Awareness of the importance of sustainability education is growing, but there’s still a long way to go. It equips individuals with the knowledge, skills, and mindset needed to address environmental, social, and economic challenges.
Dr Mark Hirons, Senior Researcher and former MSc Course Director at the ECI, is co-convening this year's Green Templeton Lectures on Sustainability Education.
The flagship college lecture series will explore the role that education can play in addressing the interwoven crises of climate change, inequality and biodiversity loss. The series will consider how, in light of growing concerns about climate and ecology anxiety, political polarisation and rapid technological advancements associated with artificial intelligence, critical questions about the ‘how’, ‘what’ and ‘why’ of sustainability education become increasingly significant.
Dr Hirons said:
Education is widely seen as a key component in addressing the complex and interwoven challenges of inequality, climate change and biodiversity loss. This lecture series aims to draw attention to the great work already happening in Oxford, and beyond, and reflect on some of the most salient challenges facing sustainability educators.”
Over the course of three lectures the 2025 Green Templeton Lectures will explore the topic of sustainability education with speakers reflecting on three critical and central issues.

Fairness and flourishing
At the heart of sustainability issues are questions of fairness and flourishing. Addressing climate change and ecological loss is not merely a technical or managerial issue. For example, the poorest and most marginalised in society bear the brunt of the impacts of climate change, yet often have the least voice in decisions about how to tackle climate change and, importantly, who should bear the costs associated with reducing carbon emissions. Equipping students to engage with questions of fairness and justice is central to sustainability education. Justice and fairness in society can be seen as one area of human flourishing, which broadly refers to taking a holistic understanding of human well-being. In a society which tends to reduce questions of well-being to economic growth, students should be able to evaluate existing strategies from a wide range of social and environmental considerations and be provided with the foundation to help create new approaches to sustainability challenges. Fairness and flourishing will be addressed at the first lecture on Wednesday 12 February, in a dialogue between Chukwumerije Okereke and Dr Amanda Power.
Power and politics
Engaging with questions of fairness and flourishing inevitably means engaging with questions of power and politics. This means equipping students with the intellectual tools required to understand how the structures of knowledge and power shape contemporary society and to assess how diverse values and priorities are expressed or oppressed through patterns of exclusion and inclusion. Climate change and biodiversity loss occur on a range of scales, from the global to the back garden. Understanding the links between international, national and local scales and connecting this to their personal experiences is essential to enabling students to find their own way to fit in with efforts to tackle sustainability challenges. In the second lecture, Chris Skidmore will discuss these issues with Dr Debbie Hopkins.
Hope and humility
In the final lecture of the series, Sam Barratt and Ann Finlayson will turn to hope and humility. Against the backdrop of chronic under-achievements in addressing climate change and biodiversity loss is growing interest in the role of hope and humility in sustainability education. Hope is different to optimism. Optimism is usually associated with the feeling that a desired outcome is likely to occur. Hope, however, involves being open about the scale of the challenges and difficulties involved. As Desmond Tutu reportedly put it: ‘Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all the darkness.’ Hope has a rich history in educational theorising and social life not only because it motivates action in the face of unfavourable odds, which is essential in responding to climate change, but also because it provides the conceptual tools to engage with, and address, fear and despair.
Dr Hirons is convening the lecture series with fellow Green Templeton College Research Fellow, James Robson, from the University’s Dept of Education.