Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to analyze and profile significant national developments in higher education for sustainable development in India and to compare different educational approaches emerging in connection with education for sustainable development. Design/methodology/approach -This is an evaluative review of contrasting initiatives to provide environmental and sustainability education in different institutions, that takes into account philosophy, policy and practice in Indian higher education. Academic programmes, policy statements and education projects are analyzed, to highlight important developments, challenges and the prospects for future progress. Findings -Several principles of sustainable development are embedded in India's education policy. It is perhaps the only country where the highest court has mandated environmental education at all levels of formal education, which includes a compulsory undergraduate course. However, the challenges of implementing this requirement effectively are hampered by lack of inter-disciplinary competence among staff and students, and traditional methods of assessment in HE. India has examples of successful community-based initiatives but these often have resource implications. Many efforts to develop learning opportunities in this field have emerged primarily from academic and student interests and priorities rather than from formal policy initiatives. Originality/value -This paper provides an evaluative perspective on the diverse and innovative responses to sustainability emerging in Indian higher education, in curriculum development and to address issues of practice on campus and in local communities. The opportunity to analyse the implementation of a national initiative is unusual, particularly in the distinctive context of India, which has considerable prior engagement with sustainable development at the level of policy and practice.

A 44-item survey instrument was designed to determine secondary students' views about how useful various specific actions related to reducing global warming might be, their willingness to undertake these various actions and the extent to which these 2 might be linked. The instrument was administered to students in grades 6 -10 (n = 768) from 4 large schools in metropolitan Delhi, India in which the teaching language was English. The findings indicated that this cohort of Indian students exhibited high levels of concern about climate change and strong willingness to act against global warming and in favour of the environment. The findings are tentatively compared with those from 2 similar survey studies conducted in Western contexts (Spain and Australia).

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tries have penned (some jointly) journal articles in English about Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). New research journals, such as this one, have arisen to meet the demand of people who want to read and write about ESD in order to improve their practice of it (see Wright and Pullen's paper in this section).As the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UNDESD) progresses, several efforts have been made to identify priority areas of ESD research. Higher education researchers met in Halifax, Nova Scotia in October 2005 to develop a list of priority themes (see Wright). UNESCO invited handpicked researchers from around the world to Paris in February 2006 to start developing an ESD research agenda. (see Mckeown in this section). A month later, researchers from Asia and the Pacifi c, sponsored by the Japanese Society for Environmental Education and the Asia Pacifi c Cultural Center for UNESCO, met in Tokyo to do the same (see Mary Paden in this section).At a research workshop sponsored by the North American Association of Environmental Education (NAAEE), in October, NAAEE president Martha Monroe suggested priority research areas for ESD in a keynote presentation (see Monroe in this section section). For this inaugural issue of the Journal of Education for Sustainable Development, we decided to report on these efforts in hopes of stimulating research in the priority areas.What are the priorities? They are highly practical, and most involve research in social change. In much of the world, ESD is about change, not simply about acquiring knowledge. ESD is emerging as a means of moving towards a vision of what could be sustainable living. The UNESCO meeting identifi ed extremely practical priorities. In addition to the ever-present theme of questioning 'What is ESD?' it asked: What are the best methods for raising awareness about ESD? What policies best support ESD? What curricula include or exclude ESD? What are the best practices in ESD? How do we build capacity to do ESD research? The Asian researchers came up with similarly practical priorities: How do we identify best practices and indicators? What are the

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