Developing Environmental Sustainability through Student Engagement

A Case Study of Val de Loire Universities

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-760-6_6How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Environmental Sustainability; Student Engagement; French Universities

Abstract

Advancing environmental sustainability in higher education requires not only institutional commitment but also the development of key competences among students. Within this perspective, the European Commission’s GreenComp framework provides a shared reference for sustainability learning, defining twelve competences across four areas of action. This study focuses on three of these (political agency, collective action, and individual initiative), examining how they are reflected in the strategies and practices of five French universities in the Val de Loire region. More precisely, it investigates to what extent institutional and student-led approaches within higher education contribute to the development of these competences. The findings reveal that while universities increasingly recognise their role in promoting sustainability, institutional support often remains limited by financial and human resource constraints. Student associations, despite their small number and fragile continuity, serve as important actors in cultivating engagement, collaboration, and ecological awareness within the university community. However, their participation rarely extends to decision-making processes, thereby limiting the development of political agency. Overall, the study highlights that fostering sustainability competences in higher education depends on stronger institutional backing and closer integration between institutional policies and student-led initiatives.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Camille Tulasne
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/08/23
TI  - Developing Environmental Sustainability through Student Engagement
BT  - Proceedings of the Conference of Growing up the Future: Education for Sustainability (GROUFES 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 57
EP  - 72
SN  - 2667-128X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-760-6_6
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-760-6_6
ID  - Tulasne2026
ER  -