2

Landscape for Sustainability Education

A large body of enduring and emerging research on sustainability showcases theoretical and goal-oriented frameworks that have informed sustainability education. This chapter briefly introduces four key frameworks that have emerged from sustainability research and influenced the subject matter of sustainability education programs. It also briefly describes the history and current status of sustainability education programs in the United States and globally. It then highlights the importance of sustainability-related employment and the need to address diversity, equity, and inclusion in sustainability-related education and employment, and it provides a summary of organizations engaged in sustainability in higher education.

FRAMEWORKS FOR SUSTAINABILITY

Frameworks help organize knowledge and practice (Ostrom, 2008). They offer a structure that can guide classroom, laboratory, and experiential learning, and orient policy, research, and practice. Sustainability frameworks fall broadly into two groups. The first set has sought to construct theoretical foundations for sustainability analyses and to represent the dynamic human and natural processes related to sustainability, highlighting at the same time the relationships among the constituent elements of the framework. Work on coupled natural and human systems and social-ecological systems (Ferraro et al., 2019; Liu et al., 2007; Ostrom, 2009) falls into this first set. Many other frameworks—and the list does not exhaust by any means the different fields—such as ecological economics (Costanza, 1991; Daly, 1996; Röpke, 2005), political ecology (Bryant and Bailey, 1997; Robbins, 2011), sustainability transitions (Johnstone and Newell, 2018; Markard

et al., 2012), resilience (Folke et al., 2010; Holling, 1996), environmental justice (Banzhaf et al., 2019; Mohai et al., 2009; Taylor, 2000), and earth systems governance (Biermann et al., 2012; Dryzek and Stevenson, 2011) also seek to achieve analogous theoretical and explanatory understanding. A second set of frameworks concerns social and environmental sustainability goals and outcomes, seeking to identify how such goals can be achieved. Work on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and on the Doughnut model falls into this second group, as do efforts in corporate social responsibility (Doh and Tashman, 2014; Montiel, 2008) and circular economy (Kirchherr et al., 2017; Pieroni et al., 2019). The private sector’s reporting initiatives apply metrics and tools to similarly focus on businesses pursuing sustainability goals, even if in more specific fields.

Members of the committee and participants in its public workshops discussed a range of these frameworks in the context of how they apply to sustainability practice and research. The ensuing discussion does not aim at a comprehensive introduction to different sustainability frameworks. Rather, it emphasizes, when developing and implementing sustainability higher education programs, the value of explicitly considering conceptual underpinnings and how existing frameworks highlight different sustainability-related processes and outcomes. A unifying framework that encompasses and informs different aspects of sustainability education by connecting social and environmental factors, interactions, processes, and outcomes remains a work in progress, a goal toward which researchers and educators in sustainability education will be likely to continue to strive.

Theoretical Frameworks in Sustainability Education

As sustainability education has grown in importance and research on sustainability has informed sustainability education, the range, diversity, and integrative ambitions of sustainability frameworks that offer interdisciplinary theoretical foundations for sustainability education has also witnessed commensurate growth. Interdisciplinary frameworks in fields such as political ecology, common property, environmental feminism, and ecosystem-based management have combined disciplinary insights and methods from a range of social and ecological fields of study to address sustainability challenges associated with different patterns of human-environmental interactions and the social and environmental outcomes with which sustainability is typically concerned. In particular, two frameworks—coupled natural and human systems and social ecological systems—have advanced theoretical ambitions to connect social and environmental interactions to inform systematic understanding of relationships and outcomes away from or toward sustainability.

Coupled Human and Natural Systems Framework

Research and curricular innovations relying on the coupled human and natural systems (CHANS) framework emphasize as their starting point the “pat-

terns and processes that link human and natural systems” (Liu et al., 2008, 639). Interactions between human and natural processes, and coupling at the system level are thus important features of the CHANS framework (NSF, 2018) (see Figure 2-1). Coupled systems frameworks additionally draw upon complexity science to highlight the nonlinearity of human-environment relationships, the importance of reciprocal interactions and feedback, the limits to rationality of agent decision-making, cross-scale interactions, the nested nature of both natural and social systems, and spatial and temporal causal coupling of systems (An, 2012; Pickett et al., 2005).

The coupled systems approach has concrete frameworks for causal and descriptive analyses. The approach is encompassing in that it can accommodate a wide range of empirical phenomena with which sustainability educators, students, and professionals are concerned. The CHANS framework supports the elaboration of methods and education for sustainability because it highlights analytical approaches for systems analysis that explicitly connect behavior of agents with system outcomes and stresses the importance of feedback and emergent phenomena. Its emphasis on cross-scale interactions allows educators and practitioners to capture important dimensions of real-world sustainability processes. Over the past two decades, with substantial support from the U.S. National Science Foundation, CHANS research and educational innovations have expanded rapidly

and provided important foundations for both curricular and scientific advances relevant to sustainability education (Kramer et al., 2017).

Social-Ecological Systems Framework

The social-ecological systems (SES) framework has been described as “arguably the most comprehensive conceptual framework for diagnosing interactions and outcomes in social-ecological systems” (Partelow, 2018). Consistent with the coupled systems framework, the SES framework also emphasizes the social and ecological interactions and links in attempting to understand sustainability processes and outcomes—it is, however, more specific in two ways. It identifies a suite of concrete causal factors hypothesized to be responsible for observed social-ecological outcomes. It is also more specific in that its primary focus is on social-ecological interactions in the context of natural resources such as land, water, wildlife, pastures, fisheries, and forests.

With founding contributions from Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues (Agrawal, 2001; Anderies et al., 2004; Ostrom, 2007), the SES framework highlights the importance of four core subsystems of governance, users, resource systems, and resource units; their interactions; and the social, economic, and political settings in which resource systems are embedded—both contextually and through causal connections (see Figure 2-2). Understanding these linkages and the relationships among the factors characterizing the subsystems is critical to understand system outcomes.

Frameworks Emphasizing Sustainability Goals

Goal-focused frameworks aim to orient and guide action for achieving socio-environmental sustainability, in some contrast to theoretical frameworks providing ways to envision and understand relationships, interlinkages, and feedbacks among social and environmental processes that affect sustainability. It is important, however, to not overstate this distinction. The two sets of frameworks, rather than working at cross-purposes, offer complementary emphases on sustainability processes and outcomes. One set seeks to provide integrative understandings of the processes, the other set analyzes and develops goals toward which sustainability efforts can direct attention and resources. Perhaps the most prominent of such goal-setting frameworks is the 17 SDGs, adopted by the United Nations and its agencies, more than 190 country governments, and many nongovernmental organizations striving for greater sustainability. Below, we also discuss the Doughnut model, which attempts to identify a safe and just operating space for humanity by taking into account aspirations for the well-being of people and the natural environment.

