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We can no longer turn a blind eye to urgent sustainable development challenges such as climate change, the food crisis, disappearing biodiversity and the depletion of natural resources. A way to rise to these challenges is through Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). ESD is a dynamic concept that aims to enable people of all ages and from all walks of life to pursue and benefit from a sustainable future. As defined in Our Common Future, sustainable development is “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”1 This evolving concept is inextricably linked to the notion of ESD.
Education is a key to shaping values and behaviour to help realize sustainable development through acquiring knowledge and skills. Quality education responds to learners’ individual needs, endowing them with their own voice and capacity to exploit their potential to its fullest. The enabling relationship between education and sustainable development has been amply illustrated. Agenda 21, adopted by 178 countries at the United Nations (UN) Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1992), gave high priority to education; Chapter 36, one of the most signifi cant parts of Agenda 21, declared education to be critical to achieving sustainable development.
ESD calls for everyone to work together to bring about sustainable development through education, a lifelong learning process that takes place in formal, non-formal and informal contexts as well as in society in general. Through ESD, real progress can be made towards building a more sustainable world.
