Biodiversity loss and environmental crises are systemic, driven by entrenched inequalities, colonial histories, and governance structures that conventional environmental education (EE) often does not address. EE approaches focused on individual awareness or behaviour change are insufficient for the transformative change that the scale and complexity of these crises demand. This commentary argues that EE must be understood and designed as infrastructure for transformative change: the interconnected social, educational, and relational systems that create the enabling conditions for learning to translate into collective action, beyond individual behaviour.

  Drawing on eight years of experience founding and leading the Global Youth Biodiversity Network Southeast Asia (GYBN SEA), we examine how EE can be designed to support meaningful youth participation in biodiversity governance in a region of acute ecological pressures and hierarchical governance cultures where youth are not accustomed to, and do not always find themselves welcomed as, equal partners in decision-making. We describe an infrastructure of transformative EE built through five interrelated components: capacity building for systems thinking and political agency; interdisciplinary and inclusive learning by design; relational and care-centred pedagogies; institutionalised pathways from learning to action; and parallel engagement of elders and decision-makers to shift institutional receptivity alongside youth capacity.

  Transformative EE is not a matter of better programme design alone, but of constructing the enabling environment in which learning becomes sustained, collective participation in governance. Observable outcomes from GYBN SEA’s operations, including institutional recognition of youth in national biodiversity policy and substantive youth contributions to CBD decisions, reflect the cumulative effects of this approach. The framework offered here contributes to the field by reframing EE’s unit of analysis from individual interventions to enabling conditions, and by identifying the dimensions such an approach must address simultaneously, from learning spaces to the institutions that must be ready to receive youth as genuine partners.

  Environmental education in India has evolved from nature awareness initiatives to a broader socio-ecological framework encompassing climate change, sustainable lifestyles, and responsible citizenship. National policy instruments such as the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, National Curriculum Frameworks, and flagship sustainability missions provide a strong normative foundation for mainstreaming environmental learning across formal and informal education systems. However, despite this progressive policy architecture, access to meaningful and empowering environmental education remains uneven, particularly for marginalised youth including Scheduled Tribes, forest-dependent communities, urban-poor and migrant populations, girls and women, learners with disabilities, and out-of-school adolescents.

  This commentary examines inclusive and equitable environmental education in India through a climate justice lens, with specific focus on Mission LiFE (Lifestyle for Environment), a Government of India initiative aimed at promoting mass behavioural change towards sustainability. Drawing on policy analysis, environmental justice frameworks, and education-for-sustainable-development literature, the paper argues that environmental education must move beyond uniform, knowledge-centric approaches towards context-sensitive, action-oriented, and rights-based pedagogies.

  The analysis identifies key structural barriers to inclusive environmental education, including cultural and linguistic exclusion, resource and infrastructure deficits, pedagogical rigidity, digital divides, gender norms, inadequate teacher preparedness, and persistent social stigma. While Mission LiFE offers a scalable public pedagogical platform through community action, youth mobilisation, and programme convergence, its inclusive potential remains under-realised due to digital dependency, standardised messaging, and limited equity-focused monitoring.

  To address these challenges, the paper proposes an inclusive Mission LiFE framework emphasising localisation, gender-responsive leadership, disability inclusion, digital equity, community-based experiential learning, green skills and livelihood integration, and participatory governance. It also highlights critical research gaps related to marginalised youth outcomes, indigenous pedagogies, gendered dimensions of sustainability, disability-inclusive education, and livelihood-linked environmental learning.

  The paper concludes that environmental education in India is fundamentally a climate justice imperative. Embedding inclusion structurally within Mission LiFE can transform environmental education into a democratic and empowering pathway, ensuring that marginalised youth are recognised as knowledge-holders and co-leaders in India’s sustainability transition.