TVETipedia Glossary

People in every country of the world must plan for, cope with, and find solutions to issues that threaten the sustainability of our planet. Involving the three spheres of environment, society and economy, education for sustainable development (ESD) can assist people to understand and address the global issues that affect the sustainability of communities and nations.
Source: UNEVOC community

Education for sustainable development (ESD) is not a particular programme or project, but is rather an umbrella for many forms of education that already exist, and new ones that remain to be created. ESD promotes efforts to rethink educational programmes and systems (both methods and contents) that currently support unsustainable societies. ESD affects all components of education: legislation, policy, finance, curriculum, instruction, learning, assessment, etc. ESD calls for lifelong learning and recognizes the fact that the educational needs of people change over their lifetime. Many individuals and organizations around the world already implement ESD (e.g. a teacher weaving sustainability themes into primary education using participatory methods; a community development worker raising people’s awareness on rights which are denied to them; or a public health worker training people to draw water from clean sources). There are many programmes using an ESD approach to learning which is critical for achieving sustainability.
Source: UNESCO 2016, Global