The article shows that education for sustainable development is of paramount importance for the implementation of the concept of sustainable development and the achievement of sustainable development goals. The use of sustainable development ideas in higher education is becoming a key factor in training specialists, which necessitates the development of effective forms and technologies for their implementation.

The article considers the experience of forming the education system for sustainable development in the North Caucasus Federal University on the example of training students in the direction of “geography”, analyzes the ideology and methodology of forming competencies in the field of sustainable development in higher education. The process of practical transition of higher geographical education to a new level is shown. The main vector of such education is the task of creating an integrated interdisciplinary educational system based on inter-subject connections. Three main directions of formation of education for sustainable development are proposed — expansion of the content of basic courses due to the problems of sustainable development, development of new independent author’s courses devoted to certain issues of sustainable development, and inclusion of an independent discipline “Sustainable development” in the curriculum. The problem of sustainable development with reference to specific academic disciplines is presented in sufficient detail.

It is emphasized that the success of developing competencies in the field of sustainable development depends directly on the use of new educational technologies, in particular, interactive and project-based learning methods.