New challenges in education for sustainable development

Within the context of the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development that began on January 2005, there is growing awareness of the urgency for educators to make changes in the ways they educate and in the content of their courses and curricula. This means that educators must increasingly focus upon multi-disciplinary, multi-generational approaches to help their students, of all ages, to become increasingly skilled and motivated to work within the Seven Generation Mandate (SGM) to help achieve Sustainable Development (SD). To meet the urgent challenges confronting educators, we must address the interconnectedness of ethical, economic and ecological facets of SD. The urgency is underscored in the context of the question, "Do we have the commitment to help our societies make the necessary changes? © Springer-Verlag 2006.