Education for sustainable development and sustainable consumption: the role of sufficiency

Maike Gossen, Ulf Schrader, Maike Gossen, Ulf Schrader, Maike Gossen and Ulf Schrader

Chapter Chapter 4 in The Elgar Companion to Consumer Behaviour and the Sustainable Development Goals, 2025, pp 56-72 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: In the face of the global sustainability crisis, education is crucial for fostering societal transformation. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4 focuses on inclusive, equitable, quality education and lifelong learning. Sustainability education supports this goal. Despite numerous initiatives, ongoing environmental and social crises demand a turn towards sufficiency, advocating ‘enoughness’ and equitable resource distribution. This chapter integrates sufficiency into sustainability education, addressing overconsumption and promoting societal change. Combining an exploratory literature review and expert interviews, our research proposes a framework for sufficiency-promoting education. This framework views sufficiency as an individual task and a societal perspective, challenging current economic paradigms and fostering collective responsibility. It emphasises ethics, critical thinking, experiential learning and socio-emotional development, advocating for a holistic transformation of pedagogical practices, teaching methods and institutional elements.

Keywords: Sufficiency-promoting education; Education for sustainable development; ESD; Education for sustainable consumption; ESC; Critical education; Transformative learning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035325054
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