Living Sustainability in Higher Education : Connecting Communities, Learning and Justice

Living Sustainability in Higher Education views universities as spaces where sustainability and justice are lived daily. It argues that real learning comes from navigating tensions in decisions, urging institutions to adopt more practical, progressive approaches grounded in global best practices.

Living Sustainability in Higher Education offers a new way of visualising the university: as an arena in which ideas of sustainability and justice manifest in the daily interactions that occur between students, academics and the myriad communities that live and work in and around campus. Rather than content to be taught, it presents sustainability as something that is lived. Every decision, by individuals, institutions and governments, is simultaneously sustainable and unsustainable, just and unjust. They result in some societal objectives being advanced and others frustrated; one group of stakeholders advantaged over another. The book’s central contention is that the totality of the university experience, and the challenges and opportunities that this comprises, enables a person to learn how to navigate these tensions throughout their lifetime. Essential reading for anyone interested in how higher education sustainability can be improved, this key title is grounded in the theoretical frameworks of sustainability learning, environmental justice and nexus. Showcasing pedagogical innovations and best practices using a global range of institutions, a powerful argument is made for higher education to move beyond its current structures and ‘ways of doing’ to embrace more progressive pedagogies that have sustainability and justice at their core.