Over the past few decades, the aspect that emphasizes a focus on sustainable development to transform education is not new. It has been seen that education systems around the world have taken action to integrate Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) as part of their responsibility. While recent studies have offered a wealth of empirical evidence about the benefits of ESD, research has argued that sustainable development and mathematics education remain largely unconnected in actual classrooms. In addition, the ideas of sustainable development in the curriculum have been defined in a variety of different way across different subject areas. The question about what ESD in mathematics education could look like at school remain unanswered. Thus, in this paper, we present a theoretical synthesis of the specialized literature in the learning and teaching of mathematics in relation to sustainable development. In doing so, we attempt to call attention to the need for a philosophy of ESD in mathematics education.