Sustainable Living, Ecological Literacy, and the Breath

of Life
Fritjof Capra, Center for Ecoliteracy, United States

Abstract
This paper discusses the conceptual foundations for “Education for
Sustainable Patterns of Living,” the mission of the Center for Ecoliteracy in
California. It offers an operational definition of ecological sustainability, and
proposes study of living systems as a framework for understanding ecology.
It considers key concepts for understanding living systems and their impli-
cations for educators. The paper addresses experiences that foster emotion-
al connections with nature within a pedagogy for education for sustainable
living. This paper is paired with Michael Stone’s paper in this issue,
“Rethinking School Lunch,” which discusses practical applications of this
conceptual grounding.

Résumé
Cet article examine les bases conceptuelles de la mission du Center for
Ecoliteracy de Californie, « Éducation en vue d’un mode de vie durable ». Il
suggère une définition opérationnelle de la durabilité écologique et propose
une analyse des modes de vie à titre de plans-cadres pour comprendre l’é-
cologie. Il se penche sur des concepts clés pour comprendre les modes de vie
et leurs conséquences pour les éducateurs. L’article aborde des expériences
qui stimulent les relations émotionnelles avec la nature à l’intérieur d’une
pédagogie d’éducation visant un mode de vie durable. Cet article s’inscrit
dans le sens de celui de Michael Stone dans ce numéro, « Rethinking School
Lunch », lequel débat des applications pratiques de ces assises conceptuelles.

Keywords: ecological systems; sustainability; emergence; metabolism

One of the great challenges facing environmental educators is preparing

students to participate effectively as members of sustainable communities in
an ecologically healthy world. Since 1995, my colleagues and I at the Center
for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley have sought to develop and explore concepts and
practices for cultivating in children the competencies of mind, hands, and heart
that they will need to create sustainable communities. “Education for Sustainable
Patterns of Living,” our name for this process, is intended to facilitate
understanding of nature’s principles, while fostering a deep respect for living nature
through an experiential, participatory, and multidisciplinary approach.
This essay addresses the conceptual grounding of our work. The essay
by Michael Stone in this issue, “Rethinking School Lunch: Education for
Sustainability in Practice” explores the practical application of these concepts.

Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 12, 2007 9

 We are sometimes asked, why such complexity? Why not just teach
ecology? An examination of the theoretical foundations of our approach will
show that its complexities and subtleties are inherent in a full understanding
of ecology and sustainability, and of life itself.
In recent years, the term “sustainable” has been used so frequently, and
often so imprecisely, that the concept has become confusing or empty to
many, more a rhetorical refrain than a source of practical guidance. The def-
inition that we encounter most often was given by Lester Brown, the founder
of the Worldwatch Institute, who wrote in the early 1980s that a sustainable
society is one that can fulfill its needs without diminishing the chances of
future generations. That was taken up by the 1987 United Nations report, the
so-called Brundtland Report, which defined sustainable development as
development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the
ability of future generations to meet their own needs. These are important
moral exhortations, in spite of evident limitations (speaking only of human
needs, for example, without reference to the natural world). They do remind
us of our responsibility to pass on to our children and grandchildren a world
with as many opportunities as we inherited, but they do not tell us anything
about how to actually build a sustainable society.
We need an operational definition of ecological sustainability. A key to
such a definition is the realization that we do not need to invent sustainable
human communities from scratch. First, we can learn from comparing the
practices of societies that have sustained themselves for centuries on a lim-
ited resource base with those that have not managed to do so. At the Center
for Ecoliteracy, we have been profoundly influenced by the work of Okanagan
wisdom keeper Jeannette Armstrong from the En’owkin Centre in British
Columbia (for more, see her essay “Let Us Begin with Courage,” on the
Center for Ecoliteracy website: www.ecoliteracy.org).
Second, we can model human communities after nature’s ecosystems,
which are sustainable communities of plants, animals, and microorgan-
isms. The outstanding characteristic of the biosphere is its inherent ability to
sustain life. To be sustainable, a human community must be designed so that
its ways of life, technologies, and social institutions honour, support, and co-
operate with nature’s ability to sustain life.
This definition of sustainability implies that in order to build sustainable
communities, we must understand the principles of organization that have
evolved in ecosystems over billions of years. This understanding is what we
call “ecological literacy.” In the coming decades, the survival of humanity will
depend on our ability to understand the basic principles of ecology and to live
accordingly.
The most useful framework for understanding ecology today is the theory
of living systems, which is still emerging and whose roots include organismic
biology, gestalt psychology, general systems theory, and complexity theory (or
nonlinear dynamics). Of particular importance in my application of this

