I am not a historian. Yet, as a sustainability education researcher, I know how important a historical perspective can be when dealing with sustainability issues. In this text, I show some of the clearest links between history and sustainability issues through the lens of sustainability education.
Many issues that plague society are related to sustainability. Examples include climate change, the energy and protein transitions, degradation of natural areas and associated extinction of species, and pollution of air, land, and water. These issues are complex: they concern different stakeholders, each with their own perspectives, they do not have easy solutions that everyone agrees with, and they are multifaceted because of their ecological, ethical, economic, social, moral, and cultural character. Because of this complexity, opinion forming, decision making, and action taking, sustainability requires a diverse set of knowledge, skills, and attitudes. In the social sciences, such a combination of knowledge, skills and attitudes is generally called a competence. For example, if I want to go to on a climate-friendly holiday, I needed to know what modes of transport have what benefits when looking at energy use (knowledge), I would need to be able to find and combine different sources of information (skills), and I would need to want to put in the effort to do all of this (attitudes).
Adopting a sustainable lifestyle requires a set of competences. In an influential review study that compared sustainability curricula across the globe, five competences have shown up time and time again.1 These key sustainability competences are systems thinking competence (what is the current situation and how did we end up here?), anticipatory competence (what could the future look like, and how likely are these scenario’s?), strategic competence (how do we get from where we are to where we want to be?), normative competence (what is desirable about current and future situations? And for whom?), and interpersonal competence (how do we work together? How do we collectively decide?). In recent years, sustainability competences such as these have come to the forefront of sustainability education globally, with international organisations such as the European Union2 and the United Nations3 developing educational policy that targets these competences.
Why should historians care? Because sustainability education needs history. In this text, I will delve into two of the most obvious sustainability competences that benefit from a historical perspective: systems thinking and anticipatory competence. But before that, I provide a historical analysis of sustainability education itself, with special attention for the substantial changes in the aims of sustainability education.
Sustainability education: the situation until now
Sustainability education had different aims throughout the last couple of decades. In the 1970s, its focus was on environmental aspects and a mainly green perspective, aimed first and foremost at ecological conservation (see, for instance, the Belgrade Charter).4 Later, also social, political, and economic dimensions were added, although ecology still clearly remained the major focus.5 It was not until the 1987 Brundtland report6 that ecology, economy, and social aspects became more balanced in the three Ps of sustainable development (people, planet, profit). This triple bottom line was further solidified in Rio de Janeiro.7 Soon, however, the P of profit was changed to prosperity, since it was deemed to be too narrow to only focus on economic growth, and societal economic benefits should also be taken into account.8 Finally, in the UN Summit that led to the Sustainable Development Goals, two more Ps were included: peace and partnership.9 In the eyes of the UN, sustainability thus concerns people, planet, profit, peace and partnership.
With this shift in sustainability thinking, educational policy and practice also changed. Sustainability is now approached from a broader perspective, going beyond a purely ‘green’, ecological perspective, to a more complex and holistic sustainability. Despite this, education for sustainability is still commonly restricted to the natural and earth sciences. Given the complex nature of sustainability issues, this monodisciplinary approach in the classroom is undesirable. Science teachers are very knowledgeable about the natural science processes (e.g., climate change and the effects of greenhouse gasses, nitrification and eutrophication, or pollution and toxicity), but are less at home in more social (e.g., climate migration, war and peace dynamics, normativity) and prosperity (e.g., economic growth/degrowth perspectives, fair wages and job stability) perspectives. Adopting a historian’s perspective is needed to set the next steps for sustainability education, for this can shed light on the social, prosperity, and ecological dimensions. In the next sections, I give examples of two of the sustainability competences that benefit most from historical context.
Systems thinking – what is happening and how did this come to be?
My first example brings us to the Wadden Islands. The Dutch coastal islands in the Wadden Sea have not always existed. From a geological perspective, they are nothing more than baby islands. We do not have to go back that far in time at all before they were part of the mainland (Figure 1). Nowadays, the Dutch have a hard time keeping these islands from ‘walking’ from West to East: we need to dig up enormous amounts of sand and plant large swaths of grasses to keep these islands in place. Sea level rise caused by climate change accelerates these natural processes, thereby making the coastal service’s job even harder.
