The role of UNESCO is to promote long term humanist visions that have transformative potential in education. With regard to both educational and sustainable development objectives, and taking into account the outcomes of the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002, the United Nations launched the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development that covered the period 2005 – 2014 and is supervised by UNESCO. The article reviews the main goals of the Decade, the tools for its implementation, and the activities held under its auspices so far at the global level. It presents the Education for Sustainable Development Strategy for the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe region and its achievements: monitoring indicators, the second evaluation report published in the middle of the Decade, and the process of competence development. The Czech national version of this Strategy is introduced together with the main obstacles for its implementation. The prospects for Education for Sustainable Development to be discussed at the Rio + 20 Summit is sketched out.