This article develops an historical and contemporary Latin-American perspective on the issues raised by Stevenson's 1987 article, "Schooling and Environmental Education: Contradictions in Purpose and Practice". It shows that since its inception as a pedagogical field in the 1970s, environmental education has faced many challenges and…

This article reports on an investigation of student teachers' learning about education for sustainable development (ESD). Phenomenographic data were collected using open proformas and interviews from student geography teachers taking the University of Oxford Post-Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) in 2003-2004. The data analysis focuses on…

Current trade rules concerning cotton subsidies are intricately linked with poverty and hunger in Mali. Over half of Mali's economy and over 30 million people depend directly on cotton. It is the main cash crop and the most important source of export revenue. Cotton also plays a key role in development policies and in the fight against poverty by…

What motivates more than 800 people from 101 countries around the world to meet at a World Environmental Education Congress (WEEC)? And how does one make the most of such an incredible gathering of people, cultures, thoughts and minds? What did people learn and was it worthwhile? These are just some of the questions that have been chasing through…

The sustainability movement in higher education has made considerable headway in the areas of research, campus operations, and community outreach, but has been less successful in bringing about curricular reform. To promote greater thinking about sustainability in the undergraduate curriculum, this essay explores three main questions: What are the…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the results of a Delphi exercise used at the Halifax Consultation in which 35 experts representing 17 countries gathered to develop research priorities for the emerging field of higher education for sustainability (HES). Design/methodology/approach: The Delphi technique was used to elicit the…

Consuming locally grown foods promotes sustainable development and individual wellness (Waters, 2006). In the United States, the average food product travels 2,000 miles before reaching the consumer (Schlosser, 2001). This distance between producer and consumer is one reason that today's youth lack an understanding of the origin of the food they…

In-class, stakeholder negotiation exercises are proposed as a means of students experiencing and reflecting critically on the potential and the risks of an increasingly popular mechanism for advancing sustainability--stakeholder engagement. This article reviews the theoretical framework for stakeholder engagement and for an issue-based rather than…

Can education for sustainable development (ESD) policies help to create a more sustainable society? In the article I argue that contemporary secondary school curriculum policies relating to ESD are rhetorical devices that will achieve little towards resolving global problems. I suggest that the conceptualization of SD is itself fundamentally…

Times change, and pollution continues to plague cities, energy prices escalate and average temperatures creep higher, the argument that society cannot afford to squander its limited resources has been embraced by more than just environmental activists. More and more education administrators and architects are among those pushing schools and…

The population growth together with the unsustainable consumption pattern is putting increasing stress on the planet's natural resources. The increasing realisation that humans are harming the environment is taking the form of a global movement intended to change behaviour towards sustainability, now recognised as a framework that links humans to…

In the drive to achieve universal primary education as one of the Millennium Development Goals, there is an increasing recognition of the urgency of focusing on teacher education to both meet the demand for more than one million qualified teachers required to achieve this goal within sub-Saharan Africa, as well as to combat the sometimes poor…

This book, prepared in the context of the "UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD)", also known as "Rio+20", contains the papers submitted to the "World Symposium on Sustainable Development at Universities (WSSD-U-2012)", which took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on 5 and 6 June 2012. It pursues the following main aims: to document and…

There is widespread consensus in the international scientific community that climate change is happening and that abrupt and irreversible impacts are already set in motion. What part does education have to play in helping alleviate rampant climate change and in mitigating its worst effects? In this volume, contributors review and reflect upon…

The inclusion of an Environmental Awareness Module (EAM) within Vocational Education and Training (VET) in Spain is considered a factor of overriding importance due to the current need to incorporate environmental awareness within society as a whole but also within particular occupations and professional practices involved both in jobs relating to…