Sustainable Development Goals

Perhaps the most well-known framework articulated globally as a set of interlocking aspirational goals is the 17 SDGs. In 2015, 193 member countries of the UN came together to commit to meeting 17 wide-ranging goals (see Figure 2-3) that group together 169 more specific targets and more than 240 indicators for measuring progress. The SDGs use clear, direct language (e.g., No Poverty, Affordable and Clean Energy, Climate Action) and bold graphics to present high-level global aspirations to achieve economic prosperity, social inclusion, and environmental integrity by 2030. The near-universal adoption of the SDGs has provided an organizing principle, shared agenda, and common language for governments, the private sector, civil society members, academia, and philanthropic communities around the world to frame their activities, interactions, impact, and reporting.¹

SDG 4 addresses the issue of education directly, that is, “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all,” and Target 4.7 of that goal specifically addresses education for sustainable development (ESD) by stating “by 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development” (UN, 2020). The SDGs are

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¹ See United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, available at https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdgs, accessed on March 11, 2020.

intentionally interrelated: for example, education is needed to achieve other SDGs, while other SDGs affect whether quality education becomes a reality. In addition, several existing legal, policy, and organizational constructs have been mapped to the SDGs, including longstanding global norms on human rights² and nationally determined contributions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.³ Such mapping can align agendas to the framework of the SDGs, but does not necessarily look at the tensions between the goals. Interactions across the 17 goals and their 169 targets generate multiple synergies (i.e., progress in one goal also supports progress in another goal) but also trade-offs (i.e., progress in one goal would hinder progress in another goal).

Understanding these linkages and externalities is essential to “leave no one behind,” the commitment made in UN Resolution 70/1 adopting the 2030 Agenda that has become the de facto slogan and organizing principle for implementation of the SDGs.⁴ Many experts contend that leaving no one behind requires locally adapted solutions. For example, Stafford Smith et al.

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² See the Danish Institute for Human Rights, Sustainable Development Goals, available at https://www.humanrights.dk/our-work/sustainable-development-goals-0, accessed on March 11, 2020.

³ See the German Development Institute on connecting climate action to the SDGs, available at https://klimalog.die-gdi.de/ndc-sdg/, accessed on March 11, 2020.

⁴ See the United Nations Committee for Development Policy document “Leaving No One Behind,” available at https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/2754713_July_PM_2._Leaving_no_one_behind_Summary_from_UN_Committee_for_Development_Policy.pdf.

(2018, 1483) state that “deeply differentiated and context-specific actions” are required and “despite the need for global outcomes, most implementation will be local.” Moallemi et al. (2019) similarly argue for a local agenda on the SDGs and a means to codevelop this information with communities and stakeholders.

The global push to achieve the SDGs is driving the need for highly skilled, well-trained experts in sustainability who can translate global policy into a local or organizational context, source measures of impact, and build action-oriented coalitions. Higher education institutions are responding to the need for educational approaches to help students address the challenge of balancing the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development.

A Framework for Safe and Just Sustainable Development

The development of the SDGs was preceded by other goal-oriented frameworks that focused attention on environmental and social boundaries. The Doughnut framework, originated by Kate Raworth in 2012, builds on the planetary boundaries model developed in 2009 that focused on planetary-scale environmental impacts. The Doughnut framework explicitly includes social boundaries to navigate pathways in a “safe and just operating space for humanity” (Raworth, 2012; Leach et al., 2013; Dearing et al., 2014). This framework adds a set of 11 social boundaries as lower bounds for human well-being to the upper environmental planetary boundaries (Raworth, 2012; see Figure 2-4). These social boundaries, including water, income, education, resilience, voice, jobs, energy, social equity, gender equality, health, and food, aim to raise all of humanity above minimums: for example, ensuring people have at least a certain level of nutrition, education, income, and other basic needs. This framework stresses that the challenge of sustainability is to navigate development within a socially just and environmentally safe space between these lower and upper boundaries: “combining the inner limits of social boundaries and the outer limits of physical boundaries in this way creates a doughnut-shaped space within which all humanity can thrive by pursuing a range of possible pathways that could deliver inclusive and sustainable development” (Leach et al., 2013, 85).

Other Frameworks

In recent years, a number of organizations have built frameworks based on the SDGs, the Doughnut models, and their own research and analysis. For example, The World in 2050 presents a framework of “integrated pathways” that identifies six “exemplary transformations which allow achieving the SDGs and long-term

sustainability to 2050 and beyond.”⁵ In 2018, the World Bank released its own “Environmental and Social Framework” to guide its investment project financing.⁶

The private sector also incorporates sustainability principles into strategy and operations through metrics and tools to measure progress (Matson et al., 2016). According to a recent survey of more than 700 global companies conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, 72 percent of companies mention the SDGs in their annual corporate or sustainability reports, 50 percent identify SDGs as a priority, and 54 percent mention them in their business strategies (PwC, 2018). Findings from a McKinsey survey show that companies that address sustainability do so “to align with their business, goals, and values; build, maintain, or improve cor-

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⁵ The six transformations relate to (1) human capacity and demography; (2) consumption and production; (3) decarbonization and energy; (4) food, biosphere, and water; (5) smart cities; and (6) digital revolution. For more information, see “Transformations to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals,” available at http://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/15347/1/TWI2050_Report081118-web-new.pdf, accessed on March 12, 2020.

⁶ See the World Bank’s “Environmental and Social Framework,” available at http://pubdocs.worldbank.org/en/837721522762050108/Environmental-and-Social-Framework.pdf, accessed on March 12, 2020.

porate reputation; and/or improve operational efficiency and lower costs.”⁷ The environmental, social, and governance, or ESG, framework has been increasingly used in recent years to evaluate the sustainability of companies and investments, as well as to better evaluate risk. Henisz et al. (2019) note that ESG-oriented global sustainability investment has increased 68 percent since 2014 and tenfold since 2004, currently reaching $30 trillion. The UN launched its private-sector UN Global Compact in 2000, a voluntary, nonbinding pact among businesses based on 10 principles that include respecting the environment. With 10,453 member companies across 166 countries, the Global Compact has been a driving force for businesses to adopt and align their work to the SDGs.⁸ The Business and Sustainable Development Commission, a global group of business leaders, identifies 60 market opportunities that could be commercially lucrative while also helping achieve the SDGs (AlphaBeta, 2017). The commission also recognizes the impact on education and employment if the private sector were to build on these opportunities, including the creation of 380 million jobs by 2030 and creation of new business models by company innovators.⁹ Membership organizations, such as the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, and transparency and accountability tools, such as the World Benchmarking Alliance or the Global Reporting Initiative’s Sustainability Disclosure Database, seek to build platforms and forums for sharing information and best practices around sustainable business (see Box 2-1).

