Given the huge challenges the world faces, it is clear that we need to teach, learn and live in a fundamentally different manner. Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is increasingly recognised as playing a central role in empowering learners of all ages to positively respond to local and global challenges and act in a more peaceful, just, inclusive and sustainable manner. This approach is already helping people develop the skills, values and attitudes necessary to create more resilient societies and transition towards the skilled, green, low-carbon economies of the future.

This handbook explores some of the central success factors in policy, process and practice in some of the pioneering countries and contexts where ESD is being effectively embraced. It examines some of the major trends, case studies and challenges in introducing this more holistic, progressive, hands-on education.

From the book: In Cyprus, the structure of the ESD curriculum is similarly not organised according to subject matter but evolves around 12 transversal thematic units (i.e. forests, energy, water, waste management, urban development, production and consumption, desertification, transport systems, poverty, culture and environment, biodiversity, and tourism). The thematic units and the issues related to them interweave through specific expected learning outcomes explicitly defined in different learning stages.