Reframing Sustainability Using a Relational Compass

In the context of accelerating ecological breakdown, social inequality, and technological transformation, Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE) is increasingly positioned as a key site for addressing the global poly-crisis. Yet while terms like ‘sustainability’ or ‘environmental justice’ are often used as aspirational goals, these concepts are usually treated as self-evident and universal. This project argues that sustainability and justice are not neutral terms, but carry legacies that shape what kinds of futures are imagined, what knowledges are valued, and indeed, what life is sustained.

Drawing on feminist, decolonial, techno-critical, and posthuman scholarship this work conceptualises sustainability and justice as relational practices rather than fixed goals. It proposes that what we know, how we are, and how we relate are co-constitutive, and that sustainability should therefore be understood as an ongoing ability-to-sustain relations of care across difference, rather than as a technical problem to be solved or a universal future to be achieved.