Language as a Sustainability Competence: A Conceptual Framework for Education for Sustainable Development

Abstract

Sustainable development is a communicative undertaking: negotiating shared goals across cultural, disciplinary, and ideological boundaries requires language, yet Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) frameworks continue to treat language as a vehicle for delivering sustainability content rather than as a sustainability competence in its own right. This conceptual paper addresses that gap by asking how existing ESD competence frameworks conceptualize language and what alternative framework could position language as a sustainability competence. Synthesizing literature from applied linguistics, communication studies, and sustainability education, the paper makes three contributions: it reconceptualizes language as a sustainability competence rather than a delivery mechanism; it integrates ESD with communicative-competence and critical-pedagogy theory; and it proposes the Sustainability Language Competence (SLC) Framework, comprising five interconnected dimensions, critical dialogue, intercultural communication, collaborative communication, participatory communication, and reflective communication. Each dimension is modelled as a conceptual pathway linking communicative practice to sustainable action, and the framework is compared against existing ESD competence models to clarify its novelty. The paper concludes with implications for curriculum design, pedagogy, assessment, and policy, and outlines an agenda for the empirical validation this conceptual work now requires.