Education for Sustainable Development
Lead Researcher: Prof Ken Peattie
Background
Education has been viewed as crucial to developing more sustainable societies, economies and businesses. Little progress will be made without education that helps managers, investors, policy makers, consumers and citizens to understand what sustainability is, how it relates to them and their lives, and what they can do to influence business and other institutions to pursue sustainability more actively. However, more than 20 years on from the Brundtland Report which provided a call for urgent adoption and pursuit of sustainable development as a societal objective, research continues to show that the majority of people have low levels of awareness about sustainability, its meaning and its relevance to them. Even where specific issues have penetrated the public consciousness, such as with global warming, there is little understanding of how it relates to people’s lives, their decisions and their actions.