10 Fritjof Capra
thinking, which is explicated in my book The Web of Life (1996), are autopoesis,
as defined by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela (1980) as the pattern
of the organization of living systems; dissipative structure, as defined by
Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers (1984) as the structure of living systems;
and cognition, as defined originally by Gregory Bateson (1979) and more fully
by Maturana and Varela (1980) as the process of life.
When we walk out into nature, living systems are what we see. First, every
living organism, from the smallest bacterium to all the varieties of plants and
animals (including humans), is a living system. Next, the parts of living
systems are themselves living systems. A leaf is a living system. Every cell in
our bodies is a living system. Finally, communities of organisms, including
both ecosystems and human social systems such as families, schools, and
other human communities, are living systems.
Thinking in terms of complex systems is now at the very forefront of
science. It is also, of course, very like the ancient thinking that enabled
traditional peoples to sustain themselves for millennia. But although the
modern version of this tradition is almost a hundred years old, it has still not
taken hold in our mainstream culture.
I’ve concluded that there are two main reasons that people find systems
thinking so difficult. One is that living systems are nonlinear—they are net-
works—while our scientific tradition is based on linear thinking, chains of
cause and effect. In linear thinking, when something works, more of the same
will be better. This has important consequences as we seek to develop sus-
tainable cultures. For instance, we often assume that a “healthy” economy will
show strong, indefinite economic growth, but we live in a world that cannot
sustain indefinite expansion of our resource use. Successful living systems,
on the other hand, are highly nonlinear. They don’t maximize their variables;
they optimize them. When something is good, more of the same will not nec-
essarily be better, because things go in cycles, not along straight lines.
Quality, not quantity, matters.
The second reason we find systems thinking difficult is that we live in a
culture that is materialist in both its values and its fundamental worldview.
For example, consider the fundamental question, what is life? What is the
difference between a rock and a plant, animal, or microorganism? Many
biologists will tell you that the essence of life lies in the macromolecules—
the DNA, proteins, enzymes, and other material structures in living cells. In
fact, this is sometimes narrowed to the definition that a living system is a
chemical system that contains DNA.
This sounds quite simple, but the problem is that when an organism dies,
its DNA does not disappear. Dead organisms, too, contain DNA. So at the very
least, we would have to modify the definition to say, “A living system is a
chemical system that contains DNA, and which is not dead.” This, of course,
is just a tautology. The point here is that, to understand the nature of life, it
is not enough to understand material DNA, proteins, and the other molecular

Sustainable Living, Ecological Literacy, and the Breath of Life 11

 structures that are the building blocks of living organisms. The difference
between a living organism and a dead organism lies in the patterns and
processes through which these structures interact.

Shifts in Emphasis

Because living systems are nonlinear and rooted in patterns of relation-

ships, understanding the principles of ecology requires a new way of seeing
the world and of thinking—in terms of relationships, connectedness, and
context—that goes against the grain of traditional Western science and edu-
cation. Such “contextual” or “systemic” thinking involves several shifts of per-
ception. These shifts are never absolute; they are, rather, shifts in emphasis,
more like movement along an axis than either/or leaps. In our work with
schools we have repeatedly observed several shifts that have important
implications for pedagogy. Among them are the following:
From the parts to the whole. Living systems are integrated wholes whose
properties cannot be reduced to those of their smaller parts. Their “systemic”
properties are properties of the whole that none of the parts has.
Pedagogically, one corresponding shift is to an emphasis on integrated cur-
ricula, rather than isolated single subjects.
From objects to relationships. An ecosystem is not just a collection of
species, but is a community. Communities, whether ecosystems or human sys-
tems, are characterized by sets, or networks, of relationships. A school that is
organized around this principle is more likely to put a premium on relation-
ship-based processes such as co-operation and decision-making by consensus.
From objective knowledge to contextual knowledge. The shift of focus
from the parts to the whole implies a shift from analytical thinking to con-
textual thinking. The properties of the parts are not intrinsic, but can be under-
stood only within the context of the whole. Since explaining things in terms
of their contexts means explaining them in terms of their environments, all
systems thinking is environmental thinking.
From quantity to quality. Western science has always maintained that only
the things that can be measured and quantified can be expressed in scien-
tific models. It’s often been implied that phenomena that can be measured
and quantified are more important—and maybe even that what cannot be
measured and quantified doesn’t exist at all. If we want to educate using this
principle, we are challenged to design evaluation processes more adequate
than the standardized testing that is becoming the norm in so many places.
From structure to process. Systems develop and evolve. Thus, the
understanding of living structures is inextricably linked to understanding
renewal, change, and transformation. This shift is embodied in project-
based learning, which emphasizes the application of knowledge within
evolving real-life contexts.

