Both individual behaviour change and societal change is needed in order to build a sustainable society. Social pedagogy is powerful tool in a shift towards a smart, sustainable and inclusive society because it represents a theory and practice of holistic education. Social pedagogy builds on principles of human rights and social justice. Together, with ecological knowledge it can support planetary orientation including people, animals, plants and abiotic reality.
A transformation view of sustainable development has a strong commitment to social equity. This emphasizes human relationships and the meaningfulness of people´s unique lives including trust, community resilience and participation in the life of society as well as establishment and flourishing of civil rights and personal expression. These things cannot be measured by monetary measures and they have not any kinds of planetary limits. Maximizing of consumption is an unsustainable and never ending way to try to reach a good life and happiness. Even though we work harder and harder, we never seem to reach what would be enough.
The most important and fundamental target for lifelong learning is to expand the domain of human responsibility to cover people and culture, animals and other organisms, plants and life-supporting ecosystems so that we neither destroy ourselves nor the system that supports lifeforms. Eco-social consciousness is a new normal of the responsible citizenship.