With the #FridaysForFuture movement launched by Greta Thunberg in 2018, students all over the world have been demanding actions from decision makers while taking an active role in the fight against climate change. EUSTEPs embraces a “learning-by-doing” approach with the aim to equip EU university students (and the Higher Education community at large) with science-based knowledge, multidisciplinary skills, and the trans-disciplinary mindset needed to play a critical role in our societal effort towards sustainability, thus allowing them to be best prepared for the future labor market.

EUSTEPs takes a 360-degree approach to sustainability, allowing the diverse academic community to understand, realize, and learn the full complexity of the economy-society-environment relationships. It does so by presenting sustainability within the context of everyday life rather than through a mere abstract teaching of intangible theories and concepts.

The project intends to address 4 target groups:

  • Undergraduate and Master students, to help them grasp how sustainability relates to the whole spectrum of their daily activities, as well as PhD students who will be actively involved in the development of their University Footprint Calculator;
  • Teaching staff, so that they adopt the developed teaching and learning modules in their courses and disseminate them across other departments;
  • Administrative staff, so that they engage in developing the Calculator and actively contribute to measuring and influencing the Footprint of their university and workspace;
  • Management bodies of the HEIs, so that they understand the effectiveness and impact of management practices in the reduction of the Footprint of universities.

EUSTEPs has been designed to transfer its outcomes to other EU and non-EU universities through 4 international multiplier events to ensure the long-term sustainability of the project intellectual outputs as well as their replication and expansion.

The Importance of Sustainability Education

There can be no path to a sustainable future without education. A major role of education is to empower individuals and future decision-makers so that they are able to face the complex and critical challenges of the 21st century, including fostering change so we may collectively build a sustainable future.

Education is perceived as an essential means for achieving sustainable development for two main reasons: i) education for all helps to ensure basic literacy worldwide, narrowing social gaps and favoring a decent quality of life; ii) education is the only way to promote informed awareness of natural ecosystems’ challenges across all sectors of civil society. In essence, education is entrusted with a significant impact on promoting sustainable ways of life.

As today’s students are tomorrow’s decision makers, the education system shall provide them with the opportunity to develope knowledge, attitudes, and skills to cope with, and handle, sustainability challenges.

Although diverse terms are currently being used to describe educational initiatives dealing with the humanity-nature relationship — including environmental education, education for sustainable development, environmental education for sustainability, as well as education for sustainability – they all aim to equip people with the necessary knowledge and skills to solve the problems that threaten the sustainability of our planet.

The roots of sustainability education can be credited in the environmental education movement that started emerging in the 1970s. Although focused on the environment, this movement recognized that environmental issues included a suite of other dimensions of sustainability. Therefore, in today’s world, strategies for problem-solving have changed and the sustainability education paradigm that provides equal attention to economic, social, environmental, and institutional concerns is now increasingly accepted across the world (e.g., SDG 4 currently emphasizes education in terms of its potential economic and social benefits.)

Because the way today’s students learn to think about sustainability will directly influence their future actions on society as local and global citizens, sustainability education is an essential element for them to appreciate, understand, and think critically about complex environmental, social, economic, and institutional problems. That is why higher education can serve as a model of sustainability by fully integrating all aspects of campus life. Embedding sustainability education in higher education institutions (HEI) helps ensure that all graduates will develop the skills to take all aspects of sustainability into account when making decisions and gain competencies in systemic, anticipatory, and critical thinking. As such, sustainability values need to be incorporated in all HEI system’s elements including education, research, campus operations, community outreach, as well as assessment and reporting.

The Importance of Sustainability Education

There can be no path to a sustainable future without education. A major role of education is to empower individuals and future decision-makers so that they are able to face the complex and critical challenges of the 21st century, including fostering change so we may collectively build a sustainable future.

Education is perceived as an essential means for achieving sustainable development for two main reasons: i) education for all helps to ensure basic literacy worldwide, narrowing social gaps and favoring a decent quality of life; ii) education is the only way to promote informed awareness of natural ecosystems’ challenges across all sectors of civil society. In essence, education is entrusted with a significant impact on promoting sustainable ways of life.