12 Fritjof Capra
 From contents to patterns. When we draw maps of relationships, we dis-
cover certain configurations of relationships that appear again and again. We
call these configurations patterns. Instead of focusing on what a living sys-
tem is made of, we study its patterns. Pedagogically, the shift reminds us of
the importance of integrating art into programs of study. There’s hardly
anything more effective than art for developing and refining a child’s natu-
ral ability to recognize and express patterns, whether we talk about literature
and poetry, the visual arts, music, or the performing arts.

The Breath of Life

By applying systems thinking to the multiple relationships interlinking the

members of the Earth household, we can identify core concepts that describe
the patterns and processes by which nature sustains life. These concepts, the foun-
dation for creating sustainable communities, may be called principles of ecol-
ogy, principles of sustainability, principles of community, or even the basic facts
of life. We need curricula that teach our children these fundamental facts of life.
As noted above, the difference between a living organism and a dead
organism lies in the basic process of life—in what sages and poets through-
out the ages have called the “breath of life.” In modern scientific language,
this process is called “metabolism.” It is the ceaseless flow of energy and mat-
ter through a network of chemical reactions that enables a living organism
to continually generate, repair, and perpetuate itself.
Understanding metabolism, the breath of life, includes two basic aspects.
One is the continual flow of energy and the cycling of matter. All living sys-
tems need energy and food to sustain themselves, and all living systems pro-
duce waste. But life has evolved in such a way that organisms form com-
munities—the ecosystems—in which the waste of one species is food for the
next, so that matter cycles continually through the ecosystem. The second
aspect of metabolism is the network of chemical reactions that processes the
food and forms the biochemical basis of all biological structures, functions,
and behaviour. The emphasis here is on “network.”
These aspects of metabolism bring us back to our operational definition
of a sustainable community as one whose institutions and practices co-
operate with the processes by which nature sustains life. These have been
identified by scientists after observing hundreds of ecosystems. We have
developed a short list of those that are of particular importance to sustaining
life, and we continue to modify and refine it in response to feedback as we
endeavor to communicate it to educators. These closely related concepts are
different aspects of a single pattern of organization: nature sustains life by
creating and nurturing communities. Our present formulation includes the
following: networks, nested systems, interdependence, diversity, cycles, flows,
development, and dynamic balance.

Sustainable Living, Ecological Literacy, and the Breath of Life 13

 Networks
One of the most important insights of the systemic understanding of life is
the recognition that networks are the basic pattern of organization of all living
systems.
Metabolism is a network of chemical reactions. Ecosystems can be
understood in terms of food webs (networks of organisms); organisms are net-
works of cells, organs, and organ systems; and cells are networks of molecules.
Wherever we see life, we see networks. Sustainability is not an individual prop-
erty but a property of an entire network.
At the Center for Ecoliteracy, we have learned that solving problems in
an enduring way requires bringing the people addressing parts of the prob-
lem together in networks of support and conversation. Each part of the net-
work makes its own contribution to the project, the efforts of each are
enhanced by the work of all, and the network has the resilience to keep the
project alive, even when individual members leave or move on.

Nested Systems
At all scales of nature, we find living systems nesting within other living sys-
tems—networks within networks. Although the same basic principles of
organization operate at each scale, the different systems represent levels of
differing complexity.
Within social systems such as schools, the individual child’s learning expe-
riences are shaped by what happens in the classroom, which is nested with-
in the school, which is embedded in the school district, and then in the sur-
rounding education systems, ecosystems, and political systems. At each level
phenomena exhibit properties that do not exist at lower levels. Choosing strate-
gies to affect those systems requires simultaneously addressing the multiple
levels and recognizing which strategies are appropriate for different levels.