SUSTAINABILITY SCIENCE

The abundance of theoretical and action-oriented frameworks to guide sustainability education and to strengthen its connections with the world of sustainability goals and actions is a clear sign of the vigor of a growing field. Research in sustainability science provides key organizing principles for available and emerging knowledge and frameworks related to sustainability. Sustainability science emerged as a distinct field in the early 2000s with key contributions that sought to better delineate the relationship between human well-being and the environment. Sustainability science has an explicit commitment to interdisciplinarity and use-inspired basic and applied research that advances fundamental knowledge and also influences sustainability outcomes through active engagement. Both these features of the field aim to undermine the traditional separation between social, natural, and applied sciences, as also between science and practice (Clark, 2007;

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⁷ See McKinsey & Company’s survey review “Sustainability’s Strategic Worth,” available at https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/sustainability/our-insights/sustainabilitys-strategic-worthmckinsey-global-survey-results#, accessed on March 12, 2020.

⁸ See http://unglobalcompact.org, accessed on March 12, 2020.

⁹ See the Business and Sustainable Development Commission’s report Better Business Better World, available at https://d306pr3pise04h.cloudfront.net/docs/news_events%2F9.3%2Fbetterbusiness-better-world.pdf, accessed on March 12, 2020.

Clark and Dickson, 2003; Kates, 2011). In drawing upon theories and tools from multiple disciplines as they relate to social and environmental science, sustainability science also highlights the contextual and the dynamic nature of social and biophysical relationships (Bettencourt and Kaur, 2011; Spangenberg, 2011).

These key features of sustainability science make it an attractive field for integrative work in sustainability and for sustainability education. But for the field to support the achievement of the SDGs and other sustainability goals, its practitioners, educators, and researchers must act to highlight the critical importance of sustainability for present and future generations, address inequalities in sustainability education, and strengthen collaboration in sustainability education beyond the rich world (Messerli et al., 2019).

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND SUSTAINABILITY

Sustainability is implied in sustainable development, as noted in such significant work as Our Common Future (WCED, 1987), the Human Development Reports of the UN Development Programme, and the concept of the “triple bottom line” articulated by John Elkington (1994). However, the two terms are not interchangeable and can even be in conflict in some situations.

Wackernagel et al. (2017, 1) noted “sustainable development” as “the world’s official commitment to everyone’s wellbeing (development), while recognizing the need to operate within the planet’s ecological limits (sustainable).” Yet when countries’ rankings in the SDG Index were plotted against their development achievements (using the UN’s Human Development Index) and their resource use (based on Global Footprint Network’s Ecological Footprint), they found that “ranking high on the SDG Index strongly correlates with high per person demand on nature (‘footprint’), while low ranking correlates with low footprints.” They concluded, “the SDGs as expressed today vastly underperform on sustainability. Such underperformance is anti-poor because lowest income people exposed to resource insecurity will lack the financial means to shield themselves from the consequences.”

There is a need to consider sustainable development in the context of sustainability as measured by Earth’s “safe and just operating space” of the Doughnut model. The potential tensions among various sustainability frameworks and goals lend a note of caution in the design and evaluation of sustainability curricula in higher education. Ensuring contextual linkages between sustainability and sustainable development in education is critical so that students, teachers, and communities remain engaged partners in achieving truly sustainable development in service to the SDGs, and reflect the intent to balance “people, planet, and prosperity.”¹⁰

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¹⁰ United Nations A/RES/70/1 – Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, Preamble. Available at https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingour-world, accessed on March 12, 2020.

BRIEF HISTORY OF SUSTAINABILITY EDUCATION AT THE UNDERGRADUATE AND GRADUATE LEVELS

Sustainability education began earlier than development of the planetary boundaries, SDGs, or other frameworks described above, and it has expanded and adapted to changing environmental and social priorities. Moreover, sustainability higher education programs have roots in earlier environment- and development-focused programs. Sterling (2004) traced the historical evolution of environmental education from Sir Patrick Geddes (1854–1932) in the United Kingdom, through environmental science and the rise of Western environmentalism in the 1960s with Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), and then, in the 1970s, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (in 1970) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) (in 1977) formulating the first definitions of environmental education. The International Union for Conservation of Nature defined environmental education as “the process of recognising values and clarifying concepts in order to develop skills and attitudes necessary to understand and appreciate the inter-relatedness among man, his culture and his biophysical surroundings.” UNESCO defined the goal of environmental education as, “To foster clear awareness of, and concern about, economic, social, political and ecological interdependence in urban and rural areas; to provide every person with opportunities to acquire the knowledge, values, attitudes, commitment and skills needed to protect and improve the environment; to create patterns of behaviour of individuals, groups and society as whole towards the environment” (Chauvet de Andrade, 1997). These early definitions of environmental education are centered on the environment but carry the seeds of the social and economic dimensions that would later sprout in sustainability education.

Development education emerged during the 1970s among nongovernmental organizations and some Western education systems, and it both overlapped and was in tension with the high-level international attention to environmental education (Sterling, 2004). These two trends then merged in the focus on Education for Sustainability (EfS) in Our Common Future in 1987 and in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992. EfS, Sterling thus argued, marks the evolution of environmental education from a narrow focus on the natural environment to the environment and human development in ESD, then to the balance between environmental, economic, and social development in EfS.

In 1990, the president of Tufts University in Massachusetts convened 22 university presidents and chancellors from 15 countries in Talloires, France. Many years before “sustainability” became a normal part of the lexicon, these forward-looking leaders called for higher education to “increase the awareness, knowledge, technologies, and tools to create an environmentally sustainable future.” Their 10-point Talloires Declaration recognizes the role of universities as role models, providers of education and training, and incubators of research and policy.¹¹

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¹¹ For more information, see Talloires Declaration, available at https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingourworld, accessed on March 12, 2020.

Education was also an important component of the UN Rio Declaration on Environment and Development. In 1992, the Rio Declaration called for “reorienting education towards sustainable development,”¹² and subsequent UN efforts have built on the goals in that document. Senator John Kerry and his wife Teresa Heinz jumpstarted the effort to link sustainability with education more deliberately in 1993 when they collaborated with Anthony Cortese to launch Second Nature. The organization focused its attention on getting college and university presidents to spearhead sustainability initiatives on their campuses (Peterson, 2013). In 2006, 12 college and university presidents, working in collaboration with Second Nature, ecoAmerica, and the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE), met to charter the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment (ACUPCC).¹³ The founding signatories invited their peers to sign on to the commitment and achieved 336 charter signatories by September 2007. ACUPCC was rebranded and expanded to form the Presidents’ Climate Leadership Commitments in 2015.¹⁴ The Carbon Commitment and the Resilience Commitment were also launched in 2015 as part of this rebranding (Second Nature, n.d.). To date, approximately 700 U.S. universities enrolling about 6 million students have signed the ACUPCC. The institutions share information publicly about their greenhouse gas inventories, climate action plans, and progress reports on sustainability initiatives. In summarizing the impact, Dyer and Dyer (2017) argued that “while there had been significant growth in higher education sustainability initiatives over the preceding decade, the ACUPCC helped shift these from a collection of distinct programs to a strategic imperative for colleges and universities. The initiative promotes cross-disciplinary education, research, and practice needed for society to achieve sustainability.”

