"Sustainability Literacy is demonstrating one’s awareness of issues that destabilize local and global relationships between economy, environment, and society, and having the information and knowledge necessary to make positive contributions within a transdisciplinary, collaborative, community-based forum of research focused on developing innovative solutions that work toward equity, responsibility, accountability, and resolution."
Western Washington University's Sustainability Institute Initiative
"Expressed at the highest level, a sustainability literate person might legitimately be expected to:
Forum for the Future's consultation workshop,
a sustainability development charity in London
The Handbook of Sustainability Literacy: Skills for a Changing World identifies the term, sustainability literacy, as "the skills, attitudes, competencies, dispositions and values that are necessary for surviving and thriving in the declining conditions of the world in ways which slow down that decline as far as possible" (p. 10-11).
The literacy in sustainability literacy refers:
"to a wide range of practices people are empowered to participate in, through having skills in using language in particular ways . . . Literacy, then, is a collection of skills that allow for effective participation and influence in diverse areas of social life. As people gain sustainability literacy skills, they become empowered to read society critically, discovering insights into the unsustainable trajectory that the society is on and the social structure that underpin this trajectory. But more than this, they become empowered to engage with those social structures and contribute to the re-writing of self and society along more sustainable lines (p.11)."
The Handbook of Sustainability Literacy: Skills for a Changing World
The Center for Ecoliteracy has identified a set of fifteen core competencies that young people need to develop for living in sustainable communities—the ability to: