Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship: A Portrait of Educational Practices (2010-2020)

Introduction

Some of those actions and strategies for implementation of sustainable development practices at different social, economic and political levels tended, at the beginning, to point out the need for societies to understand education as a prerequisite for its success. As years passed, both as cause and as a result, national, regional and local governments have also started to support their policies in the premise that originally defined the concept of sustainable development: that sustainability of their countries or localities would be achieved if current generations sought to meet their needs without compromising the needs of future generations (WCED, 1987). However, this adoption of practical principles in public policies from the epistemological point of view of sustainable development at the time (capitalist and anthropocentric), tend to pay little attention for the need to educate, from early years, global citizens capable of critically observe, understand and participate in society.

Aware of the new challenges and opportunities that demand from global citizens new skills for them to become an active part in building a more just, peaceful and sustainable world, new approaches on education like Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) or Global Citizenship Education (GCE) have been defended as appropriate and contemporaneous to today’s children and youth needs and desires. With special impact after the proclamation of United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UNESCO, 2005), education gain its prominent space and time, becoming to be understood as a sine qua non condition for sustainable development. What this means, is that education decision makers started to pay more attention to the way future generations that they represent or are responsible for are being educated.

Alongside that, issues and concerns related to sustainable development started to appear on most international global agendas (ONU, UNESCO, UNEP, UNDP, WBCSD, Council of Europe, IOSD, UNRIC) as a way to draw attention for the need to human beings to pay attention at how natural resources have been exploited and managed since the beginning of the 18^th century (Barnosky et al., 2011; Baxter et al., 2011; Ceballos et al., 2015; Dodman, 2014; Elands et al., 2019; Evans et al., 2017; Lewis & Maslin, 2015; Loh & Harmon, 2014; Neder, 1994; O’Flaherty & Liddy, 2018; Raygorodetsky, 2014; Steffen, Grinevald, Crutzen, & Mcneill, 2011; Turvey & Crees, 2019; UNESCO, 2018). In fact, associated with the forthcoming of Industrial Revolution and Science and Technology advances particularly since then until World War II, industrialized countries saw a tremendous gradual improvement in basic living conditions which as consequence world population began to show greater stability, at first, and continuous growth, later. It could be argued today that the major changes and challenges for sustainability humans face today could have their origins pinpointed to those days (Bergaglio, 2017; Vilches, Gil Pérez, Toscano, & Macías, 2014).

Greater stability and continuous growth meant tremendous social, economic and cultural changes: what was not a priority before such as health care or basic education started to become important in order to all individuals to see their basic needs answered, which they now can and have the right for. More recently, in the 20^th century sustainable development arises, in particular, from an Environmental Education (EE) perspective (Neder, 1994; O’Flaherty & Liddy, 2018; Sauvé, 2005).