Globally, colleges have made commitments to achieving sustainability goals by signing international agreements such as the Talloires Declaration (Adams et al., 2017). Currently, more than 6,000 higher education institutions on all continents have declared a climate emergency and are supporting a three-point plan to mitigate the crisis (Second Nature, 2019).

In 2005, the UN launched the Decade of ESD initiative, with periodic conferences and agreements to both track and inspire progress. These efforts aimed to infuse sustainability across curricula as well as set up more focused ESD programs. The UNESCO Global Action Programme, first established to advance the ESD agenda, focuses on five priority areas: (1) advancing policy, (2) transforming learning and training environments, (3) building capacities of educators and trainers, (4) empowering and mobilizing youth, and (5) accelerating sustainable

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¹² See Agenda 21, Chapter 36, “Promoting Education, Public Awareness and Training,” available at http://www.un-documents.net/a21-36.htm, accessed on March 12, 2020.

¹³ See https://secondnature.org; https://ecoamerica.org; and https://www.aashe.org, all accessed on March 12, 2020.

¹⁴ See https://secondnature.org/signatory-handbook/the-commitments, accessed on March 12, 2020.

solutions at the local level.¹⁵ While ESD is recognized as a key element of the SDGs, Kioupi and Voulvoulis (2019) developed a systemic framework for connecting the SDGs to educational learning outcomes to facilitate the transition to sustainability. The authors’ analysis highlights the need for identifying competencies and aims that can be core to educational programs in sustainability and thus better aligning educational programs to the goals of sustainability frameworks and the public and private sectors.

CURRENT STATUS OF HIGHER EDUCATION PROGRAMS IN SUSTAINABILITY

Covering a spectrum of issues from the global and local scales, and with a range of goals, current sustainability education programs provide a diversity of approaches in their offerings. Throughout this report, we highlight a variety of educational programs to illustrate the breadth and range of these programs and to underscore that no one-size-fits-all program is advisable or even possible.

U.S. Programs

Many interdisciplinary environmental programs in the United States were established at higher educational institutions over the last 40 years (Vincent and Focht, 2009). Some interdisciplinary programs focused on systems-based approaches that have existed for several decades, typically without “sustainability” in their names.

A large survey of U.S. interdisciplinary environmental programs found consensus in defining the field as “an applied, interdisciplinary focus on the interface of coupled human-natural systems with a normative commitment to sustainability” (Vincent and Focht, 2011). The survey also found a positive relationship between enrollment and program inclusion of sustainability (in core principles, coursework, and research and service learning opportunities), preparing students to be change agents and providing community service, which parallel major features of sustainability education addressed in Chapters 3 and 4 of this report. Vincent et al. (2013) surveyed 231 interdisciplinary environmental and sustainability (IES) program administrators, who rated the importance of 41 knowledge areas and 38 skill areas in what they view as the “ideal” curriculum for each IES degree that they administer. The study included data on 363 IES programs, which were representative of 1,859 IES programs nationally. Their statistical analysis found that undergraduate IES programs clustered around three frameworks, involving a natural science, social science, or sustainability solutions emphasis; and graduate IES programs

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¹⁵ See UNESCO Roadmap for Implementing the Global Action Programme on Education for Sustainable Development, available at https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000230514, accessed on March 11, 2020.

clustered around two frameworks, having either a natural systems or sustainability solutions emphasis. They also found that sustainability degree programs statistically fit within these IES frameworks. Importantly, “problem-solving for sustainability” was core to the curriculum across all the IES frameworks. These findings suggest that it is not possible to make a categorical distinction between interdisciplinary environmental higher education programs and sustainability education programs.

Sustainability undergraduate and graduate degree programs have developed against a backdrop of high interest by university leadership (as noted above) but also, and just as significantly, with substantial investments by both students and faculty. To illustrate the growth, the Sustainable Endowments Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, released a College Sustainability Report Card (or Green Report Card) from 2006 through 2011 (SEI, 2012). The reports examined sustainability education and efforts on 322 U.S. and Canadian college campuses that enroll about 4.2 million students. Over the span of 5 years, the reports revealed increasing commitments to sustainability on those campuses. For instance, the commitment to reduce carbon emissions increased from 23 percent in 2006 to 64 percent in 2011, campuses having a farm or garden went from 9 percent in 2006 to 70 percent in 2011, and those with green buildings went from 22 percent in 2006 to 79 percent in 2011. In addition, by 2011, 95 percent of the campuses had a sustainability committee, compared with only 40 percent in 2006.

In addition, college students express support of sustainability efforts on their campuses. Using indicators from the College Sustainability Report Card, Emanuel and Adams (2011) surveyed 148 undergraduates in Hawaii and 258 undergraduates in Alabama. They found that 69 percent of the students in Hawaii and 57 percent of those in Alabama believed that their college should make sustainability a priority in campus planning, development, and day-to-day operations. They also found that 68 percent of the students in Hawaii and 56 percent of those in Alabama felt that “everyone in my school’s community should support sustainable solutions to environmental problems.”

Campus sustainability projects have also been used for educational demonstrations and curriculum development for many universities. Cai and Shafiee-Jood (2017) examined campus sustainability programs at six universities (Harvard University, University of Washington, Ohio State University, University of Minnesota, University of California, Berkeley, and Cornell University) and found that these universities have successfully integrated research and education into their campus sustainability programs and initiatives.

These campus commitments to sustainability are linked to the proliferation of sustainability and related degree programs nationwide. Arizona State University launched its School of Sustainability in 2006 as the first school in the United States to explicitly explore the principles of sustainability (see Box 2-2). The growth in sustainability programs has been documented by the National Council

for Science and the Environment (NCSE), which conducted three censuses of interdisciplinary environmental, sustainability, and energy (IESE) degrees in 2008, 2012, and 2016 (Vincent, 2010; Vincent et al., 2012, 2017). This periodic lens provides a useful tool to observe the growth in the number of programs and the various ways the programs are offered.

The 2016 NCSE survey (reported in Vincent et al., 2017) compiled data from 1,690 institutions listed in the 2015 Carnegie Classifications, including 315 doctoral universities, 683 master’s colleges and universities, and 657 baccalaureate colleges.¹⁶ Within this total are 82 historically Black colleges and universities, 112 Hispanic-serving institutions, 309 minority-serving institutions, 40 women’s colleges, and 35 tribal colleges.

According to NCSE, the number of IESE degrees offered grew by 15 percent in the 4 years between 2012 and 2016, to a total of 2,361 degrees offered by 872 higher education institutions. Within this total, sustainability programs may be offered as degrees in sustainability, sustainable management, sustainability studies, environmental sustainability, and more than a dozen other names. A degree program in “environmental and sustainability design” also emerged between 2012 and 2016.

