ABSTRACT
Transforming culture is a vital concept of education for sustainable development (ESD): "learning the values, behavior, and lifestyles required for a sustainable future and for positive societal transformation". This chapter addresses one subset within the ESD umbrella: education for sustainable consumption (ESC). Critical literacy has been highlighted as a central concept in policy documents originating from the UN Decade on Education for Sustainable Development and in the research literature. The chapter explores how education could challenge students to rethink consumption culture and transform deep-rooted structures of society towards ways of living within the capacity of our supporting eco-systems. Systems thinking is well established within the field of ESD and entails a shift in perception from the part to the whole, learning to think in terms of relationships, inter-dependencies, patterns, and context: "Systems thinking is 'contextual', which is the opposite of analytical thinking.
