University reform, socio-environmental transformation and the ecological citizen

Abstract

Objective 4.7 of Sustainable Development supports that by 2030, students acquire the theoretical and practical knowledge necessary to promote development and sustainable lifestyles. These concerns have been recovered from the international agenda, national policies and from the field of higher education, so that sustainability guides university planning and reform. What type of professional subjects should emerge given the new paths of society and the planet? This work consisted of a theoretical dissertation following a methodology that seeks to locate the “theoretical gaps” between two concepts whose interrelation has been little explored until now, we are talking about Sustainable Education and Ecological Citizenship. Starting from the fact that if universities accept the imperative of building citizenship or, rather, of fully training the student to critically construct themselves (individually and collectively) as citizens, then training for Planetary Ecological Citizenship is an unavoidable dimension within the discussion of the university reform project for the 21st century, which is framed in the project of “another possible ecological university” that contributes to directing the socio-environmental transformations that are beginning.