In addition, the NCSE survey identified other degrees with strong sustainability elements. The top five IESE degrees in 2016 were environmental sciences (33 percent), environmental studies (20 percent), natural resources (18 percent), sustainability (11 percent), and policy and management (7 percent). The survey also revealed that 2,222 degree programs offer IESE specializations while conferring a degree in other fields. As an example, Columbia University offers multiple sustainability degree pathways, at both the undergraduate and the graduate levels (see Box 2-3).

IESE graduate programs are expanding as well. Between 2012 and 2016, the number of doctoral degrees increased 50 percent and master’s degrees by 38 percent. This growth suggests that the number of sustainability faculty with advanced degrees in sustainability science—rather than environmental science, biology, or related fields—will increase, leading to a further maturation of the discipline.

Another finding of note from the NCSE survey is that 50 percent of the IESE degree programs are in their own departments, schools, or colleges, an increase of 9 percent since 2012. According to the report authors (Vincent et al., 2017, 7), “this is significant because IESE degree programs administered by their own IESE units typically have more resources and autonomy than IESE degree programs that span or are located within traditional disciplinary units.”

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¹⁶ See Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, 2015 Data File, available at http://carnegieclassifications.iu.edu/downloads/CCIHE2015-PublicDataFile.xlsx, accessed on September 23, 2020.

Global Programs

While there is no known survey comparable to the NCSE census that provides a global review of sustainability education programs, the committee identified many networks and programs that indicate the breadth and scope of efforts outside the United States. The committee could not assess their strengths and gaps, but the range of international programs indicate a global interest in information exchange and networking to meet the needs of institutions and students in sustainability education.

Some of these global education programs have UN connections. United Nations University’s Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability, located in Japan, offers master and doctoral degree programs focused on sustainability

to students from around the world.¹⁷ The Global RCE Network, with regional centers of expertise on ESD encompasses more than 175 institutions as of April 2020, linking UN agencies, formal education institutions, and informal educators.¹⁸ The Global Universities Partnership on Environment for Sustainability serves to increase the mainstreaming of environment and sustainability practices and curricula into universities around the world.¹⁹

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¹⁷ See Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability, available at https://ias.unu.edu/en/, accessed on September 23, 2020.

¹⁸ See Global RCE Network on Education for Sustainable Development, available at https://www.rcenetwork.org/portal/, accessed on March 11, 2020.

¹⁹ See Global Universities Partnership on Environment for Sustainability, available at https://www.unenvironment.org/es/node/10655, accessed on March 11, 2020.

Sustainability education networks in Asia and the Pacific include the UN Environment Programme Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific’s Asia-Pacific Regional University Consortium, the Pacific Regional Environmental Programme, and the Pacific Islands Forum.²⁰ In Latin America, networks of universities offering sustainability programs include the Mexican Consortium of University Environmental Programmes for Sustainable Development, Environmental Committee of the Association of Universities Group Montevideo, and the Alliance of Iberoamerican University Networks for Sustainability and the Environment.²¹ The European Network on Higher Education for Sustainable Development, also called the COPERNICUS Alliance, includes 12 institutions.²² The Mainstreaming Environment and Sustainability in African Universities Partnership Programme, an initiative of UNESCO, the Association of African Universities, and the United Nations University, has 85 universities across Africa as members.²³

Looking more closely at the responses of countries to the UN’s Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, the Swedish government established the Swedish International Centre of Education for Sustainable Development in 2006 at the former Gotland University. Housed at Uppsala University today, the center promotes integrated collaborative research and development projects in Sweden and abroad, while offering training courses for teachers, professors, teacher educators, policy makers, and project leaders.²⁴ Several higher education institutions also provide courses related to interdisciplinary sustainability science, including a master’s program in social-ecological resilience for sustainable development at the Stockholm Resilience Centre (UNECE, 2012).

The Danish Ministry of Education published a national strategy for education for sustainable development in 2009, and the Danish Regional Centre of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development has focused on creating a national network for practical research and development of ESDs, including all disciplines and levels of education (Danish Ministry of Education, 2009).²⁵ In May 2014, the Aalborg Centre for Problem Based Learning in Engineering Science and Sustainability was established under the auspices of UNESCO to focus on a unique com-

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²⁰ See Global University Network for Innovation on Sustainability and Higher Education in Asia and the Pacific, available at http://www.guninetwork.org/articles/sustainability-and-higher-education-asia-and-pacific, accessed on March 11, 2020.

²¹ See Global University Network for Innovation on Sustainability and Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean, available at http://www.guninetwork.org/articles/higher-education-environment-and-sustainability-latin-america-and-caribbean, accessed on March 11, 2020.

²² See COPERNICUS Alliance, available at https://www.copernicus-alliance.org, accessed on March 12, 2020.

²³ See Mainstreaming Environment and Sustainability in African Universities Partnership Programme, available at https://www.unenvironment.org/fr/node/10690, accessed on March 12, 2020.

²⁴ See Swedish International Centre of Education for Sustainable Development, available at http://www.swedesd.uu.se/about, accessed on March 12, 2020.

²⁵ See also United Nations Global Universities Partnership on Environment for Sustainability, available at https://www.unenvironment.org/es/node/10655, accessed on March 12, 2020.

bination of problem- and project-based learning, engineering education research, and education for sustainable development (Holgaard et al., 2016).

In 2015, Australia developed consensus standards for the interdisciplinary environmental and sustainability field, titled “Learning and Teaching Academic Standards Statement for Environment and Sustainability,” based on a participatory process with nearly 1,000 stakeholders, including academics, students, practitioners, and representatives of Indigenous interests (Phelan et al., 2015). The statement includes minimum or threshold learning outcomes required of environment and sustainability graduates. These learning outcomes are endorsed by the Australian Council of Environmental Deans and Directors as a curriculum reference point for program design, development, and delivery in this field.

The Education for Sustainable Development in Africa, launched by the United Nations University’s Institute for Sustainability and Peace in 2008, involves eight African partner universities in an interuniversity collaboration program of graduate training and research.²⁶ This work builds on courses developed by the Environic Foundation International that are structured around the SDGs to create a sustainable Africa (EFI, 2020). In 2016, the Kenya Green University Network was launched to include sustainability and environmental practices into the curricula, research projects, and campus designs at Kenyan universities (UNEP, 2016).

These examples demonstrate the enormous vitality of sustainability education programs in countries beyond the United States. They also underscore the substantial diversity in content, methods, structure, and reach of programs in other countries, including many lower- and middle-income countries. At the same time, the major resource gaps that hobble sustainability education offerings in lower-income countries suggest that substantial gains may result from more systematic collaboration between higher education institutions offering sustainability education programs in the United States and internationally. Improved and more equitable access to sustainability education; curricular design to adapt sustainability education to local needs; and greater integration between research, instruction, and the practice of sustainability are only some of the potential gains from more systematic international collaboration for sustainability higher education.

