Conference Agenda

Net Zero has emerged within climate policy globally as a key concept and as a solution to slowing and even stopping global warming and the related socioecological branches of the poly-crisis (Fankhauser et al., 2022). Net Zero can be presented purely as a scientific concept combining the need to urgently and drastically reduce global carbon emissions while also removing existing accumulated emissions from the atmosphere, to produce net zero emissions globally, which will effectively stop global warming (Fankhauser et al., 2022). The science is simple, but the pathways to reach Net Zero will involve global social transformation and thus must involve the global human populace, with a particular need from the populace of the Global North, not just scientists, policy makers, and industry leaders, to hold top emitters, governments, and corporations to account (Sasse et al., 2021). Recognition of Net Zero as a viable and necessary climate solution has been formalised by a commitment to achieving Net Zero is currently supported by 138 countries globally (Net Zero Tracker Data Explorer, 2026) though the efficacy and achievability, of those pledges varies widely, with many commitments simply statements of intent without any substantive action behind them (Hans et al., 2024). Additionally, despite the futures-based nature of Net Zero and thus the inherent impact particularly on youth if it is achieved, and despite international acknowledgement that education will play a vital role in reaching Net Zero, the term Net Zero is absent from school curricula across Europe and indeed globally (DfE, 2023; Learning for the Green Transition and Sustainable Development, 2025; Puttick et al., 2026).

In this way, while Net Zero is discussed in adult circles around children and young people, there are epistemic barriers blocking children and young people from accessing valuable knowledge and awareness of Net Zero. This inequitable blockage and omission of Net Zero from school curricula not only do children and young people a disservice by excluding them from Net Zero conversations and advocacy, they also more basically hinder a just climate transition and endanger the possibility of a Net Zero future, in which the global human community has repaired a core branch of the poly-crisis, thus having positive knock-on effects on other crises.

In this study, we draw on empirical data from interviews with teachers in secondary schools in England as a springboard for engaging with international literature within structured reviews. Through this combination of empirical work and international structured literature reviews, this paper seeks to make substantive impact on the narrative of children and young people’s right to receive particular knowledges through education. Additionally, beyond stating the problem of missing connections between youth and net zero in research and education, it proposes solutions and ideas for how to approach making those connections between youth, Net Zero, and education.

Throughout this paper, we learn from the framework of childism (Wall, 2022) which reminds of the inherent bias of adultcentrism that pervades most research, education, and policy work, and proposes active steps to decentre our adult lens to more equitably and ethically understand and here discuss the rights of and realities for children and young people. Additionally, we adopt the lens of justice to direct and analyse literature and in doing so, we recognise that justice itself is complex, and is intergenerational, distributive, and procedural. We extend work on transformative climate justice (Newell et al., 2021) and empowered inclusion (Josefsson & Wall, 2020) to centre youth, affirm and explore their inclusion within global Net Zero narratives and accountability for (in)action, and to take an active role in their Net Zero future.

Introduction

Climate change is a social problem that involves poverty, social inequality and biodiversity loss, requiring systemic transformation in the practical, political and personal spheres (Leichenko & O’Brien, 2024). Hence, climate change is a matter of justice in time and space: justice related to the responsibility for climate emissions, to the distribution of cuts in climate emissions, and to the effects of climate change on those living today and future generations (Svarstad, 2021). Furthermore, green transitions away from grey economies and towards a more sustainable future will have massive effects on jobs, labour relations and income distribution. Therefore, demands from trade unions for a socially just transition have been recognised as part of the Paris Agreement (Galgózi, 2020). At the same time, phasing in green energy can also reproduce colonial relations of power both within and between countries (Sultana, 2022).

Young people living today will experience increasing impacts of climate change, hence they represent a link between current adults and future generations. As a result, social movements for climate justice involves significant youth participation, such as the Fridays for Future movement (Leichenko & O’Brien, 2024). At the same time, several studies show an increased resistance towards climate policies and sustainable development, which can be related to socio-economic background, class, gender and cultural capital (Urberg & Õhman, 2024). These findings call for new didactic approaches to climate change education.

