Graduate Arran Stibbe has edited The Handbook of Sustainability Literacy: Skills for a Changing World, which was published by Green Books in August 2009. The handbook takes a sharp look at the skills, attributes and competencies that learners will need for surviving and thriving in the 21st century. Critical of some mainstream skills agendas which focus narrowly on skills for industrialisation and economic expansion at all costs, the book instead promotes a more open-ended approach including abilities such as values reflection, ecological intelligence, and critical awareness of the social structures that underpin unsustainable societies.

The resource will be useful for lecturers, teachers and students across all study areas, and authors include leading sustainability educators as well as specialists from a wide range of disciplines from engineering to art - for example, Satish Kumar, John Naish, Stephen Sterling, Greg Garrard, Anne Phillips, Kim Polistina, John Blewitt, Stephan Harding, and Zoe Robinson, along with former CHE Academic Board member Justin Kenrick and graduate Myshele Goldberg.

In addition to a paperback book, a free multimedia resource has been launched with interviews and chapters by more than forty educators, on www.sustainability-literacy.org.

The project was funded by the Higher Education Academy Education for Sustainable Development Project and conducted by the Environmental Association of Universities and Colleges in partnership with the University of Gloucestershire Centre for Active Learning, the University of Brighton and the UNU RCE (Severn). The paperback book is edited by Arran Stibbe from the University of Gloucestershire and the multimedia version by Poppy Villiers-Stuart and Arran Stibbe.

Contact: Arran Stibbe ( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ), University of Gloucestershire, FCH Campus, Swindon Road, Cheltenham GL50 4AZ, UK.

Arran Stibbe (ed) (2009) The Handbook of Sustainability Literacy: skills for a changing world. Dartington: Green Books (£14.95, 224 pages, ISBN 978-1-900322-60-7, www.greenbooks.co.uk)