The Sustainable Development Goals in National and Global Higher Education Programs

Several U.S. and international higher education institutions have publicly embraced the SDGs as a framework for organizing core sustainability issues. For example, Yale University examines how teaching and research at the university aligns with the 17 SDGs (Goodall and Moore, 2018), and Case Western Reserve Univer-

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²⁶ See Education for Sustainable Development in Africa, available at https://unu.edu/projects/education-for-sustainable-development-in-africa-esda.html#outline, accessed on March 12, 2020.

sity has launched the AIM2Flourish initiative, which claims to be the world’s first higher education curriculum for the SDGs and “Business as an Agent of World Benefit” (AIM2Flourish, 2019). Internationally, the University of Groningen in the Netherlands has developed a 3-year bachelor degree program based on the SDGs, the University of Hong Kong offers Common Core courses tagged with the SDGs as a framework for transdisciplinary and holistic learning, and the University of Geneva and Tsinghua University of China have jointly launched a master of public policy for sustainable development goals (ISCN, 2017; Geneva Trialogue, 2019).

Many organizations are also examining strategies to map SDGs onto campus operations and course curricula. The Higher Education Sustainability Initiative, a partnership of UN agencies and initiatives, provides a platform for more than 300 higher education institutions from around the world to exchange best practices and educate future leaders on the SDGs (UN, 2019). Additionally, the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network was set up in 2012 “to mobilize global scientific and technological expertise to promote practical solutions for sustainable development.”²⁷ Originally hosted by Columbia University’s Earth Institute, the network became an independent nonprofit in 2016, and launched its global University Partnership Program in 2017. The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities and the United Nations Institute for Training and Research issued a joint Declaration on University Global Engagement as an opportunity for higher education institutions to commit to cross-border and cross-sector research in pursuit of novel solutions to the SDGs (Evers, 2018; Declaration on University Global Engagement, 2019). Other initiatives to advance global engagement on SDGs include the United Nations Academic Impact, SDG Academy, and Geneva Trialogue on scaling education for the SDGs.²⁸ The Association for Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education also provides conferences and webinars related to the SDGs and curricula.

Voluntary National Reviews, typically a commitment by UN member states to “conduct regular and inclusive reviews of progress” toward the SDGs, have begun to take different perspectives, with subnational governments preparing Voluntary Local Reviews. In September 2019, Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, committed to delivering the first “Voluntary University Review” in 2020.²⁹ This commitment echoes efforts of other universities that have worked in partnership with local and regional governments to track and report progress, including the University of Bristol (Fox and Macleod, 2019) in partnership with the Bristol City Office, and a consortium of institutions supporting the City of Los Angeles, including Occidental College, the Thunderbird

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²⁷ See UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, available at https://www.unsdsn.org, accessed on July 7, 2020.

²⁸ See http://www.sdgacademy.org and https://gt-initiative.org/events/geneva-trialogue, both accessed on March 12, 2020.

²⁹ See https://sdg.iisd.org/news/carnegie-mellon-university-to-present-voluntary-university-review-in-2020, accessed September 23, 2020.

School of Global Management at Arizona State University, the University of Southern California, the University of California, Los Angeles, and Pomona College (Office of the Mayor, 2019).

Times Higher Education’s Impact Rankings presents the impact higher education institutions have on society based on their success in delivering the SDGs by providing comparisons across three broad areas: research, outreach, and stewardship. The second edition of the ratings includes 766 universities from 85 countries (Times Higher Education, 2020). The SDGs provide an opportunity for higher education institutions to work across departments, majors, and community members, such as faculty, staff, and students, to fulfill missions to provide knowledge, build skills, and support the cultivation of global citizens (Mahalak, 2018). Universities can collaborate with governments, the private sector, and the public to help accelerate progress toward the SDGs through higher education initiatives.

SUSTAINABILITY-RELATED EMPLOYMENT

An important aspect of the committee’s work was to understand the employment prospects for sustainability graduates in terms of the opportunities and the skills that employers seek, especially when hiring recent graduates.

The number of people who are employed in sustainability-related jobs cannot be comprehensively ascertained because the field encompasses occupational categories that range from engineering to policy to community organizing and more, in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. Moreover, especially over the past few years, many organizations have integrated sustainability across their activities, beyond setting up a separate sustainability office or job category.

The committee examined several sources of employment data, including data collected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the private firm Burning Glass Technologies, recognizing that they do not show the complete picture of current or projected employment.³⁰ Professionals from hiring organizations who participated in the committee’s workshops also provided anecdotal but valuable evidence about demand within their organizations and the skills they seek, especially in the entry-level positions that would attract new graduates.

While there is not a single BLS code that identifies individuals whose primary job is to advance sustainability, the committee analyzed BLS data in 36 occupations that encompass sustainability in some way, from agricultural technicians to zoologists and wildlife biologists. These data project a 3.9 percent growth rate between 2018 and 2028: with a net increase of 108,200 jobs during the period. Growth is expected in all but five of the segments (BLS, 2019). However, the data show jobs formally related to the environment while including many jobs

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³⁰ For more information on Burning Glass Technologies, see https://www.burning-glass.com, accessed on March 12, 2020.

that are likely not related to sustainability; therefore, they only provide a limited picture of the range of jobs related to sustainability.

In 2010, the BLS used three surveys to collect data on the numbers of workers in what it termed “green jobs”; however, federal budget cutbacks in 2013 ceased the effort.³¹ It is useful to know how the BLS defined green jobs in designing the surveys: “(A) jobs in businesses that produce goods or provide services that benefit the environment or conserve natural resources; (B) jobs in which workers’ duties involve making their establishment’s production processes more environmentally friendly or use fewer natural resources.” The BLS also recognized sustainability-related jobs within many other categories that it regularly surveys, including management, science, engineering, accountants and auditors, business operations specialists, and compliance officers (Hamilton, 2012).

The committee conducted several searches of employment over the past decade using data compiled by Burning Glass Technologies, a firm that provides analytics about labor market patterns across the workforce. To do so, the committee drew from workshop input from employers, BLS data, and their own expertise to brainstorm keywords (e.g., sustainable development, natural resources, climate change) to launch the searches. Including the term “sustainability,” the number of jobs posted grew from about 100,000 in 2010 to 600,000 in 2020. In searches through the Burning Glass database that did not use the term, the number of jobs grew from about 50,000 in 2010 to 200,000 in 2020. Variability in how sustainability is defined and the limitations of the existing data sources indicate a clear need to better articulate what constitutes the sustainability workforce and for more detailed data about this workforce.

In addition to the data from BLS and Burning Glass, another indication about sustainability employment trends in the private sector emerges from State of the Profession 2018 Report, conducted by GreenBiz (2020). GreenBiz has conducted a “state-of-the-profession” survey every 2 years and has seen changes over time in how sustainability is increasingly embedded across companies.

