Education is a key tool for development and progress of human society. With the rapid progress of our society, technologies and social systems have developed as well. Education, as the most important part of human development, should live up to the requirements of present development. To this end, the requirements of present development need to be first stated briefly. After a science and technology boost in the 20th century, increasing industrial activities resulted in serious environmental problems. To combat these problems, sustainable development was introduced, which is the requirement of present development. It should be noted that the concept of sustainable development is evolving incessantly. Today, not only the environment but also other issues such as poverty and equality are included in the concept of sustainable development [1]. Therefore, for equipping people with skills and thinking of sustainable development, the new and adjusted education for sustainable development, Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) was proposed by UN and gain a lot of importance. United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) and Global Action Program on Education for Sustainable Development were carried out to accelerate the progress of ESD. In these two actions, the content of ESD was enriched with many detailed goals and feasible approaches. Under the guidance of the two actions, driven by intrinsic need of sustainability, many countries have developed their own framework of education for sustainable development. Different technologies and advanced concepts of education are applied to impart the knowledge of sustainable development to students and strengthen their skills, critical thinking and systemic thinking regarding sustainable development. With the work done by governments and UN, great progress has been made of ESD [2,3 4].As narrated above, great work has been done with ESD, including complement of the content of education, specific goals and applying new technologies. However, one element dose not get enough attention and that is the motivation of people who receive the education for sustainable development. With motivation, people would set their goals and pursue their goals with strong impetus. From a perspective of educational psychology, generating learning motivation is indispensable and it has high priority in practical education [5]. With high internal motivation of educatees, remarkable outcomes of education could be attained. The creativity and cognitive flexibility of educatees would be greatly improved [6] and these two traits are exactly required by ESD.Integrating documentary into ESD as a potential creative approach to make up for the deficiency mentioned above is proposed in this essay. One example of documentary and some other advantages of documentary for ESD are discussed. Extending from the documentary that includes engineers and scientists, the role of them and industry in documentary and ESD is also discussed.Documentaries as a form of video could contain text, graphics, animation and sound, all of which are the elements of multimedia. Multimedia teaching has been proved to be a very effective way of teaching. It helps stimulate students' interest and make students more active in class [7]. Therefore, documentary as one method of multimedia teaching is also able to have the same advantages mentioned before. But further properties should be discussed. Documentaries are not the videos that are usually seen on the class using animation to expound complex theories, but it is also a form of art and commercial products to tell the truth. As commercial products, it has very large audience. Everyone can see it in the cinemas, which means everyone can be the educatees. Documentary tells audience what happens in the real world in an artistic way. Most documentaries would not try to exaggerate the facts to attract people. Instead, different art technics are used to help give more powerful expressions combining with esthetic shots and matched background music, documentary is able to impress audience profoundly. In this way, people are more likely to recognize the facts and reflect more after the documentary [8].Because of the diversity of documentary, many issues can be displayed and discussed in documentaries. All types of issues relevant to sustainable development are covered in documentaries that have been produced. For example, these three very recent documentaries, “Ruth Bader Ginsburg”, “Chasing Coral” and “Of Fathers and Sons” respectively correspond to equality, environment and education. They provide unique and profound perspectives that audience would not expect, but they are all based on facts and do reveal the issues of sustainability that should get more public attention. More discussion of “Chasing Coral” as an example would be conducted to show some good characteristics which enable this documentary fit into ESD.Chasing Coral as a documentary records the rapidly bleaching and dying coral due to the rising temperature of ocean, see figure 1. This figure shows rising temperature clearly. When it comes to global warming, much attention is paid to the melting glaciers and rising sea levels. It is a rare and potent angle of looking into global warming. Coral form colorful sea worlds. As the famous Great Barrier Reef , It is very beautiful. However, few people know that it is being killed by global warming. Disappearance of such beautiful thing and novel perspective are able to strongly impress people.Global warming is still having an impact where we cannot see it and this is coral. In the documentary, scientists and engineers from various disciplines were invited to give analysis and prediction of coral spreading all over the world according to ocean currents and ocean water temperature warming. Some prediction is given by text, see figure 2. In this way, the predicted results could be impressing.Coral is very sensitive to the temperature rising, which would result in a great threaten on the living of coral. The famous Great Barrier Reef will probably have more extensive coral bleaching over the next few years and then die. Currently, 29% of the Coral Great Barrier Reef has died. What is more, coral is a fundamental part of a huge ecosystem and it is, in a way, just like the trees in a forest. Therefore, with coral disappearing, all other animals are also disappearing little by little in our marine ecosystems. Many contrasts are given in this documentary leaving very deep impression to audience.In summary, in this documentary, starting from a rare perspective of dying coral, combing with scientific research process, showing scientific and rigorous graphics, texts and data, with beautiful sights into the coral, this documentary touches the audience and the audience feels encouraged to think about what they can do about this issues of the dying coral.The role of scientists and engineers was emphasized in the documentary, see figure 5. They provide rigorous scientific evidence to support the facts and help explain the complex ecological processes in an acceptable way by the public. The participation of these people helps publics understand this documentary better.Engineers also solve some technical problems, for example, setting a camera in the sea water to help shooting of this documentary.For this kind of documentary, the target group is not only students but all of society. As one type of commercial movie, it has been shown in the cinemas. Even in some undeveloped regions, open-air cinemas of low cost could be applied to play documentaries to realize this kind of public education. Combined with commercial activities, the film could be advertised widely to the public. Therefore, documentary could reach a large variety of people. Promoting sustainable development widely is e。

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