Today’s societies are confronted by a daily biodiversity loss, which will increase in the face of climate change and environmental pollution. Biodiversity loss is a particularly severe problem in so-called biodiversity hotspots. Ecuador is an example of a country that hosts two different biodiversity hotspots. Human behavior – in developing as well as in industrial countries such as Germany – must be considered as one of the most important direct and indirect drivers of this global trend and thus plays a crucial role in environmentalism and biodiversity conservation. Nature relatedness and environmental concern have been identified as important environmental psychological factors related to people’s pro-environmental behavior. However, the human–nature relationship depends on a variety of other factors, such as values, gender, nationality, qualities of environmental concern and time spent in nature. This study compared young people from Ecuador and Germany with regard to their nature relatedness and environmental concern. Furthermore, the role of the aforementioned factors was investigated. In total, we surveyed 2,173 high school students from Germany (Mage = 14.56 years, SD = 1.45; female: 55.1%) and 451 high school students from Ecuador (Mage = 14.63 years, SD = 1.77; female: 55.3%). We found that young Ecuadorians were more related to nature than young people from Germany. Additionally, we found country-specific differences in the structure of environmental concern and in the role of gender in the explanation of biospheric environmental concern and nature relatedness. In both samples, the self-transcendence value cluster was a significant positive predictor for biospheric environmental concern and nature relatedness. Time spent in nature was a significant positive predictor for nature relatedness in both samples. The results are an empirical basis for the assumption of culture-specific differences in human–nature relationships.

In Education for Sustainable Development, the topic of sustainable nutrition offers an excellent learning topic as it combines the five dimensions of health, environment, economy, society, and culture, unlike most topics with a regional-global scope. The identification of existing students’ conceptions of this topic is important for the development of effective teaching and learning arrangements. This study aimed to understand students’ conceptions of sustainable nutrition and the relevance that students attribute to the five dimensions. For this purpose, we conducted semi-structured individual interviews with 10th-grade students at secondary schools in Germany (n = 46; female = 47.8%; MAge = 15.59, SD = 0.78). We found that the health dimension prevailed in students’ conceptions of sustainable nutrition; however, the more dimensions the students considered, the less importance was attached to the health dimension. The ecological dimension, in turn, became more prominent as the students’ conceptions became more elaborate. Many students neglected the social, economic, and especially the cultural dimensions. Furthermore, alternative conceptions of the terminology of sustainable nutrition, which did not correspond to the scientific concept, were identified. Students had difficulties linking the ecological, social, economic, and cultural dimensions to sustainable nutrition due to a predominant egocentric perspective on nutrition, which primarily entails focusing on one’s own body.