Creating an effective system of education to prepare future human resources within the context provided by the global shift toward a “green economy”

This article explores the major aspects of putting together effective national systems of education oriented toward providing academic instruction to the population and preparing future human resources for work within the economy in specific alignment with the concept of environmental responsibility (or that of “green economy”). The major conclusions drawn by the authors are: • this period in the development of modern civilization, characterized by our aggressive and wasteful exploitation of the Earth’s natural resources, nearing its end, the major condition for our civilization to be able to physically go on is the shift to a “green economy”, a new global concept that implies being oriented toward ensuring social equality and the availability of resources and education on the basis that our anthropogenic and technogenic impact on the environment will not be aggressive; • national education and human resource preparation systems serve as a strategic basis that determines the specificity of national social-economic development. They ought to be transformed and enhanced, while working to forestall whatever catastrophic scenarios for the development of society and the economy there may be; • the global shift from resource-wasting to resource-effective development, predicated on knowledge and its creative utilization, will be possible via the harmonization of national systems of education and their transformation, involving a shift in the focus of learning from anthropocentrism to biocentrism and ecocentrism. © 2016 The Author(s).