As the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development ends, there will be celebrations and the inevitable reporting on activities and outcomes. Countless meetings, events, and sessions have occurred around the world. This opinion piece acknowledges three significant events or outcomes that are shaping the future of ESD within formal education…

Teacher education institutions (TEIs) that are pioneers and leaders in education for sustainable development (ESD) have advanced the field through efforts in programmes, practices, and policies during the United Nations Decade of ESD. An international survey of TEIs by the UNESCO Chair on Reorienting Teacher Education to Address Sustainability at…

This paper explores how ESD activities may be viewed on a continuum from "causal" approaches, seeking to cause change in others, to "enabling" orientations where efforts are made to enable people to implement the principles of ESD and respond to the environmental challenges they face from their own context. An enabling…

The policy and philosophy of school curriculum formation in this article is interpreted from phenomenological and critical pedagogy perspectives. The main features of the phenomenology, set against the instructional method for an individual's development, and his/her relationship with the surroundings, are herein explicated. The distinction…

This article reports on an international conference "An Ethical Framework for a Sustainable World," that was held in Ahmedabad, India. The conference served as the culmination of events marking the 10-year anniversary of the completion of the Earth Charter document and the launch of a social movement to transition to a more sustainable way of life…

This article presents the findings of a collaborative investigation by six nongovernment organisations (NGOs) from five European-Mediterranean countries to identify a framework for reversing rural marginalisation in Mediterranean communities through sustainable forms of community-based agricultural development. The project brought together…

Between the Inter-governmental Conference on Environmental Education at Tbilisi in 1977 and the Fourth International Conference on Environmental Education at Ahmedabad in 2007, our conception of the challenge posed by the global crises of climate change, environmental destruction, social disintegration, poverty, natural resources exhaustion and…

The article explores social and educational processes that could undermine the Earth Charter's promise. It points out that the meaning of the Charter would be affected if it is used in a doctrinaire manner, if individuals or groups assume the role of its legitimate and expert emissaries, if it takes on a messianic tone in its central ideas, if it…

In July 2008, the Ashlawn Elementary School in Arlington, Virginia, began the implementation of the Global Citizenship Project, which is designed around the four guiding principles of the Earth Charter: respect and care for the community of life; ecological integrity; social and economic justice; and democracy, nonviolence and peace. The intent of…

This article is the edited text of the presentation made by the author at the Parliament of the World's Religions in Melbourne, Australia, 3-9 December 2009. The session was titled "Healing the Earth with Care and Concern: Religious Responses to the Earth Charter". The article highlights some of the efforts that the Soka Gakkai International (SGI)…

Humanity is part of a vast evolving universe. Earth is alive with a unique community of life. The forces of nature make existence a demanding and uncertain adventure, but Earth has provided the conditions essential to life's evolution. The resilience of the community of life and the well-being of humanity depend upon preserving a healthy biosphere…

This descriptive report outlines an innovative project in which Earth Charter International is actively involved. The project aims to develop approaches, indicators and tools for Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) to be able to measure values-based aspects and impacts of their work at the project level. Many CSOs have an intuitive feeling that…

In this article, the author argues for a more critical form of education for sustainable development (ESD) linked to global citizenship education. He does so by reference to the limitations of the "green new deals" being carried out as part of fiscal stimulus packages, the alternatives proposed by ecosocialists, and the partly conflicting and…

A key task of RCE North East, located in the North East of England, will be to tackle problems of inequality in education and to meet local and global challenges by promoting an expansive program of education for sustainable development. The article describes how the Regional Centre of Expertise in education for sustainable development (RCE) is…

The author argues that education, as we see it today, is more a part of sustainable development's (SD) problem than a part of its solution because it reinforces the principles and values of an unsustainable lifestyle and economy. He argues for an economy that is not centred on free market and profit, and which circulates wealth with a logic of…