Education for sustainability

Sustainability education (ESD), Education for Sustainability (EfS), and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) are interchangeable terms describing the practice of teaching for sustainability. ESD is the term most used internationally and by the United Nations. Agenda 21 was the first international document that identified education as an essential tool for achieving sustainable development and highlighted areas of action for education. Groundwork has been laid for sustainability education worldwide. Various approaches to ESD encourage people to understand the complexities of, and synergies between, the issues threatening planetary sustainability and understand and assess their own values and those of the society in which they live in the context of sustainability. ESD seeks to engage people in negotiating a sustainable future, making decisions and acting on them. While it is generally agreed on that sustainability education must be customized for individual learners. Some skills like En-visioning, Critical thinking, Systemic thinking, Building partnerships and Participation in decision-making are required to cope up the problems in way of ESD like poverty, gender inequality, cultural diversity and biodiversity etc.