THE EMERGENCE OF EDUCATION FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: A HISTORICAL AND EPISTEMOLOGICAL ANALYSIS

Abstract

This article analyzes the historical and epistemological conditions that made possible the emergence of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in the educational field, especially between the 1960s and the 1990s. Characterized as basic research, with a qualitative approach and a historical-epistemological orientation, the study combines bibliographic research and documentary analysis of international milestones related to environmental issues, Environmental Education, and sustainable development. The documents examined include the Biosphere Conference, Stockholm, Belgrade, Tbilisi, the Brundtland Report, Rio-92, Agenda 21, and Thessaloniki. The analysis shows that ESD did not emerge as an isolated category, nor as a simple terminological update of Environmental Education, but as an educational formulation produced at the intersection of criticism of the developmentalist paradigm, the internationalization of environmental issues, the consolidation of Environmental Education, and the incorporation of sustainability as a political-institutional language. It concludes that ESD constitutes a historical and epistemological inflection in the educational field, marked by continuities, shifts, and ambiguities, whose formative potential depends on the rationality guiding its appropriation: critical, socio-environmental, and democratic, or technocratic, adaptive, and managerial.