Growing through transformation pains: integrating emotional holding and processing into competence frameworks for sustainability transformations

Current frameworks for sustainability competences give insufficient attention to competencies for holding and processing difficult emotions such as ecological grief and eco-anxiety. This is despite emotional distress caused by environmental crises becoming a rapidly growing field of investigation and the ability to cope with such emotions an increasingly apparent need within sustainability research, education, and practice communities. To effectively support the radical sustainability transformations required to avert (or adapt to) socioecological collapse, it is crucial that competences linked to emotional recognition, holding, processing, and integration be included in future frameworks. A synthesis framework of sustainability competences with a proposal for how to incorporate these additional emotional competences is presented, together with emphasis on how developing and implementing practices for cultivating such competences represents a significant growth edge for sustainability programmes, particularly within higher education. • Integrative review of recent frameworks for sustainability competences. • Current frameworks pay insufficient attention to the emotional pains of transformation. • Holding and processing difficult emotions is key for sustainability transformations. • Developing these competences is a vital growth edge for higher education.