Promoting ecocentric visions

Abstract

When beginning an editorial for a new issue, our thoughts naturally go towards current questions and events related to sustainability, the place they occupy within humanity’s ongoing dialogue with nature and itself, and the threads that link them to the kinds of visions we wish to publish. However, in the case of this issue, as we were thinking along these lines, the recent death of our colleague and founder member of our journal, Elena Camino (1946-2026), means that our thoughts are with her and the immense richness she shared with us in innumerable dialogues as well as through the vast range of her work as an author and as a teacher. We are already preparing a future special issue dedicated to Elena, with articles and other kinds of contributions about her.

As always, many of the threads that we draw from the articles in this issue resonate with Elena’s way of embodying vision and action. She was a passionate believer in and promoter of nonviolence and how it is profoundly interconnected with sustainability. Like us, she found herself increasingly oppressed by and at odds with a dominant worldview increasingly characterized by power relations based on organized collective violence, generically called war. By no means the only driver of planetary destruction, war has, however, immediate and devastating consequences in terms not only of human waste and suffering but also of its immense impact on the entire biosphere, its biodiversity, and the global climate on which it depends.

Far beyond being a mere theoretical abstraction, Elena’s profound rejection of violence was rather a practice rooted both in her scientific work and in a civic commitment directly inspired by the nonviolence of Mahatma Gandhi and Acharya Vinoba Bhave. In the wake of Bhave's Bhoodan (the "gift of land") movement, she closely followed and supported the experience of ASSEFA (Association of Sarva Seva Farms), the organization in India that transformed land donated to the poorest farmers into self-sufficient community farms. For Elena, the ASSEFA model represented tangible proof that Gandhi's principles of social justice, grassroots sharing (Sarvodaya), and harmony with the land could become real development models, alternatives to the destructive logic of conflict.

Elena’s belief in non-violence was also embedded in her commitment to education, in her sustained and life-long research and ongoing reflection on and practice in the preparation of future science teachers and non-formal educators. Her work was not simply conceived in terms of preparing them for their daily roles but above all as a way of promoting a cultural shift from an anthropocentric to an ecocentric vision of education, extending across curricula, modalities of relationships, ways of using language, and consequently moving toward ecocentric living. Learning to act as one species among many, not as the measure of all things. This involves human beings shedding their intraspecific egocentrism and no longer considering themselves as the centre of importance, thereby achieving an interspecific decentrism that enables them to recognize that they have an ecological role to play as one species living together with other species to ensure the conditions, resources and interactions necessary for all life and planetary health.

These were the kinds of lessons to which Elena devoted her efforts throughout her career as a scientist, educational researcher, teacher educator and activist in diverse spheres of social life. We remember her personally, for the relationships she was able to foster with each and every one she came into contact with, and collectively, for what her presence offered to the community she belonged to, always demonstrating her keen sensibility through her capacity for hospitality, for testimony, and her advocacy on behalf of the most vulnerable (nature, biodiversity, the marginalized, forgotten issues...). A sensibility and a commitment that, at times – perhaps due to fatigue or a lack of vision — it is easier and quicker for many to overlook.

Her vision was also a challenge to a hegemonic way of seeing the world based on domination, exploitation, hierarchy and technocracy, a claim for the freedom to see it differently and, above all, to live it without necessarily wanting to subjugate, measure, or control it. Echoes of her emancipatory, as well as unitary, teaching are present in all previous issues, as in this current issue of our journal starting from the way that educational spaces – formal, such as pre-primary, primary, secondary and tertiary institutions, non-formal, such as families, organizations and associations, and informal, such as friendships, literature sources and digital platforms – intersect. Ideally, these all interact and feed into and out of each other, creating an educational environment in which all agencies and agents play a specific role while achieving various forms of collaboration, cooperation and synergy, thereby promoting learning as a process of building awareness and developing commitment and engagement.