Interdependence
Nature sustains life by creating and nurturing communities. No individual
organism can exist in isolation. Animals depend on the photosynthesis of
plants for their energy needs; plants depend on the carbon dioxide produced
by animals and on the nitrogen fixed by bacteria at their roots. Together,
plants, animals, and microorganisms regulate the entire biosphere and
maintain the conditions conducive to life.
Sustainability always involves a whole community. This is one of the pro-
found lessons we need to learn from nature. The exchanges of energy and
resources in an ecosystem are sustained by pervasive co-operation. Life
did not take over the planet by combat, but by co-operation, partnership, and
networking. Community is essential for understanding sustainability, and it
is also essential for teaching ecology in the multidisciplinary way that it

14 Fritjof Capra
requires. The conceptual relationships among the various disciplines can be
made explicit only if there are corresponding human relationships among the
teachers and administrators.

Diversity
The role of diversity is closely connected with systems’ network structures.
A diverse ecosystem will be resilient, because it contains many species
with overlapping ecological functions that can partially replace one another.
When a particular species is destroyed by a severe disturbance so that a link
in the network is broken, a diverse community will be able to survive and reor-
ganize itself, because other links can at least partially fulfill the function of the
destroyed species. The more complex the network’s patterns of intercon-
nections are, the more resilient it will be.
On the other hand, in communities lacking diversity, such as monocrop
agriculture devoted to a single species of corn or wheat, a pest to which that
species is vulnerable can threaten the entire ecosystem. In human commu-
nities, ethnic and cultural diversity may play the same role as does biodiversity
in an ecosystem. At the Center for Ecoliteracy, we have learned that there is
no “one-size-fits-all” sustainability curriculum. We encourage and support mul-
tiple approaches to any issue, with people in different places adapting the
teaching of principles of ecology to differing and changing situations.

Cycles
Matter cycles continually through the web of life. Water, the oxygen in the air,
and all the nutrients are constantly recycled. Mutual dependence is much more
existential in ecosystems than in social systems, because the members of an
ecosystem actually eat one another. Because one species’ waste becomes
another species’ food, a healthy ecosystem generates no waste.
The lesson for human communities is obvious. A conflict between eco-
nomics and ecology arises because nature is cyclical, while industrial process-
es are linear. Businesses transform resources into products plus waste, and
sell the products to consumers, who discard more waste after consuming the
products. The ecological principle “waste equals food” means that—if an
industrial system is to be sustainable—all manufactured products and mate-
rials, as well as the wastes generated in the manufacturing processes, must
eventually provide nourishment for something new.

Flows
All living systems, from organisms through ecosystems, are open systems.
Solar energy, transformed into chemical energy by the photosynthesis of green
plants, drives most ecological cycles, but energy itself does not cycle. As it is

Sustainable Living, Ecological Literacy, and the Breath of Life 15

 converted from one form of energy to another, some of it inevitably flows out
and is dispersed as heat. We are therefore dependent on a constant inflow
of energy.
A sustainable society would use only as much energy as it could capture
from the sun: reducing its energy demands, using energy more efficiently, and
capturing the flow of solar energy more effectively through solar heating,
photovoltaic electricity, wind, hydropower, biomass, and so on—the only forms
of energy that are renewable, efficient, and environmentally benign.

Development
All living systems develop, and all development invokes learning. During its
development, an ecosystem passes through a series of successive stages, from
a rapidly growing, changing, and expanding pioneer community to slower eco-
logical cycles and a more stable, fully exploited ecosystem. Each stage in this
ecological succession represents a distinctive community in its own right.
In an ecosystem, evolution is not limited to the gradual adaptation of
organisms to their environment, because the environment is itself a network
of living organisms capable of adaptation and creativity. Individuals and envi-
ronment adapt to one another—they coevolve in an ongoing dance. Because
development and coevolution are nonlinear, we can never fully predict or con-
trol how the processes that we start will turn out. Small changes can have pro-
found effects. Nonlinear processes can lead to unanticipated disasters, as
occurred with DDT and the development of “superorganisms” resistant to
antibiotics, and as some scientists fear could happen with genetic modification
of organisms. A sustainable society will exercise caution about committing
itself to practices with unknown outcomes.

