The Handbook of Sustainability Literacy: Skills for a Changing World.

Ferreira, Jo-Anne

The Handbook of Sustainability Literacy: Skills for a Changing World. Edited by Arran Stibbe. Dartington: Green Books, 2009, 220 pp. ISBN: 978-1-900322-60-7

The central argument behind this text is that if we are to be able to live sustainably we need more than knowledge about sustainability; we also need the attitudes, values, skills, and desires to live sustainably--what the authors in this collection term sustainable literacy. Literacy here is seen not simply as knowing about ecology or sustainability but as having the skills and capacities to understand and look critically at the world and having the skills to change--both self and society--in order to achieve a sustainable world.

The 32 chapters in this edited collection provide the reader with brief introductions to a wide range of skills including permaculture; community gardens, sustainable consumption, and transition skills; and dispositions such as commons thinking, ecological intelligence, futures thinking, Gaia awareness, systems thinking, and so on. There are also chapters dealing with media literacy, cultural literacy, ecological literacy, psychological literacy and technological literacy. The authors of each chapter outline why they believe each of these skills to be essential in shaping a sustainable society, and the chapters conclude with active learning exercises and/or a list of resources or other suggestions to encourage take-up of each of these skills and attributes. The chapters, while for the most part brief (around 5 pages), offer, as a handbook should, a concise introduction to an issue, followed by ways forward for the reader interested in finding out more about the particular issue. In this way, this text becomes useful as a learning tool not only for individuals, but also for educators seeking to find ways for their students to engage with these ideas. In this way, it operates as a "handbook", as its title implies.

The book begins, thankfully not--like many texts--with a litany of environmental problems but with a focus on the underpinnings: an examination of the systems, structures and assumptions that enable the environmental crisis. These are not doom and gloom chapters, however. Rather they offer a way for us to re-think, challenge and actively oppose these normally unquestioned underpinnings. The remainder of the text has chapters that deal with new ways of thinking, valuing and doing. The book concludes with chapters dealing specifically with how educational systems and institutions will need to--and can--change to enable students to develop sustainability literacy. The range of skills and dispositions discussed in the text will all contribute in some way to developing sustainability literacy so the book as a whole offers a great way into thinking about, and enacting, sustainability. The book has a parallel website www. sustainability-literacy.org with additional resources.

One of the novel features of this book is that many of the authors had opportunities to meet with one another in a series of workshops and symposia where they shared and discussed their ideas. No doubt these opportunities have helped in giving the book a very cohesive feel, a feeling often missing from edited collections.

There are many things to like about this text, not least that the text focuses on the how, that is, on what we can do, and importantly, is written with a tone of hope. For these reasons, this book offers grounds for optimism and as well as concrete strategies for achieving sustainability.

Jo-Anne Ferreira

Griffith University