In large companies (revenues over $1 billion), the numbers with “one or more dedicated sustainability resources” remained roughly constant in corporate social responsibility and environmental health and safety departments, both at about 40 percent of companies (GreenBiz, 2020). However, the numbers tripled in facilities and supply chain departments—in facilities, from 7 percent of companies to 30 percent; in supply chain operations, from 10 to 49 percent. In addition, the 2018 GreenBiz survey revealed that companies’ hiring practices of sustainability professionals have recognized the value of sustainability education (GreenBiz, 2018, 22):

Ten to 15 years ago, companies exploring the opportunity to leverage sustainability as a strategic business initiative typically placed someone from inside

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³¹ See Bureau of Labor Statistics Green Careers, available at https://www.bls.gov/green/greencareers.htm, accessed on March 12, 2020.

the organization, preferably an individual with connections and respect across the firm. Since then, we have witnessed the mainstreaming or “professionalization” of the sustainability role. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the dramatic increase in hiring from outside the company.

We also lack data on the career pathways of graduates from sustainability and environmental programs. Although some universities such as Arizona State University and Columbia University (see Boxes 2-1 and 2-2) track career trajectories of their own alumni, it is unknown how graduates from sustainability-related programs move into the workforce and whether sustainability education provides graduates a competitive advantage in hiring and career progression. To obtain more reliable information about the career pathways of sustainability graduates, future efforts by labor analysts, economists, statisticians, or other relevant experts could develop comprehensive data collection and tracking approaches similar to the National Survey of Recent College Graduates conducted by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics.³²

DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION IN SUSTAINABILITY EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT

The employment figures above, combined with the changing demographics of the United States, have led to the need to strengthen diversity, equity, and inclusion in sustainability education and employment.³³ The current faculty and student populations in most interdisciplinary environmental, sustainability, and energy programs do not reflect the demographic changes under way in the country, nor do the staff and boards of employing organizations.

The committee examined research related to diversity, equity, and inclusion in sustainability education and employment to better understand the demographic gaps. As background, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that in 2020, 50.2 percent of all children under age 18 in the country identify with racial and ethnic groups that are traditionally underrepresented in science and engineering,³⁴ but in 2060,

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³² See National Survey of College Graduates, available at https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/srvygrads, accessed on June 23, 2020.

³³ According to the D5 Coalition (www.d5coalition.org/tools/dei), diversity is defined “broadly to encompass the demographic mix of a specific collection of people, taking into account elements of human difference, but focusing particularly on racial and ethnic groups, LGBT populations, people with disabilities, and women.” Improving equity is “to promote justice, impartiality, and fairness within the procedures, processes and distribution of resources by institutions or systems.” Inclusion “refers to the degree to which diverse individuals are able to participate fully in the decisionmaking processes with an organization or group.”

³⁴ The National Science Foundation defines underrepresented minorities as comprising three racial or ethnic minority groups (Blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians or Alaska Natives) whose representation in science and engineering education or employment is smaller than their representation in the U.S. population. See NSF. Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering: 2017, Special Report NSF 17-310, available at https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2017/nsf17310/digest/glossary-and-key-to-acronyms, accessed on February 7, 2020.

that same group is projected to constitute 64.4 percent of the population (Colby and Ortman, 2015). Educational institutions must be prepared to offer nurturing and inclusive learning environments for all students.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Considerations in Higher Education

At this time, there has not been a survey of the racial and ethnic demographics of sustainability undergraduate and graduate students as robust as those that look more broadly at science and engineering fields. Although the interdisciplinary nature of a sustainability degree does not make the field neatly fall within a science and engineering discipline, the available data can provide some useful guideposts for sustainability given the partial overlap of disciplines.

The numbers of underrepresented minority students obtaining degrees in science and engineering fields have risen, although their percentage, as a reflection of population, remains low. By 2016, 13.7 percent of the science and engineering bachelor’s degrees were obtained by Latinx students and 8.7 percent by African Americans, while less than 1 percent were earned by Native Americans or Pacific Islanders (NSF, 2019). The 2019 Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering report from the National Science Foundation noted that the increase in science and engineering bachelor’s and doctoral degrees earned by underrepresented minorities is due, in part, to the important role that minority-serving institutions, which includes historically Black colleges and universities and high-Hispanic-enrollment colleges and universities, have played in training students for bachelor’s degrees. The report states that many of these students go on to earn graduate degrees in science and engineering (NSF, 2019).

Data compiled by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the National Science Foundation show that substantial percentages of students of color enter colleges and universities with the intent of majoring in science and engineering fields (HERI, 2014). For instance, in 2014, 54.2 percent of Asian, 45.1 percent of Latinx, 40.4 percent of Black, and 30.0 percent of Native American incoming freshman said they intended to major in science and engineering disciplines. These figures indicate diverse students enter these fields, but are diverted from pursuing the degrees.

While these data do not precisely mirror sustainability degree programs, they offer key insights for efforts to recruit and retain underrepresented minority students at all levels in sustainability higher education programs.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Considerations in Employment

The Pew Research Center reports that increases in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) occupations are outpacing overall job growth. Since 1990, STEM employment has increased by 79 percent, growing from 9.7 million to 17.3 million in 2017 (Funk and Parker, 2018). Women constitute

50 percent of all U.S. workers in STEM occupations, but fewer women than men occupy leadership positions in these fields. Black and Latinx employees are underrepresented in the STEM workforce. Blacks comprise 11 percent of the U.S. workforce overall but only 9 percent of STEM workers. Similarly, Latinx workers make up 16 percent of the U.S. labor force but comprise 7 percent of all STEM workers.

A sector that employs sustainability graduates is environmental nonprofit organizations. Here, research (Taylor, 2015) highlights the underrepresentation of female and minorities, especially in leadership positions. To illustrate, in 2014 women comprised 63.5 percent of the interns at environmental nonprofit organizations, but 49.7 percent of senior staff and 28.3 percent of presidents. Underrepresented minorities comprised 20.9 percent of the internships, 7.1 percent of senior staff positions, and 3.4 percent of presidents. However, a Green 2.0 survey of organizations addressing environmental and conservation issues reveals a positive trend in the representation of people of color in full-time positions and senior staff at those organizations. Data from the report revealed a slight increase in women (65 percent) and people of color (30 percent) on senior staff at environmental nonprofit organizations, suggesting some improvement in their representation over a 5-year span (Green 2.0, 2019). Continued research and analysis on the diversity of employees at organizations addressing sustainability is key to informing inclusive and equitable practices.

Within the federal workforce, according to 2018 data from the Partnership for Public Service, 57.9 percent of the 159,967 workers in sustainability-related agencies and bureaus in 2018 were males and 42.1 percent were females (see Table 2-1) (Partnership for Public Service, 2019). Between 2006 and 2018 the percentage of females and underrepresented minorities working in these agencies increased slightly.

