When we teach sustainability, we often lead with crisis. Environmental degradation. Biodiversity loss. Resource depletion. The urgency is real, but the emotional toll on learners, especially young people, is mounting. Eco-anxiety is now a recognized psychological condition, and burnout among environmental advocates is epidemic.
My MSc thesis at University College Dublin, completed in partnership with UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), explored an alternative approach: gratitude as a foundational virtue for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and Global Citizenship Education (GCED). Not gratitude as superficial positivity, but as a robust ethical framework that grounds environmental action in appreciation rather than fear.
The Problem with Fear-Based Education
Fear-based messaging can motivate short-term action, but it rarely sustains long-term engagement. Research shows that constant exposure to environmental doom narratives leads to learned helplessness, disengagement, and mental health decline among young people. Over 45% of youth report climate-related distress (Hickman et al. 2021)
Worse, fear-based approaches often fail to connect emotionally with diverse communities, particularly faith-based groups and cultures where relationship with nature is central to identity. When sustainability education feels alienating or guilt-inducing, we lose the very audiences who could be powerful allies.
Why Gratitude?
Gratitude is more than a feeling, it’s a virtue that shapes how we perceive and respond to the world. My research explored gratitude through three core pillars:
Reverence: Seeing creation not as a commodity, but as a gift worthy of care and protection.
Reciprocity: Responding to that gift through responsible stewardship—caring for what we’ve received so we can pass it forward.
Responsibility: Acting not from guilt or obligation, but from love and thankfulness for what we’ve been given.
This framework creates a fundamentally different emotional relationship with sustainability. Instead of acting from guilt, shame, or fear of loss, we act from appreciation, responsibility, and desire to protect what we cherish.
Faith-Informed Perspectives
One unexpected finding in my research was how powerfully gratitude resonates across religious traditions. My thesis is rooted in Christian theology, where gratitude appears throughout Scripture as central to worship and stewardship, but the concept bridges to other faiths as well.
Faith communities represent billions of people worldwide, yet they’re often overlooked in secular sustainability education. A gratitude-based framework speaks to values these communities already hold, making ESD and GCED more inclusive and culturally responsive.
I developed two complementary tools for faith-based contexts: the BLESS Goals (Biblical Leadership for Environment Service and Society) and God’s Sacred Goals, reimagining the SDGs through theological lenses that make sustainability accessible to churches, religious schools, and individuals of faith.
Beyond Toxic Positivity
Some may worry that emphasizing gratitude risks minimizing injustice or promoting toxic positivity. This framework explicitly opposes weaponizing gratitude to silence legitimate protest, and creates space for grief, anger, and lament alongside appreciation.
It’s crucial to distinguish gratitude from toxic positivity. Gratitude doesn’t mean ignoring environmental crises or pretending everything is fine. Instead, it provides emotional resilience to face difficult realities without being paralyzed by them.
Think of healthcare workers who remain committed despite witnessing suffering daily. Many cite gratitude, for the opportunity to serve, for patients’ resilience, for meaning in their work, as what sustains them. The same principle applies to sustainability work.
Gratitude doesn’t replace urgency. It sustains it.
Gratitude in Practice
How might this work in education? My research examined how gratitude-based approaches could enhance key competencies in ESD and GCED:
Systems Thinking: Gratitude helps learners recognize interconnection—how we’re linked to ecosystems, communities, and generations across time.
Anticipatory Thinking: When we feel grateful for what we’ve inherited, we naturally consider what we’ll leave behind.
Normative Competence: Gratitude clarifies values. It helps learners articulate why sustainability matters beyond abstract principles.
Practical applications include:
- Starting lessons with appreciation before discussing problems
- Teaching systems through gifts (farmers, pollinators, soil, rain) before exploring threats
- Framing pro-environmental behaviors as reciprocity rather than sacrifice
- Connecting past and future through intergenerational gratitude
Supporting the SDGs
Gratitude-Based Sustainability (GBS) doesn’t replace global frameworks, it humanizes them. My research focused particularly on how gratitude supports:
- SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-Being): Gratitude reduces eco-anxiety and builds emotional resilience
- SDG 4 (Quality Education): Values-based, emotionally grounded pedagogy that UNESCO calls for
- SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption): Gratitude reduces materialism and encourages contentment
The Path Forward
As we work toward the SDGs, we need education approaches that are emotionally sustainable, culturally inclusive, and motivationally robust. Gratitude offers that foundation.
It doesn’t replace systems thinking, critical thinking, or problem-solving but it provides the emotional and ethical ground from which these competencies grow. When learners feel connected to what they’re protecting, when they act from love rather than fear, their engagement becomes self-sustaining.
Global Citizenship Education aims to cultivate responsible global citizens who care about the planet and each other. Gratitude is the virtue that makes that care enduring.
My hope is that Gratitude-Based Sustainability can help communities, educators, and future generations face our ecological challenges with greater integrity, courage, and hope, moving us from anxiety to appreciation, from obligation to love, and from burnout to joy.
Elizabeth Zion (MSc, First Class Honours) is an environmental education researcher developing Gratitude-Based Sustainability, a framework that addresses eco-anxiety by building emotional resilience in young people. Her work has been endorsed by Dr. Patrick Paul Walsh, Vice President of the UN SDG Academy, who expressed interest in seeing it “adopted globally.” A former member of UNICEF’s Global Youth Advisory Board, Elizabeth is currently developing implementation materials for Irish secondary schools and seeking partnerships with organizations ready to transform how we teach sustainability. Her TED Talk has reached 1.8+ million views, and she is passionate about equipping the next generation for decades-long environmental action.
