Photo above comes from Wanås Konst – Center for Art & Learning, presents and communicates contemporary art that challenges and redefines society, working outside in the landscape around Wanås in Skåne, southern Sweden

Here is a chapter I have been wanting to write and get out for a while. In it I pose that fifty years of education and learning in relation to the environment and sustainability have not made a dent in the current systemic global dysfunction that is propelling humanity toward collapse. In many parts of the world, education, learning, and capacity-building have been hijacked serve an extractivist and exploitive economy that cultivates materialist lifestyles and promotes extreme wealth inequality.

In this chapter, published in a fascinating handbook, I introduce the related concepts of cotonomy and eco-Bildung as a way to transgress this dysfunction and to break with hegemonic structures and systems that are underneath. Ideas from Daoism, ecopedagogy, and Bildung are brought together as socio-critical transitional pathway that moves humanity beyond sustainability.

Full citation:

Wals, A.E.J. (2025). On Cotonomy and Eco-Bildung as a Relational Transitional Pathway Toward Post-sustainability. In: Peters, M.A., Green, B.J., Misiaszek, G.W., Zhu, X. (eds) Handbook of Ecological Civilization. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-8101-0_8-1

Note: this is not an open-access chapter unfortunately but do send me an email: arjen.wals@wur.nl or via LinkedIn @arjenwals and I might be able to share the proofs with you.