Education for sustainable development (ESD) is seen as a key element for a transformation towards a more sustainable future. Against the background of global change and increasing complexity, Education for Sustainable Development aims at enabling individuals to not only acquire and generate knowledge, but also to reflect on further effects and the complexity of behaviour and decisions in a future-oriented and global perspective of responsibility. ESD should facilitate the development of competencies needed for dealing with (un)sustainable development.

There is a growing number of researchers who have been examining the many interconnecting aspects of education for sustainable development and associated competencies (e.g. Lambrechts et al., 2013; Rieckmann, 2012; Wiek et al., 2011; de Haan, 2010; Mochizuki/Fadeeva, 2010; Mogensen/Schnack, 2010; Barth et al., 2007). The work of Wiek et al. (2011) has been important in drawing together many of these aspects, and in providing a structure for helping us to think about the competencies that are considered critical for sustainability. However, the five sustainability key competencies provided by Wiek et al. (2011) are specific to the higher education sector, in particular study programmes in sustainability sciences, although much of the information presented in their study comes from the consideration of competencies in a range of sectors, not specifically higher education. Furthermore, although some consensus exists about some of the key aspects that need to be addressed, the discussion of ESD learning outcomes shows a broad variety of concepts such as skills, literacy, competencies or capabilities.

Against this background this paper analyses the ways in which sustainability competencies have been identified and discussed to date, and specifically how they are presented for the range of educational sectors (e.g. pre-school education, school education, higher education) and disciplines. The paper aims at reviewing the work that has been done to articulate sustainability competencies and providing robust data to identify general trends and assumptions in the discourse as well as specific approaches in particular world regions, educational sectors or disciplines, and last but not least inconsistencies and gaps.

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