Introduction

This chapter will examine the international educational commitments of the 1992 United Nations (UN) Rio Earth Summit on Environment and Development in relation to trends in educational policy and practice over the last 20 years. The Rio Summit commitments were contained in the text of Agenda 21, which emphasised the imperative to reorient education systems towards sustainable development and laid out a clear programme for governments. Many organisations and commentators (for example the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation [UNESCO], United Nations Environment Programme [UNEP] and the Stakeholder Forum) have highlighted the urgency of putting these commitments into practice to turn round the oil tanker of over-consumption and unsustainable lifestyles in the wealthier parts of the world and to address the poverty and environmental devastation in other parts. Education for sustainable development (ESD) was seen as one of the key driving forces for this.

The notion of sustainable development and that of education for sustainable development are closely interlinked, and ESD can be viewed as the learning (both formal, non-formal and informal) that is necessary to achieve sustainable development (UNESCO, 2007a). However, it is important to remember that the concepts of ‘ESD’ and, indeed, ‘sustainable development’ have relatively recent origins and are both seen as ‘emerging’ and contested. How they are interpreted will depend very much on the ideological, philosophical, cultural and ethical perspectives of those using them. Nonetheless, commitments to ESD are rooted in international policy and endorsed at the highest level by UN agencies and by the member states that have signed up to them. There is broad agreement among policymakers and practitioners that ESD covers a very broad spectrum, from formal sector education to community activism, social learning, organisational learning and awareness raising. For the purposes of this chapter, I will focus primarily on the formal education sector.

Evidence indicates that governments were initially very slow to address their commitments to ESD and so other policy actors, in particular, environmental and development non-governmental organisations (NGOs), started to take the lead. This chapter will look at the influence of the NGO sector in relation to UK policy on ESD. It will also set out to look at some of the blocks and constraints on, as well as the opportunities for, change, locally and globally.