As today’s students are tomorrow’s decision makers, the education system shall provide them with the opportunity to develope knowledge, attitudes, and skills to cope with, and handle, sustainability challenges.

Although diverse terms are currently being used to describe educational initiatives dealing with the humanity-nature relationship — including environmental education, education for sustainable development, environmental education for sustainability, as well as education for sustainability – they all aim to equip people with the necessary knowledge and skills to solve the problems that threaten the sustainability of our planet.

The roots of sustainability education can be credited in the environmental education movement that started emerging in the 1970s. Although focused on the environment, this movement recognized that environmental issues included a suite of other dimensions of sustainability. Therefore, in today’s world, strategies for problem-solving have changed and the sustainability education paradigm that provides equal attention to economic, social, environmental, and institutional concerns is now increasingly accepted across the world (e.g., SDG 4 currently emphasizes education in terms of its potential economic and social benefits.)

Because the way today’s students learn to think about sustainability will directly influence their future actions on society as local and global citizens, sustainability education is an essential element for them to appreciate, understand, and think critically about complex environmental, social, economic, and institutional problems. That is why higher education can serve as a model of sustainability by fully integrating all aspects of campus life. Embedding sustainability education in higher education institutions (HEI) helps ensure that all graduates will develop the skills to take all aspects of sustainability into account when making decisions and gain competencies in systemic, anticipatory, and critical thinking. As such, sustainability values need to be incorporated in all HEI system’s elements including education, research, campus operations, community outreach, as well as assessment and reporting.

What does “Sustainability” mean?

Every living system – a living organism, a city, a human body, a region – can be interpreted as the result of the relationship between an energy source and a heat sink: it can only evolve and thrive thanks to continuous inflows of energy and resources from the environment and outflows of heat, emissions, and wastes back into the environment. As such, the sustainability of a system is defined by the way that system uses and exchanges energy and resources. Working towards a one-planet compatible society thus requires full understanding and quantification of the biophysical roots of economic activities. Unfortunately, humanity’s growing metabolism has led the humanity-nature integrated system to shift from an empty- to a full-world over the past few decades (see infographics; adapted from Daly H.E. and Farley J., Ecological Economics. Principles and Applications. Island Press, Washington DC, USA, 2004.)

The sustainability imperative thus provides the opportunity to explore humanity and to study the relations between human beings – their individual and collective expressions such as economies and societies – and the context provided by their natural environment. The study and the pursuit of sustainability, cannot be limited to environmental issues nor reduced to biophysical analyses, and must embrace a systemic thinking in which economic theories must be consistent with biophysical principles as well as with social science theories.

Sustainability is a profoundly anthropocentric concept. Nature does not need to be oriented towards sustainable paths. Nature is sustainable per se. Us, humans, need sustainability to regulate our behaviors on this planet – the only one we have.

Three key points must be highlighted in addressing sustainability:

a) the shared (holistic) picture of reality (i.e., what should sustainability efforts focus on?) demands a trans-disciplinary approach to encompass the many dimensions of the context in which we live;
b) the purpose (i.e., why should we be sustainable?) is to create and maintain the conditions for living better and in harmony with nature and other individuals over the long-term;
c) the critical assessment of how we can reach these conditions (i.e., how can we be sustainable?) requires frameworks and tools to evaluate progress towards the desired change.

The Ecological Footprint is a paradigmatic approach, comparing the ability of the ecosystems on the biosphere to support human societies (bio-capacity) with the actual society’s resource requirement (Ecological Footprint), both expressed in terms of bio-productive land, i.e. one effective way to recognize the biophysical foundations of our life. Maintaining the environmental basis which our activities are based upon means to give others the same opportunities we had; at the same time, measuring our consumption of natural capital and ecosystem services enable us to assess to what extent we are able to operationalize the well-known Brundtland’s definition of sustainable development: the development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

“We do not see science as an instrument to dominate the World and Nature, conversely a learning pathway to live in harmony with nature itself.” ~ E. Tiezzi and N. Marchettini.

