Work, Learning and Sustainable Development: Opportunities and Challenges, 2009, a 500-page book divided into 36 chapters, edited by John Fein, Rupert Maclean and Man-Gon Park, constitutes an excellent source of information on Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) and addresses a wide range of issues that are critical to national, regional and international development.

The handbooks, An Environmental Steward's Handbook and Guidelines for Environmental Clubs, both written by Marceline Collins-Figueroa and Janice HoLung, are two very important and timely books that set out very clearly how school and college communities can attend to the urgent task of caring for the environment. These handbooks are based on the writers' involvement in the Sustainable Teacher Environmental Education Project (STEEP), which piloted a novel approach to environmental education, that is, a 'whole college' approach involving all categories of staff and students.

Jamaica's National Environmental Education Committee (NEEC) aims to encourage, guide, and coordinate environmental education activities in support of sustainable development in the country. This multi-stakeholder national partnership of organizations-drawn from government, non-government, education, community, and private sector agencies-has been in existence since 1993, when it was formed by the National Resources Conservation Authority (NRCA) to help that authority fulfil its legal mandate for increasing the environmental literacy of Jamaicans.

Jamaica's commitment to the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development builds on 12 years of environmental education initiatives within the framework of a national action plan. Partnerships developed among educational institutions, government agencies, NGOs and donors are facilitating change in the formal education system, integrating environmental education into teacher professional development and national curricula; involving the school college community in participatory planning; and implementing whole college approaches.

As the global appeal of the sustainable development discourse increased from the mid-1980s onwards, environmental education became unsurprisingly linked with this concept, making sustainable development a principal aim of many environmental education initiatives on global, regional, and national agendas. Notwithstanding the political attractiveness of the discourse, the concept is a highly ambiguous and contested one. This renders engagement with individuals'understandings of sustainability, along with underlying concepts such as nature and the environment, an imperative.

This paper argues that teaching and learning for sustainable development requires a non-traditional methodology and explores the constructivist approach as providing a suitable methodology. In this exploration the paper shows the value of the constructivist approach but also indicates its limitations. The paper proposes, instead, a methodology that takes into account the usefulness of the constructivist approach, but extends it to one more anchored in community action.

Environmentally related programmes have been part of  the educational landscape in the Caribbean largely in response to a concern about the negative environmental consequences of human activity, and the efforts of Caribbean educators who were influenced by the UNESCO-UNEP International Environmental Programme in the 1980s and 1990s.

Higher education has been positioned as an important contributor to development in low-income countries in the context of the knowledge economy. This paper assesses the potential for building sustainable higher education systems that can contribute to development in low-income countries. The premise of this paper is that developing countries cannot be researched in isolation. The intensification of higher education relationships across national borders means that developments

This article examines the role of facilities management in ensuring the sustainability of higher education institutions, with particular reference to ecological sustainable development (ESD). It describes an ESD model, developed by the Tertiary Education Facilities Management Association, for incorporating sustainability into facilities management, and recommends the adoption of such a model by Caribbean higher education institutions.

Higher education has been positioned as an important contributor to development in low-income countries in the context of the knowledge economy. This paper assesses the potential for building sustainable higher education systems that can contribute to development in low-income countries. The premise of this paper is that developing countries cannot be researched in isolation.