**4. Findings and Conclusions**

The data show that lower secondary students in the Netherlands have relatively narrow views of sustainability. They mainly relate it to sustainable energy use and recycling. About 90% of the students think about the future of the planet at least sometimes, with over half of them being worried. They fear for doom scenarios with mass extinction, hunger, pollution, and destruction of the planet. However, about half of the students notice sustainability issues close to home, whereas almost all of them think sustainability issues exist elsewhere. This means students feel distant in regard to sustainability issues. In contrast, students are interested in learning more about possible solutions that they can

**Citation:** van Harskamp, M.; Knippels, M.-C.P.J.; van Joolingen, W.R. Environmental Citizenship of Dutch Lower Secondary Students. *Environ. Sci. Proc.* **2022**, *14*, 2. https://doi.org/10.3390/ environsciproc2022014002

Academic Editors: Andreas Ch. Hadjichambis, Pedro Reis, Audrone˙ Telesiene, Daphne Goldman, Demetra Paraskeva-Hadjichambi, Jan Cincera and Kateˇrina Janˇcaˇríková

Published: 1 March 2022

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

implement themselves. Students do not discuss sustainability with friends, but about half of them discuss them at home or at school. They often adopt a form of EC that can be typified as personally responsible citizenship [3].

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, M.v.H., M.-C.P.J.K. and W.R.v.J.; methodology, M.v.H., M.-C.P.J.K. and W.R.v.J.; analysis, M.v.H. and M.-C.P.J.K.; writing—original draft preparation, M.v.H.; writing—review and editing, M.v.H., M.-C.P.J.K. and W.R.v.J.; visualization, M.v.H.; funding acquisition, M.v.H., M.-C.P.J.K. and W.R.v.J. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This work was supported by the NRO (Nationaal Regieorgaan Onderwijsonderzoek) under Grant number 40.5.18540.030.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** This study was performed under ethical guidelines from the Faculty of Science from Utrecht University; explicit ethical review for this study was not mandatory.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Informed consent was obtained for all subjects involved in the study.

**Data Availability Statement:** Data sharing not applicable.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.