Illustrations adapted from Daly H.E. and Farley J., Ecological Economics. Principles and Applications. Island Press, Washington DC, USA (2004).

What does “Sustainability” mean?

Every living system – a living organism, a city, a human body, a region – can be interpreted as the result of the relationship between an energy source and a heat sink: it can only evolve and thrive thanks to continuous inflows of energy and resources from the environment and outflows of heat, emissions, and wastes back into the environment. As such, the sustainability of a system is defined by the way that system uses and exchanges energy and resources. Working towards a one-planet compatible society thus requires full understanding and quantification of the biophysical roots of economic activities. Unfortunately, humanity’s growing metabolism has led the humanity-nature integrated system to shift from an empty- to a full-world over the past few decades.

The sustainability imperative thus provides the opportunity to explore humanity and to study the relations between human beings – their individual and collective expressions such as economies and societies – and the context provided by their natural environment. The study and the pursuit of sustainability, cannot be limited to environmental issues nor reduced to biophysical analyses, and must embrace a systemic thinking in which economic theories must be consistent with biophysical principles as well as with social science theories.

Sustainability is a profoundly anthropocentric concept. Nature does not need to be oriented towards sustainable paths. Nature is sustainable per se. Us, humans, need sustainability to regulate our behaviors on this planet – the only one we have.

Three key points must be highlighted in addressing sustainability:

a) the shared (holistic) picture of reality (i.e., what should sustainability efforts focus on?) demands a trans-disciplinary approach to encompass the many dimensions of the context in which we live;

b) the purpose (i.e., why should we be sustainable?) is to create and maintain the conditions for living better and in harmony with nature and other individuals over the long-term;

c) the critical assessment of how we can reach these conditions (i.e., how can we be sustainable?) requires frameworks and tools to evaluate progress towards the desired change.

The Ecological Footprint is a paradigmatic approach, comparing the ability of the ecosystems on the biosphere to support human societies (bio-capacity) with the actual society’s resource requirement (Ecological Footprint), both expressed in terms of bio-productive land, i.e. one effective way to recognize the biophysical foundations of our life. Maintaining the environmental basis which our activities are based upon means to give others the same opportunities we had; at the same time, measuring our consumption of natural capital and ecosystem services enable us to assess to what extent we are able to operationalize the well-known Brundtland’s definition of sustainable development: the development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

We do not see science as an instrument to dominate the World and Nature, conversely a learning pathway to live in harmony with nature itself.” ~ E. Tiezzi and N. Marchettini.

Illustrations adapted from Daly H.E. and Farley J., Ecological Economics. Principles and Applications. Island Press, Washington DC, USA (2004).

What is the Ecological Footprint?

Humans need food, shelter, and heating (in some locations) to survive. Our planet’s ecological resources allow us to fulfill these basic needs. In our modern society, we also need land to accommodate our built infrastructure and forested areas to absorb the carbon dioxide we emit by burning fossil fuels to power our energy- and transport-intensive economies.

So how many resources do we consume? And is our consumption sustainable? This question can be answered using the Ecological Footprint methodology. Just as a bank statement tracks income against expenditures, Ecological Footprint Accounting measures a population’s demand for ecological resources and services on the one hand, and how many resources are supplied by existing natural ecosystems on the other hand.

On the demand side, the Ecological Footprint measures a population’s demand for plant-based food and fiber products, livestock and fish products, timber and other forest products. It also accounts for space occupied by urban infrastructure, as well as the surface of forested land needed to absorb all the carbon dioxide emissions generated by that population through burning fossil fuels. The Ecological Footprint can be calculated for a single individual, city, region, country, or the entire planet.

On the supply side, the biocapacity of a given geographical entity (country, province, city) represents the capacity of its biologically productive land and sea area to provide ecological resources and services, given current technology and management practices. Biocapacity include forest lands, grazing lands, cropland, fishing grounds, and built-up land.

