In this brief summary, we first clarify the concept of 'Planetary Citizenship', the kind of citizenship required by a sustainable society. Following, the 2030 Agenda is presented, showing how it is aimed at achieving sustainability. Finally, the educational challenge of training this type of citizenship, so urgent in the current socio-ecological framework, is presented.
In the Planetary Citizenship lies an anthropological approach that considers the human being ecodependent and a member of a community of life, and demands an ethic of responsibility and care. The concept is part of the pedagogical movement of Ecopedagogy and the initiative of the Earth Charter. Its axes are: Human Rights, democracy and participation, equity, the protection of minorities and the peaceful resolution of conflicts. Using as reference coordinates the tripod: Person-Society-Nature, while placing its focus on the ecological footprint and the social footprint, in consideration of a 'glocal ' perspective.
Regarding the 2030 Agenda (Sustainable Development Goals, SDG), it includes the strategic priorities of the United Nations for the 2016-2030 period. It has its background in the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) (2000-2015), which are closely linked to the improvement of the developing countries and, therefore, to North-South cooperation. With the approval of the SDGs there is a paradigm shift: the urgency of planetary sustainability becomes explicit, a new indicator appears to be taken into account for the evaluation of achievements, such as the socio-ecological footprint, and a Systemic goal: all objectives are interrelated. With this, all countries are concerned, in one way or another, by the challenge posed by the SDGs, 17 goals to be met, integrated by 169 targets.
This agenda includes, as one of its great innovations, a fundamental transversal axis such as education. In addition to the continuous references throughout the text, Goal number 4, with its corresponding targets, expressly establishes it. The target 4.7 claims that, through quality education, it is necessary to ensure that people acquire the necessary knowledge to promote sustainable development, training, among others subjects, on human rights, sustainable lifestyles, gender equality or promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence (UN, 2015). In short, the educating of a (planetary) citizenship capable of exercising their competences with a strong sense of responsibility with present and future generations.
UNESCO affirms that in order to achieve this global, Planetary Citizenship, education has to train in people a series of transversal key competences for sustainability that are relevant to all the SDGs.
These competences demanded by UNESCO are those that where proposed in 2014 (Rio + 20 framework): critical and systemic thinking, collaborative decision-making and taking responsibility for present and future generations; and were formerly reformulated in 2017 among new proposals: Systems thinking competency; Anticipatory competency; Normative competency; Strategic competency; Collaboration competency; Critical thinking competency; Self-awareness competency and Integrated problem-solving competency.
Among all of them, the most characteristic, the most essential in the gaze of Planetary Citizenship is the sense of responsibility. It is the focus, the magnifying glass, through which we will be able to exercise this critical analysis, that systemic reflection or decision-making ...
And responsibility understood in four aspects:
- Synchronous: of those who live in the present time.
- Diachronic: of those who will live in the future.
- Universal: towards living beings, non-living beings and the whole planet.
- And differentiated: which gives us the nuance that each person is responsible in a certain degree, depending on their position, their knowledge, their means, their ability to influence others ...