Figure 1. Dutch Wadden Sea changing over time.10
It should come as no surprise that understanding how a system such as the Wadden Sea works in the present greatly benefits from an understanding of how this system evolved. Systems thinking competence is therefore the first example of a sustainability competence that benefits greatly from a historical perspective.
Examples where systems thinking and history meet are paramount. As a first example, think about developments in the relationship between humans and non-human nature. With what perspectives did our ancestors look at nature, and what was their place in it? Does this differ from the perspectives of people elsewhere and in other times? And how do we see our relationship with nature nowadays? What can we learn from past perspectives that might help us understand the current situation and move forward?
Another example is related to nature conservation initiatives. In the Netherlands for instance, many conservation initiatives aim to restore our natural environment to a situation that mimics the late 1800s. Of course, this is a choice: we might as well have chosen the situation in the 1500s, or the 1900s. Other conservation initiatives instead aim to keep the situation from deteriorating compared to recent years. Exploring what nature looked like in different times in the past might help students see that the world is in flux. What the world looks like today has not always been the case (see also the example of the Wadden Sea above), and it will not be like this forever either. Thinking with this historical perspectives is beneficial to understanding what systems could look like, thereby reflecting on the system we are currently in, and helping us to form an opinion on the type of world we think is desirable.
Finally, examples of historic good practices from a sustainability point of view might also help students. The hole in the ozone layer is a quite recent example that is mentioned a lot in literature. Ozone layer depletion was a very acute problem in the last century, yet with successful and well-orchestrated international policies, ozone concentrations are projected to recover before 2100. What can we learn from such historical good practice examples? Understanding these historical contexts could help students, since it shows that even though these issues are dire, messy and constantly changing, we can take them on if we take them seriously and understand well enough what is going on.
Anticipatory competence – what might happen next?
From understanding what is happening right now, the next logical step would be exploring what might happen next. Anticipatory competence deals with envisioning different scenarios that might one day happen, and determining their (un)likelihood, their desirability, their probability and plausibility, and predicting where we could end up if we do not do anything at all.
Predicting the future is a tricky or even impossible activity. However, a historian’s view is of great value for anticipatory competence. After all, people in the past also thought about the future. This so-called ‘history of the future’ is for instance clearly present in the work of Jules Verne (Figure 2). Did we actually end up where Verne thought we could end up? The same goes for current science fiction authors, yet for these we often do not know yet if what they write about will one day be reality. What can historic reflections on possible future scenarios teach us about our own reflections of the future? A reflective stance towards the past is as beneficial for anticipatory competence as a reflective stance towards the future. Underscoring this, the past is sometimes also included in the ‘alternative futures cone’ (Figure 3), which helps us visualise avenues that can be considered when imagining the future.
Figure 2. First page of Jules Verne’s “From the Earth to the Moon: A Direct Route in 97 Hours, 20 Minutes”, First Edition.11
Figure 3. Alternative futures cone.12
An interesting case of anticipatory competence could be urban planning in the 20th century, where an increasing amount of public space was reserved for the personal car. In recent years, the disadvantages of this reallocation of public space have become more and more visible: scarcity of space (especially in medieval European cities), pollution of air, land and water, and safety of streets have all become pressing issues that were not entirely foreseen. While initially people thought the introduction of the car would reduce travel time to public services, the unexpected consequence was the centralisation of many services, thereby keeping travel time virtually the same because of increasing distances that had to be crossed to reach these services.
Such realisations based on past phenomena and visions on the future from generations before us help broadening our own scope on possible, probable, and desirable futures. Thinking about the future from the past helps students see that our own future is not set in stone and frees them from focussing too much on the limitations of the present.
Sustainability education in the future: the next steps
These are only some examples of how a historian’s perspective can help students (and adults alike) when trying to make sense of sustainability issues. Let me sum up my point about systems thinking competence and anticipatory competence. Historical perspectives can greatly improve systems thinking: to better understand what is happening now, students need to understand what happened in the past, how we saw or understood the world back then and what changed in our understanding. Furthermore, historic perspectives can help us liberate our visions of the future from the shackles of the present. Understanding what people back then thought about the future opens up possibilities for the future. Thus, as with systems thinking, anticipatory competence benefits from a historian’s perspective.
