Policy, politics and polity in higher education for sustainable development

Higher education for sustainable development has moved up the international political agenda, at the latest since the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in 2002. This agenda involves three elements: content and goals (policy), the activities of different actors (politics) engaged in higher education for sustainable development, as well as its institutional and organizational infrastructure (polity). Since the Johannesburg summit meeting the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has taken up the challenge of promoting the integration of education for sustainable development in the different educational sectors, from elementary schooling to higher education and informal education, in every region in the world. A key political activity was the United Nation’sWorld Decade on Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014), which will be continued in 2015 as a Global Action Programme (GAP) in order to maintain support for the activities, together with their actors, that started during the Decade (Michelsen 2011, Leal Filho 2011, Barth 2015). Higher education for sustainable development played an important role in the World Decade and it should be continued in the Global Action Plan.