Anthropocentrism and climate change: Discussing the need for radical re-orientation toward degrowth in business education.

This chapter discusses how Education for Sustainable Development Goals (ESDG) emphasizes the implications of climate change, which is an economic- and anthropo-centric view of sustainability issue. This approach sidelines the value of non-human species and biodiversity, foregrounding oxymoronic aims of combating climate change without drastically reducing production, consumption and population. For about a decade, ESDG has been dominating the international sustainable business curriculum (UNESCO 2017; Molina-Motos 2019). The application of ESDG to business education is often associated with the ubiquitous triple Ps of People, Profit, and Planet. The SGDs Agenda focuses more on the first two and not sufficiently on the last (Washington 2021), reinforcing the anthropocentric bias (Adelman 2018; Visseren-Hamakers 2020; Kopnina 2018a, 2020a, 2020b, 2021a, 2021b). In placing ESDG in the context of business education, the focal point of this chapter is: How can business education address a broader range of environmental problems beyond the dominant anthropocentric perspective? There is a need to shift business education toward more progressive solutions. Instead of prioritising the Planet, the SDGs Agenda advocates responses that balance across social, economic, and environmental issues, misleading us on the extent of real changes. Educators need to equip students with critical thinking skills to detect greenwashing.