The CNL project has therefore developed innovative teaching/learning materials that address sustainability, diversity, and digitalisation in a way that is appropriate for the target group, take the SDGs into account, and teach CultureNature Literacy (CNL) as an Anthropocene competence. Anthropocene competence, defined as the ability to address the uncertainties of climate change in a fact-based and future-oriented manner, should be accessible to all people in line with SDG 4 so that they can participate in the future-oriented redesign of human-nature relationships. To this end, the CNL project partners have established cultural sustainability as an educational concept for social transformation in line with Agenda 2030, which aims to protect and secure living conditions in the Anthropocene. The CNL concept is theoretically grounded in the collaboration between the CNL project partners and translated into next-practice examples for educational practice in schools and universities.
Studies show that students want schools to focus more on the climate crisis so that they can learn to deal with their worries and fears about an uncertain future. Teachers and teacher trainers need fact-based, encouraging teaching/learning materials that promote cultural sustainability to counter fears about the future and climate concerns. As a scientific and cultural concept, the Anthropocene (the “age of humankind”) provides an inspiring framework for interdisciplinary, fact-based discussion of climate and environmental issues. Narratives and visualisations offer a creative approach to these facts. They make complex material cycles and the interactions between humans and nature, culture and technology understandable. Language, literature, and art enable creative, cognitive, emotional, and aesthetic approaches to factual knowledge and therefore play an important role in science communication. Understanding human-nature relationships in the Anthropocene is an important prerequisite for jointly redesigning them in a sustainable way for the future and for everyone.