Inside the Sustainability Competencies Shaping Future Leaders
Climate adaptation, food systems change and biodiversity loss are all complex challenges that require more than just technical expertise to address. They call for a shared set of skills and values that guide people to work across systems and disciplines.
In the world of sustainability education, these skills and values are known as competencies. We spoke with three members of the Institute on the Environment’s Learning & Development (L&D) team to unpack the concept.
What Are Sustainability Competencies?
The term sustainability competencies can sound abstract, but, in fact, it describes a straightforward concept. In the words of Mary Hannemann, co-director of sustainability education at IonE, sustainability competencies are “the skills and the characteristics that we all need to be effective in making change in the world, particularly around building a more sustainable and equitable future.”
IonE’s L&D staff draw on research-based frameworks to identify key competencies for sustainability education and practice; two that they point to are Redman & Wiek’s systematic review, published in 2021, and a 2020 Sustainability Science article with global co-authors. Below are eight core competencies, developed through years of scholarship, that currently guide IonE’s approach to teaching and leadership:
- Systems-thinking – seeing connections among ecological, social, and economic systems and scales.
- Futures-thinking – imagining and preparing for multiple possible futures.
- Values-thinking – understanding how ethics and personal or cultural values shape decisions.
- Strategic-thinking – designing and implementing pathways toward short and long-term goals.
- Interpersonal – communicating and collaborating across differences.
- Intrapersonal – fostering self-awareness, resilience, and reflection.
- Implementation – turning ideas into practical action.
- Integrated problem-solving – weaving together multiple forms of knowledge, from scientific to Indigenous, to address complex challenges.
In the classroom, using these competencies can give students a shared language for what sustainable leadership really looks like, says Trina Van Schyndel, a postdoctoral scholar in the L&D group focused on community-engaged graduate program development.
“We hope that students walk away with a language that is understandable to organizations outside of higher education,” says Van Schydel. “From government agencies, to nonprofits, to industry, these competencies provide a shared understanding from which we can all be building on the work of sustainability together.”
Why These Competencies Matter Now
The challenges that we are facing are urgent, and at the same time can be anxiety-inducing.
Ben Ingman, director of L&D, notes that these competencies provide a grounding in what could otherwise be an untethered and uncertain space.
“We’re not preparing people for specific tasks,” says Ingman. “We’re preparing people to be actors in society. So, we need to be honoring that broader context and we need a grounding in competencies to tether us across disciplines.”
With problems that can seem overwhelmingly complex, Hannemann sees competencies as a way to help people from feeling stuck. They provide the mindset and skills needed to envision and create a better future.
“These competencies help shift people’s thinking from ‘What if we get it wrong?’ to ‘What if we get it right?’” says Hannemann. “What would it look like if the world were the way we want it to be?”
Putting Competencies into Action
Across IonE’s Learning & Development programs, sustainability competencies are embedded into curricula and are strengthened through interdisciplinary and community-engaged models of learning.
One of these programs, the sustainability studies minor, a partnership between IonE and five University of Minnesota Twin Cities colleges, builds these competencies by requiring students to take courses across disciplines. Along with sustainability-focused courses, the minor requires students take courses in other disciplines, such as social science, economics, policy, biophysical sciences, and design.
The cross-disciplinarity of these courses specifically supports the systems-thinking competency, which Hanneman, Van Schyndel, and Ingman each called out as one of the most essential competencies for tackling complexity.
Sustainability can feel really nebulous, explains Ingman. It can reach from local communities to international systems. But exposure to different disciplines helps students find structure in that complexity. They develop systems-thinking and the ability to recognize the interconnections between people, institutions, and the ecological systems that link them.
Other IonE programs, like the Clean Energy Leaders and Sustainability Corps, emphasize community-engaged learning to help undergraduates develop competencies that are best learned in contexts outside of the classroom. This community-embedded model of learning builds the interpersonal skills needed to implement climate solutions and create real-world impact.
The Future of Sustainability Learning
L&D staff are thinking about the future of competencies in the ever-changing world of sustainability.
Ingman is considering how the framework might evolve by embracing community.
“The language of competency is based on a westernized version of education, where the task of education becomes the development of individuals as individuals,” says Ingman. “I‘m curious about how we can expand beyond that – to think more about community competencies.”
Van Schyndel, in turn, is excited about how the intrapersonal competency could help climate leaders develop the resilience necessary to pursue long-term change.
“We need to be thinking about ourselves as whole people and human beings first,” says Van Schyndel. “Yes, we exist in the workplace or in the classroom, but we’re more than that. Sustaining yourself is vital to being able to do the work of sustainability.”
Molly Stroh is the Communications & Editorial Fellow at the Institute on the Environment.