This proposed view of sustainability education demands an approach that is broader and inter- or even transdisciplinary, something that is a challenge in the current educational landscape. Luckily, there are already some great initiatives in the field of history teaching and sustainability education that use this potential of including a historical perspective.13
Let me end with direct points of action. I think the current situation can be improved in two ways. On the one hand, science and sustainability education researchers like me need to collaborate with historians of all sorts, tapping into the potential that historical perspectives bring to sustainability education. On the other hand, curriculum developers and textbook writers need to support teachers in harnessing these important historical competences, thereby supporting students to develop sustainability competences. Our history is as rich and complex as the present. Adopting a historical perspective in sustainability education can help students understand what might have happened, see what could be happening, and imagine what might happen next. Historians: our students need you!
Edited by Elian Schure and Marieke Gelderblom.
- Wiek, Arnim, Withycombe, Lauren, and Redman, Charles L., “Key Competencies in Sustainability: A Reference Framework for Academic Program Development,” Sustainability Science 6, 2 (2011): 203–218, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-011-0132-6. ↩︎
- Bianchi, Guia, Pisiotis, Ulrike, and Cabrera Giraldez, Marcelino, “GreenComp – The European Sustainability Competence Framework,” Luxembourg: European Union (2022), https://dx.doi.org/10.2760/13286. ↩︎
- UNESCO, “Education for Sustainable Development: A Roadmap,” Paris: UNESCO (2020), https://doi.org/10.54675/YFRE1448. ↩︎
- UNESCO, “Final Report of the International Workshop on Environmental Education, Belgrade (Yugoslavia), 13–22 October 1975,” Paris: UNESCO (1976). ↩︎
- UNESCO, “Final Report of the Intergovernmental Conference on Environmental Education, Tbilisi, USSR, 14–26 October 1977,” Paris: UNESCO (1978). ↩︎
- United Nations, “Results of the World Conference on Environment and Development: Agenda 21,” New York: United Nations (1992). ↩︎
- United Nations, “Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development. From Our Origins to the Future: Report on the World Summit on Sustainable Development, 26 August–4 September 2002, Johannesburg, South Africa,” New York: United Nations (2002). ↩︎
- United Nations, “Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” New York: United Nations (2015). ↩︎
- World Commission on Environment and Development, “Our Common Future: The United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development,” New York: United Nations (1987). ↩︎
- Van den Biggelaar, D.F.A.M., Kluiving, S.J., van Balen, R.T., Kasse, C., Troelstra, S.R., and Prins, M.A., “Storms in a lagoon: Flooding history during the last 1200 years derived from geological and historical archives of Schokland (Noordoostpolder, the Netherlands),” Netherlands Journal of Geosciences 93, 4 (2014): 175-196, https://doi.org/10.1017/njg.2014.14. ↩︎
- Bibliothèque nationale de France. ↩︎
- Chambers, Josephine, “Around the future in eighty worlds,” 28 March, 2024, https://www.uu.nl/en/opinie/around-the-future-in-eighty-worlds. ↩︎
- See for instance the work of Tessa de Leur, https://www.hva.nl/nieuws/2025/5/hoe-tekenen-leerlingen-helpt-bij-leren. ↩︎
Author biography
Michiel van Harskamp is a postdoctoral researcher in science education with a focus on sustainability education at the Freudenthal Institute, Utrecht University, the Netherlands. He has a background in Biology, and a PhD in fostering Environmental Citizenship through science education (2023). In his PhD, Van Harskamp focused on Socio-Scientific Issues related to sustainability and Inquiry-Based Science Education, and their potential to promote Environmental Citizenship through Socio-Scientific Inquiry-Based Learning. For this, he collaborated with a team of six science teachers in a Lesson Study team. Through several Lesson Study cycles, the team researched both teacher and student EC competence development. After a postdoc at the University of Antwerp (Belgium) on assessment of sustainability education, he returned to Utrecht University. He now works for the Horizon-Europe IMP>ACT project, where he researches assessment of action competence as a learning outcome of sustainability and climate change education. Furthermore, he researches climate change emotions and coping strategies of young people in collaboration with colleagues from Utrecht University’s Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences.