Sustainable development has become the leitmotif of environmental education. Consequently, the former primary concentration on technical solutions applied to ecology and nature has been expanded to include a consideration of social, economic and cultural components and to afford their equal importance. Ecological education creates one of the most important foundations of sustainable development. The main goal of the United Nations’ Decade is to ‘develop competencies that are vital to understanding the complex correlations between ecological, economic technological and social dimensions of sustainable development and to contribute to funding solutions for present and future problems’. Sustainability must deal with a societal balance of ecology, economy and socially beneficial factors, as well as with each individual’s understanding of the scope of her or his deeds and actions.
It is important that all technical and biotechnical Universities adopt their thinking to ecological education. The urban food production is a food system. But, this has only recently been internationally recognized. Food systems of a city must be afforded as much attention as, for its water and energy systems. The food system has been neglected for a long time, even has been receiving both academic and financial attention for many years (including in the sense of sustainability). But it could result in a perfect synergy with water and energy systems. Another branch of research that has received increasing attention in recent years is devoted to the greening of inner-city buildings. In addition to roof greening, which has been the subject of many years of research, vertical greening is also considered. The energy systems would benefit from the good cooling effect of the plants, as would the covering of the urban storage mass. The result would be a reduction in the size of the Urban Heat Islands. Water management would also benefit from this. In the case of fields on the roof, rain events would cause the water to flow more slowly through the earth into the sewage system.
