Modern life is convenient, but our daily choices are draining the Earth’s resources. Extreme weather events and collapsing ecosystems threaten to destabilise our planet — potentially leaving future generations to face unprecedented crises. As the Education Bureau emphasises, ‘Today’s students are tomorrow’s decision-makers’. By teaching sustainability values early, we empower young minds to drive societal change. Schools are now integrating three key principles into curricula to ensure students don’t just inherit the future — they shape it.
The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), advocated by UNESCO, equips students with the knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes needed to live in ways that benefit the environment, economy, and society. It encourages responsible choices and active participation in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — a global blueprint for a better future.
The 17 SDGs address critical issues like poverty, climate change, education, gender equality, and economic inequality. Adopted in 2015 by 193 countries, these goals aim to transform our world by 2030 through collective action.
The 17 Goals
1.No Poverty: End poverty in all its forms everywhere.
2.Zero Hunger: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture.
3.Good Health and Well-being: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.
4.Quality Education: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.
5.Gender Equality: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
6.Clean Water and Sanitation: Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.
7.Affordable and Clean Energy: Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all.
8.Decent Work and Economic Growth: Promote sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all.
9.Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure: Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation, and foster innovation.
10.Reduced Inequalities – Reduce inequality within and among countries.
11.Sustainable Cities and Communities: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable.
12.Responsible Consumption and Production: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.
13.Climate Action: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.
14.Life Below Water: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas, and marine resources for sustainable development.
15.Life on Land: Protect, restore, and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.
16.Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions: Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all, and build effective, accountable, and inclusive institutions at all levels.
17.Partnerships for the Goals: Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalise the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development.
Teaching Methods for Education for Sustainable Development
Education lies at the heart of achieving sustainable development, with schools serving as the ideal environment for its implementation. To integrate sustainability values into curricula, the Education Bureau recommends three core principles: issue-based learning, life-wide learning, and whole-school participation. The Bureau also provides teaching resources for different grade levels on its ‘Values Education’ website, covering topics such as food waste reduction, recycling, and climate change awareness. These materials use everyday contexts to help students progressively understand various aspects of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The University of Plymouth in the UK emphasises that there is no single ‘correct’ approach to sustainability education. However, active, participative, and experiential learning methods are widely advocated to deepen students’ understanding, thinking and ability to act.
The university has identified five pedagogical elements for teachers to incorporate into learning environments:
1.Critical reflection: including the more traditional lecture, but also newer approaches such as reflexive accounts, learning journals, and discussion groups.
2.Systemic thinking and analysis: the use of real-world case studies and critical incidents, project-based learning, stimulus activities, and the use of the campus as a learning resource.
3.Participatory learning: with emphasis on group or peer learning, developing dialogue, experiential learning, action research/learning to act, and developing case studies with local community groups and business
4.Thinking creatively for future scenarios: by using role play, real-world inquiry, futures visioning, problem-based learning, and providing space for emergence.
5.Collaborative learning: including contributions from guest speakers, work-based learning, interdisciplinary/ multidisciplinary working, and collaborative learning and co-inquiry.
Cultivate students' eight interdisciplinary competencies
UNESCO emphasises that Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) cultivates eight key interdisciplinary competencies in students:
1.Systems thinking: The ability to recognise and understand relationships; to analyse complex systems; to think of how systems are embedded within different domains and different scales; and to deal with uncertainty.
2.Anticipatory: The ability to understand and evaluate multiple scenarios for the future – possible, probable and desirable; to create one’s own visions for the future; to apply the precautionary principle; to assess the consequences of actions; and to deal with risks and changes.
3.Normative: The ability to understand and reflect on the norms and values that underlie one’s actions; and to negotiate sustainability values, principles, goals, and targets, in a context of conflicts of interests and trade-offs, uncertain knowledge and contradictions.
4.Strategic: The ability to collectively develop and implement innovative actions that further sustainability at the local level and further afield.
5.Collaboration: The ability to learn from others; to understand and respect the needs, perspectives and actions of others (empathy); to understand, relate to and be sensitive to others (empathic leadership); to deal with conflicts in a group; and to facilitate collaborative and participatory problem solving.
6.Critical thinking: The ability to question norms, practices and opinions; to reflect on one’s own values, perceptions and actions; and to take a position in the sustainability discourse.
7.Self-awareness: The ability to reflect on one’s own role in the local community and (global) society; to continually evaluate and further motivate one’s actions; and to deal with one’s feelings and desires.
8.Integrated problem-solving: The overarching ability to apply different problem-solving frameworks to complex sustainability problems and develop viable, inclusive and equitable solution options that promote sustainable development, integrating the abovementioned competences.
Through immersive engagement with the Sustainable Development Goals, students cultivate far more than academic knowledge. They develop the capacity to navigate and shape our complex world. This transformative learning experience equips them with practical problem-solving skills that bridge classroom theory with real-world challenges, while fostering a profound understanding of how political, economic, and environmental systems intertwine on a global scale. Ultimately, this holistic approach empowers students to both envision and implement innovative solutions to sustainability challenges, positioning them as prepared and principled leaders capable of building more resilient and equitable societies for the future.