Efforts to introduce environmental education can be viewed as a process of educational change. This paper questions whether efforts to introduce environmental education in the last 10‐20 years have given lasting and widespread results (are sustainable) and suggests that this work could be made more sustainable by following a systemic approach to changing the institutional framework for environmental education. Such an approach would focus on placing responsibility for environmental education with the educational authorities; curriculum revision; competence; building and development of networks of intersectoral cooperation with institutions outside the school. The environmental education strategy developed by the Norwegian Education Ministry is presented and discussed as an example of a systemic approach.