Abstract

Sustainable development requires education explicitly focused towards sustainability; Therefore Unesco has declared the “United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005- 2014)”. While some progress has been made, changes during the coming decades should be deep and constant, if we really want to move towards economies more kind to the environment. Anchoring the challenge to specific territories, such as Biosphere Reserves, we need sustainability nodes for which rural schools can play a vigorous role in the virtuous cycle that needs to be planted, irrigated and cared for (like an orchard). Schools can be the guardians of the values of the reserves, strengthening their essence, and reserves can be the space for the flourishing of the highest values of human beings, transmitted by teachers to students through the exploration of the essence of nature and the human nature within it.