TEACHING SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AT UNIVERSITY LEVEL: CURRENT TRENDS AND FUTURE NEEDS

Sustainability as a concept as a way of thinking or as a subject, has found its way into university programmes. Fifteen years ago, a pioneering book outlined how sustainable development can be implemented at universities (Leal Filho, MacDermitt and Padgham 1995). In addition, over ten years ago, in a set of volumes on sustainability in the context of university education (Leal Filho 1988, Leal Filho 1999a, Leal Filho 1996b, Leal Filho 1996c), the author discussed the fact that, since Rio, a lot has been said, written and published on the broad subject of sustainability at various levels, from curriculum (Creighton 1996) to planning (Blowers 1993) to the broad field of policy (e.g. Selman 1996, Baker, Kansis, Richardson and Young 1997, Brown 1997) and local environmental initiatives (Whittaker 1995, ICLEI 1997), also including at the university level. Within the tertiary sector, there have been various landmarks in the process of design of approaches and mechanisms to bring in environmental concerns and matters related to sustainable development to university policies some of which set in motion well before UNCED-, which include many important documents such as: