Reimagining Our Future: Environment, Education, and the Ethics of Coexistence

Every World Environment Day, we are reminded - almost ritually - of the fading green, the choking skies, and the plastic in our seas. But mere remembrance is no longer enough. What we need is rethinking, relearning, and reforming - not just how we treat nature, but how we educate ourselves and our future generations to live with it, not just off it.

The crisis is no longer ecological alone. It is pedagogical, generational, and moral.

Beyond the ‘Green Talk’: Education as Environmental Action

When we talk of the environment, education often plays a supporting role in the narrative. But in truth, education must be the lead actor. Not just as a medium of information, but as a force of transformation. It must help cultivate ecological sensitivity, instill indigenous wisdom, and awaken responsibility in young minds. Environmental consciousness should not be confined to a textbook chapter; it must become a lived curriculum.

At Shobhit University, especially in our rural campuses, we have witnessed how environmental literacy - when rooted in the lived realities of students - becomes more than awareness. It becomes agency. Students learning in the shadow of sugarcane fields and neem groves are not just reading about sustainability - they are embodying it.

Circular Economy: Learning to Complete the Circle

In a world addicted to linear growth, the principle of a circular economy offers a whisper of sanity. Here, nothing is wasted - everything is repurposed, revived, or returned to the soil. This philosophy aligns deeply with Indian civilizational thought, which never viewed consumption as conquest but as a cycle of co-existence.

Our education system must re-align with this principle. We must teach design thinking that includes dismantling. We must inspire innovation that regenerates. Our laboratories must not only create - but recreate. And in doing so, education can become the cradle of a circular civilization.

Youth: Inheritors of a Wounded World

The youth today are not just tomorrow’s citizens - they are today’s victims of yesterday’s mistakes. They inherit a climate of crisis, oceans in distress, and forests reduced to ash and numbers. Yet, within them lies the fire of rebellion and the seed of renewal.

But they need more than slogans - they need skills. Not just technical, but ethical. Not only employability, but ecological literacy. They must be equipped to ask the inconvenient questions and to build the inconvenient solutions.

If we fail to provide them this scaffold of consciousness, we are not just failing education - we are failing the planet.

The Power of Rural Institutions

Too often, we look to metropolitan institutions as epicenters of change. But real, sustainable change often germinates far from glass towers - in the humble classrooms of rural India.

Universities like ours, located in Gangoh and other semi-urban landscapes, are more than academic hubs. They are environmental frontlines. Our students walk to class through farms, not malls. They see soil erosion, not just climate charts. They understand scarcity not from lectures, but from lived experience.

By empowering such students - the sons and daughters of the soil - we cultivate not only professionals, but protectors of the earth. These rural institutions, when aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), can become India’s real contribution to the global environmental movement.

A Civilization in Reflection

India has never viewed nature as a resource - but as Ritambhara, the rhythmic, truthful force of existence. Rivers were mothers. Trees were teachers. The earth was sacred. Today, as glaciers retreat and deserts advance, perhaps it is time to remember not just our past rituals - but their underlying philosophies.

Education, in this new age, must serve as both mirror and map - reflecting the consequences of our choices and guiding us to better ones. It must transcend degrees and job-readiness to become a sacred dialogue between the self, the society, and the soil.

On this World Environment Day, let us go beyond green hashtags and embrace green dharma. Let us treat education not as an industry of degrees, but as a garden of ideas - where the mind is trained to think, and the soul is taught to care.

After all, the most fertile ground we must now reclaim… is consciousness!

By: Kunwar Shekhar Vijendra: Co-founder & Chancellor, Shobhit University | Chairman, ASSOCHAM National Education Council | Mentor CEGR | Philanthropist | Agriculturist | Policy Influencer | Public Speaker | Gandhian | Seeker