Facing the recently outlined challenges we should be exploring innovative ways to conceptualize multidisciplinary environmental education in the international context. One such perspective views the environmental arena not as a profession implying a standard set of skills and knowledge, but as a practice, focusing on ‘mind-set’ of environmental practitioners, the way they should think about environmental problems.

It is not helpful to perceive environmental studies as a single discipline with its own conceptual and theoretical foundations supported by empirical facts or as a set of ‘practical’ approaches: codes, standards, principles, rules, tools and methods. Such ‘shortcuts’ are better called impractical because they rarely work in practice. They often trivialize and simplify serious and complex challenges and refer to simplistic solutions, such as ‘strategic planning’ which were tried on a massive scale during the last century and had created precisely those environmental challenges which they are now somehow supposed to solve. This occurs, in part, because the environment is a very broad area so that all common approaches are bound to be simplistic and universal. At the same time, concrete environmental challenges are always complex and specific, not amenable to simple, generic techniques.

In other words, a technique is ‘something that can be used instead of a brain’, and we should focus not on ‘techniques’ but rather on teaching students how to use their brains. We need to teach how to think about environmental problems.

I believe that environmental professionals need to be able to set their minds in particular ways. They need various mind-sets which are:

1. Earthly
2. Analytical
3. Careful
4. Collaborative and
5. Action

A mindset is a way to think about sustainability challenges. It is not a certain fixed position, principle, value or a method. Fixed principles or mindless techniques have little to do with mindsets because they require little thinking. In order to think you usually need a problem, a dilemma, a set of choices to make, so each mindset is associated with such ambiguities. At the same time particular mindsets may be associated with particular values or approaches

The first mindset is called Earthly referring to both ‘the Earth’ – the planet - and ‘earth’, the stuff of everyday’s existence. At the centre of this mindset are tensions between the environment and development at both the global and local levels. The global environmental and development concerns define one side of the Earthly mindset. These are now penetrating the agendas of nations, communities and organizations that have their own environmental and developmental problems. The speeding convergence of global and local issues is a result of the increasing interconnectedness between ideas, people and artefacts in the contemporary world, sometimes referred to as a glocalization or ‘the flat world’. But though the boundary between the global and the local is shifting, they often remain in conflict or tension with each other. The ability to solve specific and local problems requires experience and deep familiarity with their context. This is the other side of the earthly mindset, spelled with a small ‘e’, reflecting practicality, sophistication and experience. It focuses on resolving local contradictions between the environment and development as well as ensuring synergy, not conflict, between the global and the local agendas.

The other four mindsets indicate ways in which such dilemmas can be thought about and acted upon. The Analytic mindset focuses on the complexity of the environment, beyond the immediately visible and the intuitively obvious. It identifies separate simple elements of the environment and relationships between them, allows quantifying, modeling, forecasting, and explaining. It forces to calculate one or two steps ahead and to examine the environmental effects of our past, present of future activities. It also provides a universal and authoritative language of communication.

The limitation of the Analytic mindset is that it cannot adequately deal with truly complex system. So when faced with enormous complexities of sustainability challenges analysts often ask for more information, more details, more studies whereas the problems lie there unsolved. Or else they may simply brush complexities aside by entertaining an illusion of a fully understandable world which can be analytically predicted and even managed or controlled. The first approach may result in inaction, ‘paralysis by analysis’, the second one – in an attempt to technocratically control complex systems, which is at best ineffective and at worst – damaging.

To deal with complexity we need another mindset which I call ‘Careful’. This mindset is framed by appreciation of our constraints in explaining and controlling complex systems, such as climate. It respects the ability of such systems to have irreplaceable functions or emergent properties which cannot be predicted, modelled or substituted. It stresses protecting such ability: through minimizing disruption which we cause to natural and social systems, especially their vulnerable elements such as endangered species, disappearing ecosystems or indigenous people. In addition to ‘respecting’ and celebrating complexity the Careful mindset focuses on approaches to ‘harness’ it or to ‘dance with systems’ using Donella Meadows’ terminology.

To deal with people as well as with ‘systems’ environmental professionals need the Collaborative mindset. It focuses on securing cooperation which is absolutely necessary for solving sustainability challenges. In order to do so it seeks to ‘translate’ different interests and foster networks so that can they can best serve sustainable development. But it also focuses on transforming those attitudes and perspectives which are obstacles to collaboration for sustainability. Creating pre-conditions for such transformation is often associated with building capacity of communities, citizens, organizations, which is also part of the Collaborative mindset.

The last, Action, mindset focuses on ‘action’, weaving together all the mindsets. The Action mindset both conceives action and reflects upon in a constant attempt to manage both change and continuity required for sustainable development.

I illustrate the five mindset by a table and a diagram: