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The handbook of sustainability literacy: skills for a changing world

This compilation is a highly gratifying read for many reasons. It sets out to profile the skills, as well as the attitudes, competencies, dispositions and values that are required to facilitate the sustainability transition. It is organised in 32 chapters each authored by a different writer. They include sustainability educators, literary critics, permaculturalists, ecologists, artists, journalists, engineers, mathematicians and philosophers who outline sustainability literacy from their various perspectives. Common themes run through the chapters and a coherent picture of sustainability literacy emerges. Arran Stibbe and Heather Luna indicate in their introduction that the chapters are written in response to the challenging conditions of population growth, rising demands for energy, water and biological resources, climate change, declining oil resources, rapidly increasing consumption in developing countries, ecosystem degradation and economic uncertainty. Starting points for the Handbook are the social, cultural and economic systems that give rise to these conditions rather than these problems as such. It is through this approach that this book gives a sense of a way forward. One of the themes reappearing throughout the chapters is the identification of critical thinking and understanding with a sustainability orientation as an important component of sustainability literacy. It means here not only understanding the unsustainable paths and the structures and systems that support them, but also reassessing and re-thinking them under a new paradigm to leverage different kinds of questions that lead to new solutions. For example, it involves critiquing consumerism and the ability to see, as Morgan Phillips puts it, ‘beyond consumer culture’. It is about re-assessing science to understand its social construction, and skills in technological appraisal for which Gavin Harper lists a number of aspects and considerations: the role of material, embodied energy, ‘bolt-on-renewables’ (such as solar coating on car roofs), technological ‘lock-in’ and ‘path dependency’ of large infrastructure projects such as energy and transport systems. A question like ‘how can I best fulfil my transport needs’ replaces ‘what’s the greenest kind of car I can buy’ (Gavin Harper). Another common theme running through many chapters is the nature of learning required, which is summed up in the concept of active learning. This is described as self-directed enquiry, self-reflection, learning by doing, engagement with real-life issues and learning within communities of practice. It aims at action competence, that is, gaining the skills and motivations for personal as well as social action. Sustainability literacy then is seen as a collection of skills that allow for effective participation and influence in all areas of life to ‘(re-)create’ a sustainable society. Environmental Education Research Vol. 18, No. 5, October 2012, 719–731