Being ecoliterate today means seeing how our choices affect the web of life and finding ways to live in harmony with nature, community and future generations. It’s about awareness, responsibility, and action — making wiser decisions that care for all of us – humans and non-humans on our planet.
Ecoliteracy is the ability to understand the principles of ecological systems and to apply that understanding in making conscious choices that support a sustainable way of life. (Capra, 1997). Ecoliteracy is the awareness, knowledge, and mindset that empower individuals and communities to live sustainably and in harmony with the natural world.
Ecoliteracy is about understanding how nature works and applying that knowledge to the way we live. When we develop our ecoliteracy, we become better equipped to make choices that support healthier, more sustainable communities.
In his book “Ecoliterate”, Daniel Goleman describes these 5 practices for developing ecoliteracy:
– Developing empathy for all forms of life;
– Embracing sustainability as a community practice;
– Making the invisible visible;
– Anticipating unintended consequences;
– Understanding how nature sustains life.
But if we want to be practical, and design a workplan for increasing our capacity to lead sustainable lives, we need to be more specific.
Are you ready to explore your eco-competence level? Time to discover!
Improving our eco-competences is a lifelong journey — there’s always more to explore and learn. Here you’ll find a list of tools (books, videos and more), tailored to your level in each eco-competence. Dive in!
Much research has been done around what specific knowledge, skills and attitudes are needed in order to lead a sustainable lifestyle. In 2022, after an extensive analysis of the existing research and several consultations with experts and stakeholders, the European Commission published “GreenComp”, the European sustainability competence framework. The GreenComp identifies 12 sustainability competences.
We very much welcome the attention from higher institutions on this topic, and we appreciate and value the work behind it. The GreenComp provides a valuable framework, but it can be difficult for practitioners to understand and apply in practice. It often comes across as rather theoretical and general, partly because it is designed so that all sectors can connect to it. In our work as trainers, we have experienced that non formal trainers, educators and other change agents feel that the GreenComp lacks practical examples of what the identified competences really are and how they can be developed. These needs were voiced, for example, by participants at the European Platform on Learning Mobility (EPLM) conference organised by the Council of Europe Youth Partnership in Munich in March 2023, following the official GreenComp presentation.
Through the materials available on this website, we aim to bridge the gap between theory and practice, making the GreenComp more accessible and easier for practitioners to understand. We also seek to make it more complete by including additional competences that we have identified and consider important to cover in order to see the full picture.
Eco-competences are the specific knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to lead a sustainable lifestyle. By developing these, we become more ecoliterate.
Since 2019, we (the people behind this project) have been collecting, curating, analysing, and grouping eco-competences, as perceived by participants in the training courses we deliver. For this, we ran creative workshops in which participants, divided into small groups of 5 or 6, drew a “fully eco-competent creature.” They then described in words the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that make this creature eco-competent. The eco-competences that we have identified through this method come from a practitioner’s eye: educatorss, teachers, activists, community leaders, youth workers, and other change agents.
Here you’ll find all competences in one place (those from the GreenComp and those additional ones that we identified), explained both through GreenComp and from a real practitioner’s perspective.
If you work in the field of education (in any form), this collection of learning activities, sorted by competences that they help develop, can support your work. They can serve as inspiration, or you can directly use and integrate them into your learning process designs .
Some of the aims of The Ecoliteracy Hub are to:
– Bridge the gaps we mentioned earlier, by “translating” GreenComp into language that most practitioners can understand and by providing practical examples that illustrate how these competences look in practice;
– Fill the gaps identified in the set of green competences, by adding those that are missing for leading a sustainable lifestyle. This resulted in a comprehensive set of 20 eco-competences (the original 12 from GreenComp plus 8 additional ones);
– Collect and make freely available a curated set of quality-tested learning activities and resources that individuals can use to develop these eco-competences in themselves and in the people they work with.
This bridge is built by professionals — a group of eco-trainers who bring many years of field experience. They are also available to support your learning design and implementation needs, such as training, conferences, process design and more. You can find them here:
We are a vibrant community of trainers, organizations and supporters committed to promoting ecoliteracy. Whether you’re a non-formal educator seeking useful resources or an individual or organization eager to support our mission, we’re excited to welcome you into our network!