In “Organisations and environmental education. Self-learning pathways for teachers and educators in nature conservation”, Lorenzi and Sangiorgio examine how organisations engaged in nature conservation, along with educational stakeholders – particularly teachers and other educators – can play a vital role in fostering environmental awareness and responsibility. They explore the potential contribution of organisations, ranging from NGOs to public institutions at national and international levels, in supporting self-directed learning pathways for teachers and other educators by investigating the resources available on their websites. They also suggest future directions for strengthening collaboration between organisations and teachers or other educators, in the development of innovative learning materials and educational experiences.

Elena was a firm believer in embedding educational practices in their specific contexts. In “Sustainable development through Transformative Education Framework. A structural equation model”, Shana et al. argue that debates around Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) often presume a shared understanding of “sustainability,” yet the concept remains contested across ecological, social, and ethical dimensions, particularly in relation to its association with development, economic growth, and anthropocentric policy frameworks such as the Sustainable Development Goals. Their study adopts a critical and exploratory stance to examine how schoolteachers in India interpret and internalise sustainability-related values and how these interpretations shape sustainable behaviour within a transformative education framework grounded in the Value–Attitude–Behaviour model.

The importance of contact with nature and the development of nature connectedness as a driver of pro-environmental behaviours was another of Elena’s convictions. In “Young children focus more on pets that on inanimate objects: Experimental evidence for the innate nature of biophilia”, Pinna et al. argue that the human-Nature relationship is a valuable resource through which children can mature, evolve, investigate their subjectivity, and get in touch with their own emotions and subsequently with those of other living beings, ultimately leading them to pay attention to the preservation and protection of ecosystems. Their experimental study with young children operates within Wilson's prediction that biophilia is “our innate tendency to focus on life and life-like forms and, in some cases, to associate emotionally with them”. Given the age of the participants, they propose that this is most likely an innate behaviour that reinforces the idea that biophilia is an evolutionary adaptation.

In her career as university researcher and teacher, Elena was from the outset concerned to underline and promote the role of HEIs as drivers of sustainability in their teaching, learning, research and operational aspects. In “Teaching and acting for sustainability in the Anthropocene. Navigating complexity and tensions through critical and constructive hope”, Pardo Quiles conducts a critical review that examines both the challenges and opportunities of teaching and acting for sustainability within the complex framework of the Anthropocene. Such an approach, with a necessary interdisciplinary focus, can foster critical thinking, empowerment, action, and agency in students. This critical review offers a conceptual framework for rethinking sustainability in the Anthropocene, exploring pathways to develop students’ agency and to promote transformative social and ecological change through action.

In “Development of a Sustainability Disclosure Index model for higher education institutions” Sari et al illustrate the development of a Sustainability Disclosure Index that can be utilized by stakeholders to measure sustainability in Indonesian Higher Education Institutions using legitimacy theory. They propose 115 indicators, including sustainability indicators (economic, environmental and social) as well as scholarly pointers (education, research and community service).

In “Restoration or representation? How culture shapes our visions of nature”, Guarino examines how cultural narratives shape our perception of nature and sustainability, using artificial intelligence as both a mirror and metaphor for collective environmental imagination. He argues that our fascination with “untouched” nature and the ideal of “sustainable development” derive from a nostalgic vision of a pre-industrial paradise that never truly existed. True ecological transition demands more than symbolic acts or technological fixes, and requires restoring respect for natural sciences, long-term ecological understanding, and a cultural reconciliation between representation and reality.

If education is fundamental to promoting understanding, awareness and responsibility within an ecocentric vision of life, it is equally important that this is then translated (trans-latus: carry across/over, take from one place to another) into coherent vision and action. As a journal, we believe that the concept of sustainability remains central to this process and we are committed to participating on the ongoing debate concerning its definition and application. In this respect, all the following articles address significant issues related to global justice and ethical models of engagement that are inclusive of different voices, histories and places within local social-ecological systems.

In “The Spinning Top Model of Sustainability. A systems-theoretic interpretation as dynamic coherence”, Saseendran and Thomas employ Conceptual Framework Analysis to systematically examine 161 sustainability definitions drawn from a multi-source corpus, extracting 712 sustainability-related concepts subsequently synthesized into 30 Integrated Concepts (ICs). Building on the Triadic Negotiation Framework for Sustainability, their study proposes the Spinning Top Model of Sustainability (STMS), which interprets sustainability as dynamic coherence, the emergent property of a self-generating system whose vertical axis (normative orientation), spinning body (material conditions), and contact point (methodological negotiation) interact through recursive feedback to sustain coherent motion against socio-ecological resistance.

