How can education address the planetary crisis and steer it in a positive direction?

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world¹”. But how can educational methods and contents motivate and steer society in a positive direction, and how do we accelerate the educational reform process?

Here we present tools, projects, and movements from academic curricula, ranging from storytelling and experiential coursework to grassroots initiatives in green education.

• For the UN climate conference COP28 in Dubai in 2023, students, employees, scientists, climate activists, writers and Indigenous authors spurred climate action beyond its walls and national borders through creative means. The outcome was a fluid book² calling on politicians, policymakers and organisations to action.
• At the Amsterdam University College (Netherlands), teachers (re-)designed, taught and coordinated the second-year bachelor course ‘Big Questions in the Anthropocene’. 250 students critically evaluated their planetary relationships and explored new ways to transform and sustain them. An experiential format asked students to design and guide a city-based excursion while reflecting on and reviewing that of their peers’ and developing an independent research project.
• At the grassroots level, EDI (Equality, Diversion and Inclusion) Committees within the program Earth and Environmental Sciences organised lectures, workshops and information sessions on geoethical topics³. These committees connect through networking like national events, conferences and social media (e.g. ‘Earth Science for All 2025’), informing and activating peers around inclusive, cross-broder scientific collaboration and the deconstruction of colonial practices.
• Plato’s Garden is a VU’s grassroots cross-faculty educators’ movement with interdisciplinary expertise spanning six VU faculties and collaborating with the University of Twente. The platform promotes and incorporates nature- and art-based pedagogic methods such as forest bathing, ecopedagogy exercises and nature walks into higher education.
• In line with this, the Sustainability Education Hub is active in integrating sustainability into all VU programs.

The tools mentioned here showcase inspiration and creativity, providing fertile ground for the germination of new identities, ultimately blossoming into hands- and heart-type of activities that embed curricula and (non-)academic communities in nature. The challenge is that all these programs operate more in isolation than in collaboration, lacking an ecosystem to scale these initiatives.

Educational specialists and students need an infrastructure that supports their endeavours. This includes 1) formal embedding within university structures, 2) financial support from host institutes, 3) teachers and students with time to spend on those initiatives, 4) facilitating networking and 5) promoting active implementation in educational curricula.  

To stimulate meaningful transformation, we build on a collectivist approach rooted in existing (non-)academic settings and communities. Its strength lies in the diversity of geoethical practices and themes – such as climate action, digital transformation, and social justice – and their expression through educational programs and grassroots initiatives. Here, the classroom becomes a space of critical engagement, enabling us to confront the climate crisis as an ethical, social, and political condition that demands a lived, justice-oriented responsibility. This, in turn, supports an adaptive transformation toward a resilient and synergistic ecojust education.

¹ quote attributed to Nelson Mandela

² VU 2023, Fluidbook for COP28, www.vu.nl/cop28

³ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoethics