Sustainability & education for sustainable development in schools and higher learning institutions should be broadly implemented in line with international perspectives. Structural and procedural hurdles at the local, regional, national, and international levels should not be a hindrance to the implementation of sustainability & education for sustainable development that reflects international standards. National policy frameworks should be designed to accommodate a transformative society where sustainability entails applying holistic approaches that require interdisciplinary perspectives.
Achieving sustainable development is a daunting challenge faced by local, regional, national, and international actors. These challenges are because of different conceptualizations, interpretations, and implementation of sustainable development initiatives. Complexities in national contexts, values, and interests determine how societies shape their environmental sustainability priorities. Also, different actors and stakeholders have policy priorities that they consider more important than sustainable development policies. This makes it difficult to implement sustainable development at all levels of contemporary societies. This difficulty requires urgency in increasing the knowledge, skills, and competencies necessary to empower actors to actively engage in building more sustainable societies.
To overcome these challenges, there is a need for all national governments to incorporate sustainability & education for sustainable development into schools and higher education learning processes. This is important because schools and higher institutions of learning produce future leaders. And also because, and more especially that higher institutions of learning have a knowledge base that can facilitate and galvanize expertise to influence policy formulations by developing new processes of change.
Sustainability & Education for Sustainable Development is the cornerstone of environmental sustainability. Our “Common Future” will be determined by how much knowledge and skills we attain pertaining to environmental sustainability, and how we use this knowledge and skills to create awareness about environmental sustainability globally.