In “Towards ecovillages: Insights from environmental ethic in selected countries”, Pertiwi and Koestoer argue that the current multidimensional global crisis encompassing climate-related disasters, food insecurity, and socio-economic inequality, requires sustainable development approaches that are not only macro and top-down in nature but also grounded in environmental ethics and community engagement. Their study employs the lens of environmental ethics to analyse how community practices and ethics within ecovillages could complement government policies that are typically top-down, sectoral, focused on physical aspects, and often less responsive to local needs.

In “Models of agroecology businesses in Northern Tanzania. Strength and challenges co-learnt, and co-developed pathways for transitioning to full Agroecology”, Ayesiga et al. document a participatory action research initiative aimed at supporting the transition of agroecology businesses in Northern Tanzania through agroecological models and tools. Through co-learning and co-creation workshops, business actors, including producers, processors, marketers, and restaurants,  three key tools were developed to assess 18 agroecology businesses, revealing strong alignment with agroecological principles in areas such as inclusivity that incorporates women and the youth, governance, and resilience and an ability to promote sustainable food systems and just land governance.  

In “Energy justice, geospatial conflict and dual pressure: synergy between energy and infrastructure in Ecuador’s protected areas”, Reyes Garcia et al. consider the need for a just energy transition in Ecuador by analysing the territorial conflict between the need for energy development and conservation commitments. Their study identifies a key strategic opportunity in how the rights-of-way of existing linear infrastructure can be transformed from vectors of fragmentation into functional and regulated ecological bonds. They conclude that energy transition strategies must incorporate an ecological co-management framework for the restructuring of multimodal corridors, thereby ensuring a more just transition and reinforcing landscape connectivity in the face of extractive pressure.

In “Urban health as a diagnostic lens for sustainability. Exposing policy myopia through Himalayan urbanisation”, Chaudhary and Shree argue that, while contemporary sustainability discussions revolve around the notions of resilience, liveability, social cohesion and green infrastructure, urban health is often treated as secondary concern rather than an intrinsic indicator of socio-ecological well-being. This policy myopia not only undermines the stated objectives of sustainable urbanism but also results in health vulnerabilities. Their research considers urban health as a critical diagnostic lens through which the adequacy of sustainability frameworks can be evaluated, and they conclude by outlining a health-centred, context-responsive planning outlook that repositions urban health as an organising principle for sustainable urbanism, rather than an auxiliary policy objective.

In “Ayn Rand and Kingfisher on zero-carbon bombs and a sustainable future”, Minh-Hoang Nguyen imagines a fictional imagines a fictional dialogue between Ayn Rand and Kingfisher, a philosopher-bird, centring on Rand’s key assumptions of Objectivism in the context of climate change, biodiversity loss, and environmental crises. This narrative vision reveals the epistemic limitations of Objectivism in addressing sustainability challenges and ecological crises and warns that, if order-induced blindness toward technologies and innovations persists and intensifies combined with an anthropocentric worldview and a heroic morality of “saving the world” - humanity may face a profound systemic absurdity. A worldview that elevates the “creative mind” as the ultimate driver of progress may ultimately erode human agency, leading to a stage where advancement, decision-making, and innovation are increasingly governed by artificial intelligence (AI). In such a scenario, even decisions such as the deployment of nuclear weapons - could be delegated to AI’s “wisdom.”

The paradigm shift involved in moving from anthropocentrism to ecocentrism was at the heart of Elena’s vision for sustainability. As she insisted, it is a shift that cannot happen through theory alone, but must be lived, practiced and taught. The freedom to see the world differently, not as a retreat from engagement, but rather as its very condition, to resist the coercion of dominant worldviews, and to believe that a different way of living is possible. As a journal we intend to maintain our commitment to that vision and our role in facilitating a dialogue between diverse communities, across disciplines and embedded in social-ecological systems in multiple geographical contexts. In this, as in so much else, we follow her example.