidance: Lifelong Learning for Climate and Sustainability Action. The institute continues to promote Shanghai's experience and China's approaches on international platforms, while deepening research on climate change education with distinctively Chinese features. The Guidelines for Climate Change Education (Digital and Intelligent Empowerment Edition), currently under development by SMILE, is scheduled for official release at the Climate Change Education Forum during Shanghai Climate Week 2026. This initiative aims to encourage and support educational institutions across China—including universities, primary and secondary schools, community colleges, and universities for older adults—in further exploring and accumulating locally grounded experiences.
In addition, as one of the coordinating cities of the ESD Working Group under the UNESCO GNLC, Shanghai will continue to collaborate with Hamburg, Germany, to advance the 12 Working Group and Thematic Meetings scheduled for this year, while jointly planning the 2026 Global Online Conference on ESD.