The gap between Ecological Footprint and biocapacity is determined by several factors. Our personal Footprint is the product of how many resources one uses and how efficiently these resources are being produced. The biocapacity per person is determined by how many hectares of productive area are available, how productive each hectare is, and how many people (in a city, country, or the world) share this biocapacity.

When a country’s biocapacity is greater than its population’s Ecological Footprint, the country has an “ecological reserve.” Many countries are “in the red,” however, meaning that they use more natural resources (Ecological Footprint) than their ecosystems can regenerate (biocapacity). They are running an “ecological deficit.”

Countries can run ecological deficits by liquidating their own resources (e.g. overfishing); importing resources from other areas; and/or emitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than their own ecosystems can absorb.

When the entire planet is running an ecological deficit, as it has been since the early 1970s according to Global Footprint Network data, it is called “overshoot” since there can be no net import of resources to the planet.

Overshoot occurs when humanity’s Ecological Footprint is larger than Earth’s biocapacity. According to the most recent data, humanity’s Ecological Footprint amounts to 1.75 Earth’s biocapacity, with carbon emissions making up 60% of the Ecological Footprint.

Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services (Ecological Footprint) in a given year exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year (biocapacity). In 2019, it landed on July 29.

Source: WWF Japan and Global Footprint Network; Ecological Footprint for Sustainable Living in Japan www.footprintnetwork.org

What is the Ecological Footprint?

Humans need food, shelter, and heating (in some locations) to survive. Our planet’s ecological resources allow us to fulfill these basic needs. In our modern society, we also need land to accommodate our built infrastructure and forested areas to absorb the carbon dioxide we emit by burning fossil fuels to power our energy- and transport-intensive economies.

So how many resources do we consume? And is our consumption sustainable? This question can be answered using the Ecological Footprint methodology. Just as a bank statement tracks income against expenditures, Ecological Footprint Accounting measures a population’s demand for ecological resources and services on the one hand, and how many resources are supplied by existing natural ecosystems on the other hand.

On the demand side, the Ecological Footprint measures a population’s demand for plant-based food and fiber products, livestock and fish products, timber and other forest products. It also accounts for space occupied by urban infrastructure, as well as the surface of forested land needed to absorb all the carbon dioxide emissions generated by that population through burning fossil fuels. The Ecological Footprint can be calculated for a single individual, city, region, country, or the entire planet.

On the supply side, the biocapacity of a given geographical entity (country, province, city) represents the capacity of its biologically productive land and sea area to provide ecological resources and services, given current technology and management practices. Biocapacity include forest lands, grazing lands, cropland, fishing grounds, and built-up land.

The gap between Ecological Footprint and biocapacity is determined by several factors. Our personal Footprint is the product of how many resources one uses and how efficiently these resources are being produced. The biocapacity per person is determined by how many hectares of productive area are available, how productive each hectare is, and how many people (in a city, country, or the world) share this biocapacity.

When a country’s biocapacity is greater than its population’s Ecological Footprint, the country has an “ecological reserve.” Many countries are “in the red,” however, meaning that they use more natural resources (Ecological Footprint) than their ecosystems can regenerate (biocapacity). They are running an “ecological deficit.”

Countries can run ecological deficits by liquidating their own resources (e.g. overfishing); importing resources from other areas; and/or emitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than their own ecosystems can absorb.

When the entire planet is running an ecological deficit, as it has been since the early 1970s according to Global Footprint Network data, it is called “overshoot” since there can be no net import of resources to the planet.

Overshoot occurs when humanity’s Ecological Footprint is larger than Earth’s biocapacity. According to the most recent data, humanity’s Ecological Footprint amounts to 1.75 Earth’s biocapacity, with carbon emissions making up 60% of the Ecological Footprint.

Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services (Ecological Footprint) in a given year exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year (biocapacity). In 2019, it landed on July 29.