This review essay offers a critique of the concepts of sustainability and sustainable development through an appraisal of three recent texts. These texts explore issues of sustainability and sustainable development in the context of three different (but interrelated) discourses-practices, namely, (lifelong) learning, (educational) leadership and (environmental) law. The texts reviewed are:

Halsey, Mark. (2006). Deleuze and Environmental Damage: Violence of the Text. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Hargreaves, Andy, & Fink, Dean. (2006). Sustainable Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Scott, William A. H., & Gough, Stephen R. (2004). Sustainable Development and Learning: Framing the Issues. London and New York: RoutledgeFalmer.

This paper begins with a letter of thanks from future generations for the wisdom our generation has shown in initiating a Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. It describes the overall goals of the Decade and focuses on the Action Plan being developed by UNESCO to guide its contributions as the international lead agency for the Decade. These are shown to be two-fold. The first is one of leadership, catalysing, coordinating and supporting activities around the world, especially supporting the re-orientation of national education systems and policies in support of sustainable development and encouraging civil society, the private sector and the media to participate. The second is as a substantive implementer of Education for Sustainable Development, itself, helping to create an enabling environment for the achievement of the objectives of the Decade.

In Canada education for sustainable development is not flourishing. This may seem curious as The Decade of Education For Sustainable Development is now well underway. But this isn't a bad news story. There are interesting dynamics at play and many great initiatives are emerging. This assessment is a story too. There are many ways of interpreting events and the analysis presented here is one; there will be others. In telling this story, especially for a brief article, I've made no attempt to provide a comprehensive survey of Canadian activities. Rather, I have taken a closer look at some key events and trends and discussed ways that they might be understood.

Within the globalising trajectory of modernism, conservation, then environmental (EE) and now sustainability education (ESD) have each emerged as developing responses to risk produced by and in the modern state. Through adopting a long term process perspective, this paper narrates the emergence of situated learning perspectives and a developing re-orientation of EE at the start of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UNDESD). We identified the need to examine ESD practice in responses to recent ESD consultations in 14 southern African countries, where a rhetorical marking was noted in discussions on ESD practices, particularly with regard to changing teaching and learning processes. The paper narrates how an interplay of review, research and practical engagement activities have all contributed to an extended critical review of learning interactions in environmental education in an attempt to provide useful perspective for educational activities within the UNDESD. We found that EE and ESD initiatives only acquired more substantive meaning and coherent orientation when examined within ongoing inquiries into situated learning, agency and risk reduction in contexts of poverty, vulnerability and risk, the key concern to us in this paper and the primary focus of the WEHAB (Water, Energy, Health, Agriculture and Biodiversity) sustainable development agenda in the region.

This article charts the history of environmental education over four decades - from the 1960s to 2006 - as a rocky road of determined chocolate with the possibilities of rocks (nuts) and easy passage (marshmallow). There were distractions such as suggestions of changing names and new directions (add fruit?) along the way but the road has continued to be well travelled. The article concludes that there is much in common with where we have come from (the 1975 Belgrade Charter) and where we stand now (in year 2 of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development). Where next?

Environmental Education is one of the cross-curricular themes, introduced in the mid 1990s in the curriculum of Flemish secondary education (12-18 yr). Both the Brundtland report and the ENSI philosophy inspired the development of the objectives for EE. A strong partnership exists between the departments of education and the environment of the Flemish Ministry and the provincial authorities, which resulted in the project ‘MOS’, an environmental management system for primary and secondary schools. Besides environmental objectives, the pedagogical objectives of the project are strongly emphasised. The UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development provides a strong stimulus to link Environmental Education to the other cross-curricular themes, Citizenship and Health Education and to include the ‘MOS’-project into the broader framework of Education for Sustainable Development.

The United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) 2005-2014 provides a significant platform to enhance the profile of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in formal and informal learning spaces and ultimately to assist in transforming our future into a more sustainable one. The article presents a brief summary of Australia's response to the DESD since its announcement in 2003. It argues that if stakeholders interpret the Decade as “business as usual”, rather than as a chance to reflect on how to be more strategic and reach out to key decision-makers or how to be more effective in involving a greater number of stakeholders in learning and change for sustainability, then the opportunities presented by the DESD will be missed.