The Sustainability Curriculum

Chapter 1

Introduction

John Blewitt

At the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, education was identified as one of the key forces central to the processes of sustainable development during the 21st century. Some years later, the goal of sustainability and the need for education in all of its forms in order to seriously engage with this imperative remain as significant as ever – possibly more so, as many of us are directly experiencing the risks, uncertainties and pressures of working and living within a globalized, weightless knowledge economy. As wealth increases for some, global poverty, insecurity and inequality are an obdurate reminder that economic development is far from even and far from fair. Higher education (HE) is implicated in all of this, ...