Dynamic Balance and Emergence

All ecological cycles act as feedback loops, so that the ecological communi-
ty continually regulates and organizes itself. When one link in an ecological
cycle is disturbed, the entire cycle brings the situation back into balance. Since
environmental changes and disturbances happen all the time, ecological cycles
continually fluctuate. During the last 20 years, the dynamics of metabolism
have been studied in great detail and have led to a very important discovery.
Living systems generally remain in a stable state, even though energy and mat-
ter flow through them and their structures are continually changing. But every
now and then such an “open system” will encounter a point of instability
where there is either a breakdown or, more frequently, a spontaneous emer-
gence of new forms of order.
This spontaneous emergence of order at critical points of instability, often
referred to simply as “emergence,” is one of the hallmarks of life. It has been
recognized as the dynamic origin of development, learning, and evolution.

16 Fritjof Capra
In other words, creativity—the generation of new forms—is a key property
of all living systems, and more specifically of their metabolism, the basic
process of life. Whether instability leads to the emergence of creativity or to
collapse often depends on the system’s flexibility. Lack of flexibility manifests
itself as stress. Temporary stress is essential to life, but prolonged stress is
harmful and destructive to the system. These considerations lead to the impor-
tant realization that managing a social system—a company, a city, a school
district, or an economy—means finding the optimal values for the system’s
variables. Trying to maximize any single variable instead of optimizing it will
invariably lead to the destruction of the system as a whole.

A Sense of Wonder

When we teach these principles in our schools, it is important to us that the

children not only understand ecology, but also experience it in nature—in a
school garden, on a beach, or in a riverbed. Otherwise, they could leave school
and be first-rate theoretical ecologists, but care very little about nature,
about the Earth.
Pedagogy oriented toward connecting actions with full appreciation of
nature’s processes—the breath of life—is therefore more than just a matter
of teaching about biology and chemistry. The Latin spiritus, breath, is also the
root of “spiritual.” In the schools and programs that the Center for Ecoliteracy
supports, we want to create possibilities for developing abiding relationships
with the natural world.
David W. Orr, chair of the Department of Environmental Studies at
Oberlin College and a member of the Center for Ecoliteracy board of trustees,
describes this process in “A Sense of Wonder,” an essay that may be found
on the Center for Ecoliteracy website:

We all have an affinity for the natural world, what Harvard biologist Edward O.
Wilson calls, “biophilia.” This tug toward life is strongest at an early age when we
are most alert and impressionable. Before their minds have been marinated in
the culture of television, consumerism, shopping malls, computers, and freeways,
children can find the magic in trees, water, animals, landscapes, and their own
places. Properly cultivated and validated by caring and knowledgeable adults, fas-
cination with nature can mature into ecological literacy and eventually into
more purposeful lives. (Orr, 2000, p. 19)

These affinities develop out of engagement. Experiencing and under-

standing the principles of ecology in a school garden or a creek restoration proj-
ect are examples of what educators sometimes call “project-based learning”—
experiences that engage students in complex real-world projects, reminiscent
of the age-old tradition of apprenticeship. Project-based learning not only pro-
vides students with important experiences—co-operation, mentorship, integration
of various intelligences—but also makes for better learning.

Sustainable Living, Ecological Literacy, and the Breath of Life 17

 In the conventional view of education, students are seen as passive learn-
ers and the curriculum is a set of predetermined, decontextualized infor-
mation. Our pedagogy of education for sustainable living breaks complete-
ly with this convention. Engagement with projects in which their actions have
consequences generates in students a strong motivation and emotional
connection. Instead of presenting predetermined, decontextualized infor-
mation, we encourage critical thinking, questioning, and experimentation.
The pedagogy described here arises from understanding ecology,
sustainability, and the breath of life in all their rich dimensions. Close study
of the principles and processes by which nature sustains life teaches us that
sustainable systems are possible, and that nature is both our model and our
mentor. Through this multifaceted pedagogy we seek to foster in learners an
understanding of nature’s principles, a deep respect for living nature, and long-
lasting relationships with the natural world, out of which they may gain the
passion, knowledge, and ability to design sustainable communities for
themselves, their children, and their children’s children.

Notes on Contributor

Physicist and systems theorist Fritjof Capra has studied the philosophical and
social implications of science for 30 years. His books include The Tao of
Physics, The Turning Point, The Web of Life, and The Hidden Connections. He
teaches at Schumacher College in England and is a co-founder of the Center
for Ecoliteracy. Contact: c/o Center for Ecoliteracy, 2528 San Pablo Avenue,
Berkeley, California, 94702, USA; Email c/o Michael Stone at the Center for
Ecoliteracy: [email protected]

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18 Fritjof Capra