A growing body of literature emphasise the role of geographical thinking in climate change education to develop young people’s capabilities to live a life they value without harming others (He, Tani & Puustinen, 2024). Although various and overlapping interpretations exist, key ingredients are abstract and critical thinking about interconnections grounded in the geographical key concepts of place, space and scale (Bendl et al., 2025). These concepts enable students to think about the world in new ways beyond their everyday experiences, and may therefore be regarded as powerful (Maude, 2024). However, detailed analysis of the educational potential of specific places, is rarely elaborated on in this literature. Consequently, geographical thinking risks turning into theoretical abstractions less accessible to young people. In the meantime, there is a rich literature discussing the potential of place-based education as an entry point to sustainability. Although emphasising interconnections between geographical scales, ‘place’ is often conceptualised as the local surroundings of the school (Smith & Pike, 2023; Tannock, 2021).

Addressing justice issues in climate change education calls for cultivation of humanity, both towards human and non-human animals, involving critical self-refection, perspective taking, and narrative imagination (Nussbaum, 2025). Similarly, the rhetorical concept of "topoi" refers to the mental place from which we approach an issue. Visiting several topoi enables us to think critically by assessing different perspectives (Kjeldsen, 2015). Thus, this paper asks: How can students' geographical thinking on justice in climate change education be developed through shifting place - both in the mental and material sense?

In the context of accelerating ecological breakdown, social inequality, and technological transformation, Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE) is increasingly positioned as a key site for addressing what has been described as a global poly-crisis (Lawrence et al., 2024; UNESCO, 2017). Yet while terms like ‘sustainability’ or ‘environmental justice’ are often used as aspirational goals of ESE (Rousell & Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, 2020), these concepts are often treated as self-evident and universal. This paper argues that sustainability and justice are not neutral terms, but carry onto-epistemic legacies that shape what kinds of futures are imagined, what knowledges are valued, and indeed, what life is sustained.

Against this background, this paper is guided by the following question: How do dominant onto-epistemological constructions of sustainability in ESE shape what forms of ecological/social justice become thinkable/doable?

Drawing on feminist, decolonial, techno-critical, and posthuman scholarship (e.g. Bellacasa, 2017; Lewis et al., 2023; Kumalo, 2017; Stein, 2019), we conceptualise sustainability and justice as relational practices, not simply fixed goals. We propose that what we know, how we are, and how we relate are co-constitutive, and that sustainability should therefore be understood as an ongoing ability-to-sustain relations of care across difference, rather than as a technical problem to be solved or a universal future to be achieved.

The paper is structured around two theoretical movements, both of which take seriously the idea that ‘the environment’ includes ecological, social, and technological spaces. First, we analyse dominant trends in ESE research and policy in the Global North. We show how sustainability is often framed through dualistic, universalist, and extractivist epistemologies that reproduce the colonial and neoliberal logics that limit the political and ethical possibilities of ESE by framing ecological crisis as a problem of individual action, technological innovation, or resource management, rather than as a relational and historical condition.

Next, we turn toward relational and pluriversal onto-epistemologies emerging from Indigenous, Global South, feminist, and new materialist scholarship (e.g. Druker-Ibáñez & Cáceres-Jensen, 2022; Escobar, 2020; Garcia et al., 2023; Le Grange, 2018;). These perspectives reconceptualise sustainability as a relational, situated, and ethical practice grounded in accountability to human and more-than-human worlds. Here, sustainability emerges as a relational practice, of the ability-to-sustain, an ethico-onto-epistemological issue of how things are (or are not) connected.

We argue that this shift has significant implications for how ESE research understands its role in a time of poly-crisis. Rather than primarily producing knowledge for policy implementation or behaviour change, ESE research can be understood as a site of epistemic responsibility: shaping the conditions under which different futures become possible. This involves interrogating not only what knowledge is produced, but whose knowledge is legitimized, and how knowledge is generated. Such a practice informs what kinds of relations educational practices sustain, or have the ability-to-sustain.

The European and international dimension of this contribution lies in its critical engagement with dominant Global North policy frameworks (such as ESD and UNESCO discourses), while centring epistemologies from the Global South and Indigenous traditions as resources for rethinking sustain-ability education in plural and decolonial terms. The paper contributes to current debates on the role of education research in times of poly-crisis by reframing sustainability as an ethico-onto-epistemological question and proposing relationality as a guiding principle for future ESE research and practice.