Disparities in Sustainability Education and Employment

A large body of research has examined the issues of gender, racial, and ethnic disparities across STEM fields, including the following National Academies reports: Expanding Underrepresented Minority Participation: America’s Science and Technology Talent at the Crossroads (NAS-NAE-IOM, 2011), Minority Serving Institutions: America’s Underutilized Resource for Strengthening the STEM Workforce (NASEM, 2019), Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering (NAS-NAE-IOM, 2007), and To Recruit and Advance: Women Students and Faculty in Science and Engineering (NRC, 2006). Complementing this body of knowledge, additional research provides insights into why sustainability programs may have difficulty in recruiting underrepresented minority students, with a focus on how the programs are framed and potential misperceptions about race, ethnicity, and class related to the natural world. For example, perceived interest and comfort in the natural world can influ-

TABLE 2-1 Demographic Characteristics of the Workforce of Federal Environmental Agencies: 2018

SOURCE: Compiled from Partnership for Public Service, 2019. Best Places to Work in the Federal Government. Available at https://bestplacestowork.org.

ence sustainability engagement, since affinity for nature is a comparable baseline from which sustainability educators can build support for campus sustainability activities, although it is necessary to acknowledge that interest in natural and environmental issues is only one of many components covered in sustainability science. It is a common practice to depict underrepresented minority students, especially Black students, as disinterested in the outdoors (Taylor, 2018a, 2019). This portrayal may occur even in programs intended to encourage participation from students who are historically underrepresented in STEM and sustainability-related fields. To illustrate, O’Connell and Holmes (2011) described what they observed as perceptions by underrepresented minority students about geosciences, interactions with the outdoors, and career aspirations. They argued that those students were less likely than White students to express interest in working on science projects in outdoor settings, and that the families of underrepresented minority students tend to be unsupportive if the student decides to major in the geosciences. In contrast, Huntoon et al. (2015) found that helping underrepresented minority students feel like they belong in geosciences programs enhances retention—especially at the doctoral level.

Several scholars have researched how college students relate to the natural world and reached varying conclusions. Virden and Walker (1999) studied 323 students at a public university and found that White and Latinx students were more likely to prefer more remote and less developed settings than Black students. Manning (2012) studied students at Southern Utah University and found that male students scored higher on a connectedness-to-nature scale than females, and urban students had higher scores on the same scale than suburban and rural students. Lakenau (2018) conducted a survey of university students and observed that an introductory ecology course enhanced students’ connectedness to nature.

Other studies of college and university students show that—regardless of race and ethnicity—many students have an affinity for nature and the outdoors (Taylor, 2018a). A recent study of 157 STEM college students found that approximately 91 percent of underrepresented minority students reported that they felt somewhat or very connected to nature. Almost all underrepresented minority students surveyed (95.4 percent of Black students, 98.6 percent of other minority students) indicated that they were either curious or very curious about nature. Another study highlighted that many students across the academy (arts, humanities, and science) are already enrolled in a range of sustainability and science courses, but with a gap by race/ethnicity. However, while 41.3 percent of White respondents indicated that they had taken at least one sustainability course, only 16.3 percent of Black students and 21.2 percent of other underrepresented minority students had taken courses of this nature (Taylor, 2018b).

Another line of research revealed that underrepresented minority students express a strong interest in working in the sustainability/environmental workforce. As shown in Table 2-2, in a study analyzing data from 157 students, more than three-quarters of Black and other minority students surveyed expressed a

TABLE 2-2 Interest in Working in the Environmental Field Upon Graduation

SOURCE: Taylor, 2018b

desire to work in federal environmental agencies upon graduation; similar high percentages reported interest in working in state departments of natural resources; and 73.9 percent of Black students and 81.8 percent of other students of color expressed interest in working for environmental think tanks. Additionally, more than two-thirds of underrepresented minority students indicated a desire to work in environmental nonprofits, while roughly 60 percent said they would like to work in nature centers (Taylor, 2018b).

Despite this interest, the data from government and nonprofit organizations discussed above show a small percentage of underrepresented minority employees, and the numbers decrease with the level of seniority (Taylor, 2018b). Reasons for this disconnect as identified by underrepresented minority students include what they see in that workforce (Taylor, 2018b, 165): “The potential for upward mobility in an organization and the diversity-related institutional infrastructure are key factors that minority students in this study are looking for in environmental organizations when it comes time to decide where they will work.” Improving diversity in sustainability-related employment will remain a challenge if these misgivings about career progression are not addressed systematically.

ORGANIZATIONS ENGAGED IN SUSTAINABILITY EDUCATION

In gathering input for this report, the committee heard remarks from representatives of sustainability councils, associations, alliances, and other organizations. As recognized by Dyer and Dyer (2017) when reviewing the efforts of the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment related to climate change, higher education administration and faculty are recognizing the value in collaborating with external organizations to share visions and best practices for advising sustainability education. Several organizations that provided input or were discussed at the committee’s public workshops are highlighted below; however, the committee recognizes that this list may be representative of the number and range of organizations engaged in sustainability education.

Founded in 2005 as a group of higher education associations to advance sustainability, the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education includes administrators, faculty, staff, and students. AASHE offers continuing education and a self-reporting metric for colleges and universities to measure their sustainability performance, known as the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment, and Rating System. AASHE also supports member efforts to integrate sustainability into teaching, operations, and research.

The National Council for Science and the Environment, as noted earlier in this chapter, conducts a census of programs that includes sustainability, and it is developing a consensus statement of core competencies. Within NCSE, the Alliance of Sustainability and Environmental Academic Leaders provides input and perspectives to the larger council.

The purpose of the Sustainability Curriculum Consortium is to build “collective capacity as educators and change agents, along with the administrators and stakeholders who can support them, to improve the ways sustainability is perceived, modeled, and taught.”³⁵ It aligns its activities, especially through its webinars, around three key themes in sustainability education: pedagogy, substantive content, and leadership.

The U.S. Partnership for Education for Sustainable Development takes a broad look at sustainability education, from K–12 to higher education to communities of faith and other organizations outside the academy. Along with AASHE, it coordinates the Disciplinary Associations Network for Sustainability, which aims to advance sustainability within other fields of study (physics, business, and history, to name but a few).

The Alliance for Sustainability Leadership in Education has more than 300 institutional members in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The Association of University Leaders for a Sustainable Future serves as the secretariat for signatories of the Talloires Declaration.

These organizations represent a broad collection of efforts to engage higher education programs to advance sustainability goals, often doing so by convening their members through conferences and webinars. By providing frameworks for sustainability performance, resources for education and community engagement, and professional development and networking opportunities, these organizations are valuable partners for initiatives to strengthen sustainability programs in higher education.

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