Ecoliteracy to Achieve Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

All living organisms cannot live in isolation as they are dependent on each other to maintain the conditions that make life worth living. Hence, sustainability involves a whole community and is not an individual property. One should always remember that ‘the whole is more than the sum of its parts’, which means that all the important living systems depend on connections among the system’s components. Thus to support each other and make others live comfortably, each one should know about the environment they live in. In the billions of years of Earth’s evolution, the ecosystems have developed specific standards to sustain life. Understanding this is called as ‘ecoliteracy’. By becoming ecologically literate, one will be able to identify the patterns that help to sustain life and the ways in which these patterns were ignored by the previous generations. This literacy has to be arrived at an early stage by introducing interactive learning programs that allow children to participate in these initiatives. This will also encourage healthy habits and healthy lifestyle. The UN has propounded the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which pave the way for living a peaceful and healthy life. This paper demonstrates how Eco literacy can contribute towards the SDGs and how ecoliteracy could be a blessing for the Mother Earth and what are the challenges in implementing ecoliteracy.