Education for Sustainable Development: The Path of Future Learning

By SHI GENDONG

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is education catering for the future. Facing climate change, environmental deterioration, and other global issues, the education field is striving to integrate the science of sustainable development into teaching and study. The goal is to instill sustainable principles in students’ habits and thinking, in order to help them better respond to future challenges.

Because future challenges are complex and uncertain, students need to learn critical thinking, cooperation and decision-making, and cultivate the ability to foresee future changes. The ESD aims to replace traditional teaching with participatory learning, encouraging students to explore independently and cooperate to find solutions. This is a reform to exam-oriented education.

Dr. Shi Gendong, the author.

ESD was conceived in 1972, when the UN Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE) in Stockholm highlighted education as a means to address environmental and development problems. In 1987 the UN for the first time defined the concept of sustainable development, and in 1992, the UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro recognized the role of education in achieving sustainable development.

In China, a large-scale promotion started in 1998 when the Chinese National Commission for UNESCO established the Chinese National Working Committee for UNESCO Projects on ESD, based at the Beijing Academy of Educational Sciences. Later the ESD Research Center of the Beijing Academy of Educational Sciences, and Beijing ESD Association were set up. Experts from these institutes are responsible for organizing and coordinating the research and practice of ESD across the country.

In the last 15 years, over 1,000 schools in 17 Chinese provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities have adopted the ESD concept and teaching methods, which have evidently accelerated their educational innovation and improved teaching quality.

What Is ESD?

ESD was developed in three phases: environmental education (EE), Education for Environment, Population and Sustainable Development (EPD) and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). The three stages reflected people’s growing consciousness on the relations between education and the environment and sustainable development. In 2003, the UN officially launched the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014), a guiding document for ESD promotion which also represents the agreement of international society. ESD is a new form of education emerging in the era of sustainable development and a necessary task for constructing an ecologically sustainable and developed civilization.