This article reveals the changes that have taken place in the under-researched Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) discourse in China over the past three decades and presents new findings. The authors conducted discourse analysis to examine the changes of ESD discourse in official policy documents and compared them with the concept of ESD as it appears in the UNESCO framework. Findings suggest that ESD in China has been redefined by domestic discourse and interests. The concept of ‘Ecological Civilisation’ replaces the identity and function of ESD as it appears in China’s education policies, while ESD primarily targets the environmental sector. This redefining of ESD weakens the interconnection between ESD and sustainable development (SD) that exists within the UNESCO framework and presents an unstable approach to ESD in China. This research contributes to ESD development in China and updates its potential education challenges considering China’s 2030 Agenda.

This article aims to explore the definitions and approaches of sustainable development (SD) in UK higher education institutions (UKHEI). Specifically, the article investigates how SD and education for sustainable development (ESD) are defined and enacted from the official websites of the 24 Russell Group Universities. The findings reveal that some of these universities disclosed their institutionalised sustainability conceptualisation with specific targets; more than half of these universities did not disclose their institutional definitions. Despite this inconsistency, all of the universities have recognised the importance of sustainability and SDGs and prioritised one or multiple dimensions of sustainability. Sustainability is implemented in UKHEIs mainly through four categories of activity: the learning environment, Research SDGs, external collaboration, and curriculum integration. This article found that sustainability has been routinised and systematically integrated by these universities regardless of their institutionalised sustainability conceptualisation. A more innovative path, however, is needed to ensure that sustainability transitions from being merely a strategic priority to an institutional ethos that drives all actions and decisions in these universities.

This article uses just transition to understand the education for sustainable development (ESD) transition in China. The latter has shifted from an internationally recognized response to support sustainable development to an “ecological civilization,” that is, a policy agenda combining domestic environmental and political interests. Using a climate justice framework, this article interprets the ESD transition on three levels: stakeholder engagement, education scope, and environmental governance. The findings reveal that (a) the concept of ecological civilization is heavily political, (b) its scope is limited to environmental sustainability, and (c) stakeholders from the education sector who participated in the new agenda as policy recipients are underrepresented in decision‐making processes. Most importantly, despite the heavy political endorsement of the agenda, many previous challenges associated with ESD, such as lack of policy support, inadequate professional training, and exam pressures, continue at the institutional level. This article recommends establishing an overarching ESD or ecological civilization framework in the education sector to sustain the growing attention given to ecological civilization in the Chinese education sector and calls for further research on the roles of education in just transition in the global context.

Given the rapid development of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in the global north and south, the status of ESD in Chinese primary education remains underexplored. Teachers, who play a critical role as education stakeholders in enacting and spreading the influences of ESD, have been largely overlooked in ESD research focusing on China. This paper therefore aimed to narrow this research gap and provide an empirical snapshot illustrating the progress of ESD through the eyes of Chinese primary school teachers. Drawing on an analysis of 151 questionnaires and 25 semi-structured interviews, the study finds that ESD is primarily interpreted as environmental education and often linked through the literal connections of 'sustainability', 'education', and 'development'. ESD is enacted mainly through school activities, policies, curricula, and extracurricular opportunities, though inconsistencies in implementation are evident. The findings provides empirical evidence of ESD in Chinese primary education and build foundations for further investigation into how ESD can be more effectively integrated and practiced within China’s educational system.

In recent years, China’s strong commitment to the political agenda of ecological civilisation has increased the presence of environmental education (EE) in the policy arena. Using the waste classification policy as an example, this research explores the implementation of EE policy in two Chinese primary schools. Through the use of a policy enactment framework, the findings reveal that contextual factors such as school enrolment, infrastructure and external influences from the District Bureau greatly influence the schools’ policy capacity. By exploring the internal policy flow and school artefacts, it was found that although the waste classification policy was enacted similarly in the selected primary schools, the outcomes differed significantly. These variations highlight the complexities and challenges of implementing an EE policy under ecological civilisation and contribute to the understanding of the tension between localised adaptations and the nationally politicised EE policy mandates.