Sustainability in higher education:: what is happening?

This special issue focuses upon diverse facets of Education for Sustainability. The 33 documents within it are from authors in institutions of higher education from Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, South America, Central America and North America. Some authors use discipline-specific foci to foster inclusion of sustainable development (SD) within their educational programs. Many other authors report on their experiences in working within interdisciplinary teams to re-focus education, research and outreach to help accelerate the rate at which educational institutions foster and underpin the values, knowledge and actions to help their students transform society from unsustainable to sustainable patterns. The authors of these articles underscore the importance of the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development that began on January 2005 to be an important framework and a catalyst for increasing SD educational, research and outreach efforts within all academic institutions, worldwide. The developers of this special issue hope that the lessons learned by the authors of these articles will help all in envisioning the way forward and in overcoming the resistance to change within and outside of academia as we work together on our joint journey toward sustainable societies. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.