Education for Sustainable Lifestyles. Learning to live for people, planet and prosperity. Practices from around the world, Vol.1
This booklet is the first in a new series collecting good practices in education for sustainable lifestyles from around world, which is increasingly identified as an important step in linking personal responsibility and practice to the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.
We are living in an unprecedented age and in a world that has achieved many great advances but is also facing “grand challenges” (Fensham, 2012) of a scale and complexity never experienced before. As noted by the former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in 2015, “We are the first generation that can end poverty, the last that can end climate change”. We are already facing many unpleas- ant consequences of unrestrained economic growth and unsustainable patterns of production and consumption. In order to preserve and improve the quality of our lives and those of future generations, we need to strive for the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
In order to reach the ambition of these global goals, we need to take a new perspective and search for solutions that address the interlinkages between social, economic and environmental dimensions. This, in part, relies on the importance of education for sustainable development and its ability to link learning to the contexts and challenges of everyday living. With quality education for sustainable development, we can empower people with values, skills and knowledge, which will help them become active agents of change in their own lives and in their wider society
