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J. Joachims and K. Lingenau
in 2015. With five concrete fields of action, the educational goal was to be further
advanced, existing ESD projects consolidated and new ones created. As a result,
exciting and diverse activities and concepts have been developed during this period,
but the big goal—a systematic integration of ESD in education and training—has
still not been achieved (Michelsen 2016). And so the World Action Programme 2019
ended with another follow-up programme: ESD for Sustainable Development Goals
(SDG) (2020–2030).
But even if the big goal (ESD is integrated in every field of education) is still
far away from being achieved, there are very big differences in the grade of the
implementation of ESD in different educational sectors. For example, while great
progress has been made in early childhood education in integrating ESD, German
higher education is still lagging behind. In 2009, only about 2% of Germany’s nearly
3 million students were reached by courses with a sustainability focus (DUK 2009).
Although about 2000 different projects have been developed in Germany within the
UNESCO Decade of ESD, the German higher education landscape is still far from
becoming an ESD mainstream (Michelsen 2016). The same applies to the worldwide
integration of ESD in curricula and research activities of universities.
Since 2015, the “Institut Futur” in Berlin has been conducting national monitorings of ESD in Germany. The overarching goal is to collect and describe a differentiated picture of the anchoring of ESD in Germany, the implementation of the UNESCO
World Action Programme and the implementation of the German National Action
Plan on Sustainable Development. The progress in the individual areas of education
is regularly documented via document analysis (e.g. examining the existence of the
topic of sustainability in university development plans or the integration of this topic
in study programme plans) and expert interviews. For the higher education sector,
the Institute comes to the conclusion:
…that for the broad concepts of sustainability and sustainable development a significant
increase can be recorded in the documents analysed, whereas pure educational concepts such
as environmental education or education for sustainable development are only marginally
found in the selected documents of the higher education sector. This means that further efforts
are needed at all the levels examined in order to further advance the goal of comprehensively
anchoring ESD in the higher education system. (Etzkorn and Singer-Brodowski 2017, p. 6)
These assessments were also made by the experts interviewed by the Institute. In
addition to the issue of sustainability, universities are confronted with a variety of
socially relevant topics such as diversity or digitalization. Moreover, approaches of
ESD, such as interdisciplinarity, are confronted with the current characteristics of
a course of study. All this means that the higher education system is moving only
slowly towards sustainability, even though the pressure from politics, science and
society is growing (Etzkorn 2017).
In addition to the current World Action Programme on ESD, the UN adopted the
SDGs at the end of 2015. As part of Agenda 2030, 17 SDGs were drawn up and
assigned with 169 sub-goals. The declared goal of the SDGs is to achieve sustainable development in developing and industrialised countries by 2030 (United Nations
2015). The Goals cover a wide range of complex social, ecological and economic
J. Joachims and K. Lingenau
in 2015. With five concrete fields of action, the educational goal was to be further
advanced, existing ESD projects consolidated and new ones created. As a result,
exciting and diverse activities and concepts have been developed during this period,
but the big goal—a systematic integration of ESD in education and training—has
still not been achieved (Michelsen 2016). And so the World Action Programme 2019
ended with another follow-up programme: ESD for Sustainable Development Goals
(SDG) (2020–2030).
But even if the big goal (ESD is integrated in every field of education) is still
far away from being achieved, there are very big differences in the grade of the
implementation of ESD in different educational sectors. For example, while great
progress has been made in early childhood education in integrating ESD, German
higher education is still lagging behind. In 2009, only about 2% of Germany’s nearly
3 million students were reached by courses with a sustainability focus (DUK 2009).
Although about 2000 different projects have been developed in Germany within the
UNESCO Decade of ESD, the German higher education landscape is still far from
becoming an ESD mainstream (Michelsen 2016). The same applies to the worldwide
integration of ESD in curricula and research activities of universities.
Since 2015, the “Institut Futur” in Berlin has been conducting national monitorings of ESD in Germany. The overarching goal is to collect and describe a differentiated picture of the anchoring of ESD in Germany, the implementation of the UNESCO
World Action Programme and the implementation of the German National Action
Plan on Sustainable Development. The progress in the individual areas of education
is regularly documented via document analysis (e.g. examining the existence of the
topic of sustainability in university development plans or the integration of this topic
in study programme plans) and expert interviews. For the higher education sector,
the Institute comes to the conclusion:
…that for the broad concepts of sustainability and sustainable development a significant
increase can be recorded in the documents analysed, whereas pure educational concepts such
as environmental education or education for sustainable development are only marginally
found in the selected documents of the higher education sector. This means that further efforts
are needed at all the levels examined in order to further advance the goal of comprehensively
anchoring ESD in the higher education system. (Etzkorn and Singer-Brodowski 2017, p. 6)
These assessments were also made by the experts interviewed by the Institute. In
addition to the issue of sustainability, universities are confronted with a variety of
socially relevant topics such as diversity or digitalization. Moreover, approaches of
ESD, such as interdisciplinarity, are confronted with the current characteristics of
a course of study. All this means that the higher education system is moving only
slowly towards sustainability, even though the pressure from politics, science and
society is growing (Etzkorn 2017).
In addition to the current World Action Programme on ESD, the UN adopted the
SDGs at the end of 2015. As part of Agenda 2030, 17 SDGs were drawn up and
assigned with 169 sub-goals. The declared goal of the SDGs is to achieve sustainable development in developing and industrialised countries by 2030 (United Nations
2015). The Goals cover a wide range of complex social, ecological and economic